Banneker versus School Without Walls

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, so have you opted your kid(s) our of the PARCC in DCPS? I do so every year, because PARCC is a poorly written, unnecessarily lengthy, widely discredited corporate 10-hour test given to 8 year-olds, crafted and graded by a British company vs. an American one.

The SAT has been around since 1926, helping tens of millions of low and moderate-income students prove their value to elite colleges through four or five generations. You can throw the baby out with the bathwater because Banneker students don't get the prep to collectively shine on the SAT, or you can see the forest for the trees.

Test optional doesn't mean that the SAT, or ACT, has been rejected by academe. It means a decent score can only enhance an application. I don't know of any colleges that won't permit an applicant to submit a favorable SAT score with an application, do you?

It’s EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that the SAT was created by a eugenicist as a way to support only allowing white people to immigrate to the US.

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2020/08/17/history-sat-reflects-systemic-racism-opinion

LOL it's EXTREMELY ahistorical and ignorant to say the SAT was about only letting white people immigrate. You know the restrictionists in the early 20th century were trying to keep out Eastern European Catholics and Jews, right? And Bruce Hammond is a hack, not a historian. Read a book.

It's EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that high school and college admissions tests are systematically used all over the world. This is the case because such tests are useful for identifying the academic preparedness of prospective students.

+1. Grade inflation is rampant, courses are dumb down. It’s difficult to really assess what students know, and if they will be prepared for college.

This is where standardized tests come in. Same basic knowledge test administered to everyone. The SAT, as previous posters have said, are testing basic knowledge you should have learned in high school. It’s not testing things you don’t know.

Yes, test prep is out there. Millions of kids take the SAT but really only a small percentage do test prep courses like Kaplan, etc…. It’s really a false narrative, the people on here saying majority of kids that do well on the SAT are test prep.

I’m a minority who immigrated here when I was 4 and grew up poor. My parents bought a SAT study book and that was what I did. It costs maybe $20? Did fine in the SAT and got a full academic scholarship to college.

It’s not because of lack of test prep that Banneker kids don’t do well. It’s because DCPS refuses to do tracking to identify early in elementary the lower SES kids with potential, to then challenge them moving forward to reach their full potential. The kids coming to Banneker are mostly from poorly performing schools with no rigor or high performing peer group. By high school, it’s too late for them to plug in all the gaps in their knowledge or correct a weak foundation in math, reading, writing, vocab, etc…

I knew no English when I started K and had ESL pull outs. I did well in school because teachers saw I had potential early on, and I was put in G & T in 3rd grade. From there, I was tracked with a higher performing peer group and had more challenging content and materials.

AA kids from low SES backgrounds like myself in DC just gets lost in the system. They usually are in poorly performing schools with no rigor or high performing peer groups. Then they get to Banneker, and by then it’s too late and a catch up game just to get 500 on the SAT and 3’s on AP tests. It also doesn’t help how low a bar DCPS sets.

What DCPS needs to do is establish G & T schools at the elementary level, magnet schools at the middle school level. But that will never happen because it’s all about social promotion in the name of equity and a race to the bottom.

[Anonymous]

Exactly, HS is far too late to build foundational skills in math, writing and reading. You're the right messenger, PP.

When UMC white and Asian posters make similar points with DCPS and on these threads, they're seeking preferential treatment for their precious snowflakes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, so have you opted your kid(s) our of the PARCC in DCPS? I do so every year, because PARCC is a poorly written, unnecessarily lengthy, widely discredited corporate 10-hour test given to 8 year-olds, crafted and graded by a British company vs. an American one.

The SAT has been around since 1926, helping tens of millions of low and moderate-income students prove their value to elite colleges through four or five generations. You can throw the baby out with the bathwater because Banneker students don't get the prep to collectively shine on the SAT, or you can see the forest for the trees.

Test optional doesn't mean that the SAT, or ACT, has been rejected by academe. It means a decent score can only enhance an application. I don't know of any colleges that won't permit an applicant to submit a favorable SAT score with an application, do you?

It’s EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that the SAT was created by a eugenicist as a way to support only allowing white people to immigrate to the US.

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2020/08/17/history-sat-reflects-systemic-racism-opinion

LOL it's EXTREMELY ahistorical and ignorant to say the SAT was about only letting white people immigrate. You know the restrictionists in the early 20th century were trying to keep out Eastern European Catholics and Jews, right? And Bruce Hammond is a hack, not a historian. Read a book.

It's EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that high school and college admissions tests are systematically used all over the world. This is the case because such tests are useful for identifying the academic preparedness of prospective students.

+1. Grade inflation is rampant, courses are dumb down. It’s difficult to really assess what students know, and if they will be prepared for college.

This is where standardized tests come in. Same basic knowledge test administered to everyone. The SAT, as previous posters have said, are testing basic knowledge you should have learned in high school. It’s not testing things you don’t know.

Yes, test prep is out there. Millions of kids take the SAT but really only a small percentage do test prep courses like Kaplan, etc…. It’s really a false narrative, the people on here saying majority of kids that do well on the SAT are test prep.

I’m a minority who immigrated here when I was 4 and grew up poor. My parents bought a SAT study book and that was what I did. It costs maybe $20? Did fine in the SAT and got a full academic scholarship to college.

It’s not because of lack of test prep that Banneker kids don’t do well. It’s because DCPS refuses to do tracking to identify early in elementary the lower SES kids with potential, to then challenge them moving forward to reach their full potential. The kids coming to Banneker are mostly from poorly performing schools with no rigor or high performing peer group. By high school, it’s too late for them to plug in all the gaps in their knowledge or correct a weak foundation in math, reading, writing, vocab, etc…

I knew no English when I started K and had ESL pull outs. I did well in school because teachers saw I had potential early on, and I was put in G & T in 3rd grade. From there, I was tracked with a higher performing peer group and had more challenging content and materials.

AA kids from low SES backgrounds like myself in DC just gets lost in the system. They usually are in poorly performing schools with no rigor or high performing peer groups. Then they get to Banneker, and by then it’s too late and a catch up game just to get 500 on the SAT and 3’s on AP tests. It also doesn’t help how low a bar DCPS sets.

What DCPS needs to do is establish G & T schools at the elementary level, magnet schools at the middle school level. But that will never happen because it’s all about social promotion in the name of equity and a race to the bottom.

G&T programs just makes everything worse because people are less likely to see minorities as gifted. This thread is exhibit A. Page after page of people tearing down Banneker students. It’s gross.

[Anonymous]

You missed the plot, PP. Nobody's tearing down Banneker students. It's the adults who fail to ensure that they're well prepared for college who get the blame.

Sorry, but your thinking about the promise of GT programs for low SES minorities in ES and MS belongs in a different decade. I work for MoCo public schools, a school system that works very hard to include low SES minorities in a great variety of programming to support advanced learners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, so have you opted your kid(s) our of the PARCC in DCPS? I do so every year, because PARCC is a poorly written, unnecessarily lengthy, widely discredited corporate 10-hour test given to 8 year-olds, crafted and graded by a British company vs. an American one.

The SAT has been around since 1926, helping tens of millions of low and moderate-income students prove their value to elite colleges through four or five generations. You can throw the baby out with the bathwater because Banneker students don't get the prep to collectively shine on the SAT, or you can see the forest for the trees.

Test optional doesn't mean that the SAT, or ACT, has been rejected by academe. It means a decent score can only enhance an application. I don't know of any colleges that won't permit an applicant to submit a favorable SAT score with an application, do you?

It’s EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that the SAT was created by a eugenicist as a way to support only allowing white people to immigrate to the US.

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2020/08/17/history-sat-reflects-systemic-racism-opinion

LOL it's EXTREMELY ahistorical and ignorant to say the SAT was about only letting white people immigrate. You know the restrictionists in the early 20th century were trying to keep out Eastern European Catholics and Jews, right? And Bruce Hammond is a hack, not a historian. Read a book.

It's EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that high school and college admissions tests are systematically used all over the world. This is the case because such tests are useful for identifying the academic preparedness of prospective students.

+1. Grade inflation is rampant, courses are dumb down. It’s difficult to really assess what students know, and if they will be prepared for college.

This is where standardized tests come in. Same basic knowledge test administered to everyone. The SAT, as previous posters have said, are testing basic knowledge you should have learned in high school. It’s not testing things you don’t know.

Yes, test prep is out there. Millions of kids take the SAT but really only a small percentage do test prep courses like Kaplan, etc…. It’s really a false narrative, the people on here saying majority of kids that do well on the SAT are test prep.

I’m a minority who immigrated here when I was 4 and grew up poor. My parents bought a SAT study book and that was what I did. It costs maybe $20? Did fine in the SAT and got a full academic scholarship to college.

It’s not because of lack of test prep that Banneker kids don’t do well. It’s because DCPS refuses to do tracking to identify early in elementary the lower SES kids with potential, to then challenge them moving forward to reach their full potential. The kids coming to Banneker are mostly from poorly performing schools with no rigor or high performing peer group. By high school, it’s too late for them to plug in all the gaps in their knowledge or correct a weak foundation in math, reading, writing, vocab, etc…

I knew no English when I started K and had ESL pull outs. I did well in school because teachers saw I had potential early on, and I was put in G & T in 3rd grade. From there, I was tracked with a higher performing peer group and had more challenging content and materials.

AA kids from low SES backgrounds like myself in DC just gets lost in the system. They usually are in poorly performing schools with no rigor or high performing peer groups. Then they get to Banneker, and by then it’s too late and a catch up game just to get 500 on the SAT and 3’s on AP tests. It also doesn’t help how low a bar DCPS sets.

What DCPS needs to do is establish G & T schools at the elementary level, magnet schools at the middle school level. But that will never happen because it’s all about social promotion in the name of equity and a race to the bottom.

G&T programs just makes everything worse because people are less likely to see minorities as gifted. This thread is exhibit A. Page after page of people tearing down Banneker students. It’s gross.

I tutored for many years in schools in SE and NE DC. What's gross is the soft bigotry of low expectations. Plenty of low SES kids are bright enough to compete w/ UMC kids. But many of them are battling both a culture that denigrates academic achievement as "acting white" and a school system that reinforces the idea that "good enough" is the same as excellence. Agree with the poster who said the blame lies at the feet of the adults in those kids lives -- and a school system that doesn't identify the gifted and offer them the academic challenges they deserve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, so have you opted your kid(s) our of the PARCC in DCPS? I do so every year, because PARCC is a poorly written, unnecessarily lengthy, widely discredited corporate 10-hour test given to 8 year-olds, crafted and graded by a British company vs. an American one.

The SAT has been around since 1926, helping tens of millions of low and moderate-income students prove their value to elite colleges through four or five generations. You can throw the baby out with the bathwater because Banneker students don't get the prep to collectively shine on the SAT, or you can see the forest for the trees.

Test optional doesn't mean that the SAT, or ACT, has been rejected by academe. It means a decent score can only enhance an application. I don't know of any colleges that won't permit an applicant to submit a favorable SAT score with an application, do you?

It’s EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that the SAT was created by a eugenicist as a way to support only allowing white people to immigrate to the US.

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2020/08/17/history-sat-reflects-systemic-racism-opinion

LOL it's EXTREMELY ahistorical and ignorant to say the SAT was about only letting white people immigrate. You know the restrictionists in the early 20th century were trying to keep out Eastern European Catholics and Jews, right? And Bruce Hammond is a hack, not a historian. Read a book.

It's EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that high school and college admissions tests are systematically used all over the world. This is the case because such tests are useful for identifying the academic preparedness of prospective students.

+1. Grade inflation is rampant, courses are dumb down. It’s difficult to really assess what students know, and if they will be prepared for college.

This is where standardized tests come in. Same basic knowledge test administered to everyone. The SAT, as previous posters have said, are testing basic knowledge you should have learned in high school. It’s not testing things you don’t know.

Yes, test prep is out there. Millions of kids take the SAT but really only a small percentage do test prep courses like Kaplan, etc…. It’s really a false narrative, the people on here saying majority of kids that do well on the SAT are test prep.

I’m a minority who immigrated here when I was 4 and grew up poor. My parents bought a SAT study book and that was what I did. It costs maybe $20? Did fine in the SAT and got a full academic scholarship to college.

It’s not because of lack of test prep that Banneker kids don’t do well. It’s because DCPS refuses to do tracking to identify early in elementary the lower SES kids with potential, to then challenge them moving forward to reach their full potential. The kids coming to Banneker are mostly from poorly performing schools with no rigor or high performing peer group. By high school, it’s too late for them to plug in all the gaps in their knowledge or correct a weak foundation in math, reading, writing, vocab, etc…

I knew no English when I started K and had ESL pull outs. I did well in school because teachers saw I had potential early on, and I was put in G & T in 3rd grade. From there, I was tracked with a higher performing peer group and had more challenging content and materials.

AA kids from low SES backgrounds like myself in DC just gets lost in the system. They usually are in poorly performing schools with no rigor or high performing peer groups. Then they get to Banneker, and by then it’s too late and a catch up game just to get 500 on the SAT and 3’s on AP tests. It also doesn’t help how low a bar DCPS sets.

What DCPS needs to do is establish G & T schools at the elementary level, magnet schools at the middle school level. But that will never happen because it’s all about social promotion in the name of equity and a race to the bottom.

G&T programs just makes everything worse because people are less likely to see minorities as gifted. This thread is exhibit A. Page after page of people tearing down Banneker students. It’s gross.

I tutored for many years in schools in SE and NE DC. What's gross is the soft bigotry of low expectations. Plenty of low SES kids are bright enough to compete w/ UMC kids. But many of them are battling both a culture that denigrates academic achievement as "acting white" and a school system that reinforces the idea that "good enough" is the same as excellence. Agree with the poster who said the blame lies at the feet of the adults in those kids lives -- and a school system that doesn't identify the gifted and offer them the academic challenges they deserve.

This is what drives me crazy about DCPS. I work in Central and get frustrated why no one wants to aim for excellence rather than adequate or good enough. Our kids are smart enough but we don’t push them to perform at the level we deserve. There are many bright kids of all races and income levels who are being failed by our quest for mediocrity. DCPS does not care what happens to kids when they graduate high school. They just want to tout increasing graduation rates. Banneker is a fine school and one of the best in DCPS but it could be so much better. Same situation with Walls and Wilson.

[Anonymous]

Correction - I meant the kids deserve better not we deserve better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, so have you opted your kid(s) our of the PARCC in DCPS? I do so every year, because PARCC is a poorly written, unnecessarily lengthy, widely discredited corporate 10-hour test given to 8 year-olds, crafted and graded by a British company vs. an American one.

The SAT has been around since 1926, helping tens of millions of low and moderate-income students prove their value to elite colleges through four or five generations. You can throw the baby out with the bathwater because Banneker students don't get the prep to collectively shine on the SAT, or you can see the forest for the trees.

Test optional doesn't mean that the SAT, or ACT, has been rejected by academe. It means a decent score can only enhance an application. I don't know of any colleges that won't permit an applicant to submit a favorable SAT score with an application, do you?

It’s EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that the SAT was created by a eugenicist as a way to support only allowing white people to immigrate to the US.

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2020/08/17/history-sat-reflects-systemic-racism-opinion

LOL it's EXTREMELY ahistorical and ignorant to say the SAT was about only letting white people immigrate. You know the restrictionists in the early 20th century were trying to keep out Eastern European Catholics and Jews, right? And Bruce Hammond is a hack, not a historian. Read a book.

It's EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that high school and college admissions tests are systematically used all over the world. This is the case because such tests are useful for identifying the academic preparedness of prospective students.

+1. Grade inflation is rampant, courses are dumb down. It’s difficult to really assess what students know, and if they will be prepared for college.

This is where standardized tests come in. Same basic knowledge test administered to everyone. The SAT, as previous posters have said, are testing basic knowledge you should have learned in high school. It’s not testing things you don’t know.

Yes, test prep is out there. Millions of kids take the SAT but really only a small percentage do test prep courses like Kaplan, etc…. It’s really a false narrative, the people on here saying majority of kids that do well on the SAT are test prep.

I’m a minority who immigrated here when I was 4 and grew up poor. My parents bought a SAT study book and that was what I did. It costs maybe $20? Did fine in the SAT and got a full academic scholarship to college.

It’s not because of lack of test prep that Banneker kids don’t do well. It’s because DCPS refuses to do tracking to identify early in elementary the lower SES kids with potential, to then challenge them moving forward to reach their full potential. The kids coming to Banneker are mostly from poorly performing schools with no rigor or high performing peer group. By high school, it’s too late for them to plug in all the gaps in their knowledge or correct a weak foundation in math, reading, writing, vocab, etc…

I knew no English when I started K and had ESL pull outs. I did well in school because teachers saw I had potential early on, and I was put in G & T in 3rd grade. From there, I was tracked with a higher performing peer group and had more challenging content and materials.

AA kids from low SES backgrounds like myself in DC just gets lost in the system. They usually are in poorly performing schools with no rigor or high performing peer groups. Then they get to Banneker, and by then it’s too late and a catch up game just to get 500 on the SAT and 3’s on AP tests. It also doesn’t help how low a bar DCPS sets.

What DCPS needs to do is establish G & T schools at the elementary level, magnet schools at the middle school level. But that will never happen because it’s all about social promotion in the name of equity and a race to the bottom.

G&T programs just makes everything worse because people are less likely to see minorities as gifted. This thread is exhibit A. Page after page of people tearing down Banneker students. It’s gross.

I tutored for many years in schools in SE and NE DC. What's gross is the soft bigotry of low expectations. Plenty of low SES kids are bright enough to compete w/ UMC kids. But many of them are battling both a culture that denigrates academic achievement as "acting white" and a school system that reinforces the idea that "good enough" is the same as excellence. Agree with the poster who said the blame lies at the feet of the adults in those kids lives -- and a school system that doesn't identify the gifted and offer them the academic challenges they deserve.

+1000.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, so have you opted your kid(s) our of the PARCC in DCPS? I do so every year, because PARCC is a poorly written, unnecessarily lengthy, widely discredited corporate 10-hour test given to 8 year-olds, crafted and graded by a British company vs. an American one.

The SAT has been around since 1926, helping tens of millions of low and moderate-income students prove their value to elite colleges through four or five generations. You can throw the baby out with the bathwater because Banneker students don't get the prep to collectively shine on the SAT, or you can see the forest for the trees.

Test optional doesn't mean that the SAT, or ACT, has been rejected by academe. It means a decent score can only enhance an application. I don't know of any colleges that won't permit an applicant to submit a favorable SAT score with an application, do you?

It’s EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that the SAT was created by a eugenicist as a way to support only allowing white people to immigrate to the US.

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2020/08/17/history-sat-reflects-systemic-racism-opinion

LOL it's EXTREMELY ahistorical and ignorant to say the SAT was about only letting white people immigrate. You know the restrictionists in the early 20th century were trying to keep out Eastern European Catholics and Jews, right? And Bruce Hammond is a hack, not a historian. Read a book.

It's EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that high school and college admissions tests are systematically used all over the world. This is the case because such tests are useful for identifying the academic preparedness of prospective students.

+1. Grade inflation is rampant, courses are dumb down. It’s difficult to really assess what students know, and if they will be prepared for college.

This is where standardized tests come in. Same basic knowledge test administered to everyone. The SAT, as previous posters have said, are testing basic knowledge you should have learned in high school. It’s not testing things you don’t know.

Yes, test prep is out there. Millions of kids take the SAT but really only a small percentage do test prep courses like Kaplan, etc…. It’s really a false narrative, the people on here saying majority of kids that do well on the SAT are test prep.

I’m a minority who immigrated here when I was 4 and grew up poor. My parents bought a SAT study book and that was what I did. It costs maybe $20? Did fine in the SAT and got a full academic scholarship to college.

It’s not because of lack of test prep that Banneker kids don’t do well. It’s because DCPS refuses to do tracking to identify early in elementary the lower SES kids with potential, to then challenge them moving forward to reach their full potential. The kids coming to Banneker are mostly from poorly performing schools with no rigor or high performing peer group. By high school, it’s too late for them to plug in all the gaps in their knowledge or correct a weak foundation in math, reading, writing, vocab, etc…

I knew no English when I started K and had ESL pull outs. I did well in school because teachers saw I had potential early on, and I was put in G & T in 3rd grade. From there, I was tracked with a higher performing peer group and had more challenging content and materials.

AA kids from low SES backgrounds like myself in DC just gets lost in the system. They usually are in poorly performing schools with no rigor or high performing peer groups. Then they get to Banneker, and by then it’s too late and a catch up game just to get 500 on the SAT and 3’s on AP tests. It also doesn’t help how low a bar DCPS sets.

What DCPS needs to do is establish G & T schools at the elementary level, magnet schools at the middle school level. But that will never happen because it’s all about social promotion in the name of equity and a race to the bottom.

G&T programs just makes everything worse because people are less likely to see minorities as gifted. This thread is exhibit A. Page after page of people tearing down Banneker students. It’s gross.

I tutored for many years in schools in SE and NE DC. What's gross is the soft bigotry of low expectations. Plenty of low SES kids are bright enough to compete w/ UMC kids. But many of them are battling both a culture that denigrates academic achievement as "acting white" and a school system that reinforces the idea that "good enough" is the same as excellence. Agree with the poster who said the blame lies at the feet of the adults in those kids lives -- and a school system that doesn't identify the gifted and offer them the academic challenges they deserve.

+1000.

Yeah. And the thing is, they wouldn’t even have to actively seek to “integrate” Banneker to pursue the kind excellence you describe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, so have you opted your kid(s) our of the PARCC in DCPS? I do so every year, because PARCC is a poorly written, unnecessarily lengthy, widely discredited corporate 10-hour test given to 8 year-olds, crafted and graded by a British company vs. an American one.

The SAT has been around since 1926, helping tens of millions of low and moderate-income students prove their value to elite colleges through four or five generations. You can throw the baby out with the bathwater because Banneker students don't get the prep to collectively shine on the SAT, or you can see the forest for the trees.

Test optional doesn't mean that the SAT, or ACT, has been rejected by academe. It means a decent score can only enhance an application. I don't know of any colleges that won't permit an applicant to submit a favorable SAT score with an application, do you?

It’s EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that the SAT was created by a eugenicist as a way to support only allowing white people to immigrate to the US.

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2020/08/17/history-sat-reflects-systemic-racism-opinion

LOL it's EXTREMELY ahistorical and ignorant to say the SAT was about only letting white people immigrate. You know the restrictionists in the early 20th century were trying to keep out Eastern European Catholics and Jews, right? And Bruce Hammond is a hack, not a historian. Read a book.

If you had read a book, you'd know that white supremacists didn't (and still don't) consider Jews like me or European Catholics to be white.

Also, the white-supremacist origins of the test that became the SAT have been documented extensively. You need look no further than the writings of Carl Bingham, developer of the Alpha test (which became the Scholastic Aptitude Test), to understand that his primary intellectual driving force in the 1920s was white supremacy and eugenics. He started with the ideas that different ethnic groups had an innate genetic intelligence level, that "Nordic peoples" had the most intelligence, and that allowing other groups to immigrate or to be admitted to universities risked lowering the standards and quality of those institutions. It's quite clear that his intellectual project was to scientifically justify segregation and closing both US borders and universities to people other than "Nordic" whites. It's also worth noting that he explicitly repudiated many of these ideas and much of his support for intelligence testing later in life.

It's also abundantly clear that:

- High school grades are the best predictor of first year college success (higher r value than SATs, per the College Board's own studies)

- SATs are most effective statistically at predicting parental SES

- The College Board has been really slow to implement changes that would go a long way toward reducing the pro-white, pro-wealthy bias of the SAT, the easiest of which would be to make the SAT more difficult. Studies of re-scoring previous tests by eliminating easy questions and only grading difficult questions have been repeatedly shown to reduce the wealth and racial gaps in test results, but the College Board has resisted.

All of which makes the assertion -- in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary --- that SATs are an objective measure of college readiness really laughable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, so have you opted your kid(s) our of the PARCC in DCPS? I do so every year, because PARCC is a poorly written, unnecessarily lengthy, widely discredited corporate 10-hour test given to 8 year-olds, crafted and graded by a British company vs. an American one.

The SAT has been around since 1926, helping tens of millions of low and moderate-income students prove their value to elite colleges through four or five generations. You can throw the baby out with the bathwater because Banneker students don't get the prep to collectively shine on the SAT, or you can see the forest for the trees.

Test optional doesn't mean that the SAT, or ACT, has been rejected by academe. It means a decent score can only enhance an application. I don't know of any colleges that won't permit an applicant to submit a favorable SAT score with an application, do you?

It’s EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that the SAT was created by a eugenicist as a way to support only allowing white people to immigrate to the US.

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2020/08/17/history-sat-reflects-systemic-racism-opinion

LOL it's EXTREMELY ahistorical and ignorant to say the SAT was about only letting white people immigrate. You know the restrictionists in the early 20th century were trying to keep out Eastern European Catholics and Jews, right? And Bruce Hammond is a hack, not a historian. Read a book.

If you had read a book, you'd know that white supremacists didn't (and still don't) consider Jews like me or European Catholics to be white.

Also, the white-supremacist origins of the test that became the SAT have been documented extensively. You need look no further than the writings of Carl Bingham, developer of the Alpha test (which became the Scholastic Aptitude Test), to understand that his primary intellectual driving force in the 1920s was white supremacy and eugenics. He started with the ideas that different ethnic groups had an innate genetic intelligence level, that "Nordic peoples" had the most intelligence, and that allowing other groups to immigrate or to be admitted to universities risked lowering the standards and quality of those institutions. It's quite clear that his intellectual project was to scientifically justify segregation and closing both US borders and universities to people other than "Nordic" whites. It's also worth noting that he explicitly repudiated many of these ideas and much of his support for intelligence testing later in life.

It's also abundantly clear that:

- High school grades are the best predictor of first year college success (higher r value than SATs, per the College Board's own studies)

- SATs are most effective statistically at predicting parental SES

- The College Board has been really slow to implement changes that would go a long way toward reducing the pro-white, pro-wealthy bias of the SAT, the easiest of which would be to make the SAT more difficult. Studies of re-scoring previous tests by eliminating easy questions and only grading difficult questions have been repeatedly shown to reduce the wealth and racial gaps in test results, but the College Board has resisted.

All of which makes the assertion -- in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary --- that SATs are an objective measure of college readiness really laughable.

DP. I haven't extensively researched any of that. Decades ago, the SAT was considered a good proxy test for the IQ test. They've changed it several times since then and it no longer is. Maybe you're going to say that IQ is meaningless wrt college. Maybe it is. Is it also meaningless wrt grad school or a doctorate? Is IQ ever meaningful?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
It's EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that high school and college admissions tests are systematically used all over the world. This is the case because such tests are useful for identifying the academic preparedness of prospective students.

If you learn a bit more about the origins and stated purpose of the SAT (hint -- it's right there in the name, the Scholastic APTITUDE Test) you'll understand the difference between the SAT and other tests used all over the world for college admissions. The SAT was explicitly developed, and has been repeatedly adapted over the years, to NOT be a content-specific or skill-specific test like AS levels or A levels in the UK.

The SAT was originally developed to be a test of genetic aptitude rather than specific skills. Looked at charitably, you could argue that this is all in an effort to prevent people from being able to prep for the test so that true genetic aptitude rather than preparation could be tested (again, explicitly UNLIKE the tests used in the rest of the world), but there are a lot of problems with this, most importantly that content-specific, prep-able tests have lower bias toward high-SES and white students. This is reflected in the fact that eliminating questions that the College Board designates as easier from SAT test scores results in a lower SES and racial gap, and the prevailing understanding of this result is that harder questions reflect things that both high SES and low SES students need to study for, whereas easy, "general knowledge" questions tend to favor high SES students.

The fact that the College Board knows all this but continues to push their genetic aptitude test is really problematic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that high school and college admissions tests are systematically used all over the world. This is the case because such tests are useful for identifying the academic preparedness of prospective students.

If you learn a bit more about the origins and stated purpose of the SAT (hint -- it's right there in the name, the Scholastic APTITUDE Test) you'll understand the difference between the SAT and other tests used all over the world for college admissions. The SAT was explicitly developed, and has been repeatedly adapted over the years, to NOT be a content-specific or skill-specific test like AS levels or A levels in the UK.

The SAT was originally developed to be a test of genetic aptitude rather than specific skills. Looked at charitably, you could argue that this is all in an effort to prevent people from being able to prep for the test so that true genetic aptitude rather than preparation could be tested (again, explicitly UNLIKE the tests used in the rest of the world), but there are a lot of problems with this, most importantly that content-specific, prep-able tests have lower bias toward high-SES and white students. This is reflected in the fact that eliminating questions that the College Board designates as easier from SAT test scores results in a lower SES and racial gap, and the prevailing understanding of this result is that harder questions reflect things that both high SES and low SES students need to study for, whereas easy, "general knowledge" questions tend to favor high SES students.

The fact that the College Board knows all this but continues to push their genetic aptitude test is really problematic.

It’s about aptitude, not “genetic” aptitude. Brains have plasticity, which is why education, especially ECE, is important. And the fact that studying — learning more math and logic — can improve scores shows that skills are involved (and, I would argue, these same skills are useful in work and life).

Whether SATs predict college performance or whether it should be used for college admissions are different matters. But the idea that the SAT is all about “genetics” is absurd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that high school and college admissions tests are systematically used all over the world. This is the case because such tests are useful for identifying the academic preparedness of prospective students.

If you learn a bit more about the origins and stated purpose of the SAT (hint -- it's right there in the name, the Scholastic APTITUDE Test) you'll understand the difference between the SAT and other tests used all over the world for college admissions. The SAT was explicitly developed, and has been repeatedly adapted over the years, to NOT be a content-specific or skill-specific test like AS levels or A levels in the UK.

The SAT was originally developed to be a test of genetic aptitude rather than specific skills. Looked at charitably, you could argue that this is all in an effort to prevent people from being able to prep for the test so that true genetic aptitude rather than preparation could be tested (again, explicitly UNLIKE the tests used in the rest of the world), but there are a lot of problems with this, most importantly that content-specific, prep-able tests have lower bias toward high-SES and white students. This is reflected in the fact that eliminating questions that the College Board designates as easier from SAT test scores results in a lower SES and racial gap, and the prevailing understanding of this result is that harder questions reflect things that both high SES and low SES students need to study for, whereas easy, "general knowledge" questions tend to favor high SES students.

The fact that the College Board knows all this but continues to push their genetic aptitude test is really problematic.

I'm not white and didn't grow up UMC but I say bunk. If you're a HS student of whatever race or background who can't score at least in 500s on both sections of the SAT after a couple of tries, you don't belong in a BA program. You need more prep, perhaps at a community college. You can argue about the whys and wherefores until the end of time without changing this inconvenient truth.

There aren't really general knowledge questions on the SAT. There are simple reading comp questions, only a little bit harder than those on MS state standardized tests mandated by ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act under Obama), questions stemming from knowledge of arithmetic and basic algebra geometry, and questions related to interpreting highly accessible charts and graphs. No trick questions designed to trip up poor minority students.

If you haven't acquired the requisite college prep skills in HS to get a decent SAT score, you need to that before commencing BA studies. Policy makers need to ensure that far more low-income minorities have the education to score well enough on good-quality standardized tests to demonstrate that they're ready to move on to BA studies on good form. I wasn't a cherry-picked minority at a private school or NYC magnet. But I had access to GT programs in ES/MS in my working-class community, and good AP classes in HS. The SAT was no great mountain to climb for me and my low-SES minority friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's EXTREMELY disingenuous not to acknowledge that high school and college admissions tests are systematically used all over the world. This is the case because such tests are useful for identifying the academic preparedness of prospective students.

If you learn a bit more about the origins and stated purpose of the SAT (hint -- it's right there in the name, the Scholastic APTITUDE Test) you'll understand the difference between the SAT and other tests used all over the world for college admissions. The SAT was explicitly developed, and has been repeatedly adapted over the years, to NOT be a content-specific or skill-specific test like AS levels or A levels in the UK.

The SAT was originally developed to be a test of genetic aptitude rather than specific skills. Looked at charitably, you could argue that this is all in an effort to prevent people from being able to prep for the test so that true genetic aptitude rather than preparation could be tested (again, explicitly UNLIKE the tests used in the rest of the world), but there are a lot of problems with this, most importantly that content-specific, prep-able tests have lower bias toward high-SES and white students. This is reflected in the fact that eliminating questions that the College Board designates as easier from SAT test scores results in a lower SES and racial gap, and the prevailing understanding of this result is that harder questions reflect things that both high SES and low SES students need to study for, whereas easy, "general knowledge" questions tend to favor high SES students.

The fact that the College Board knows all this but continues to push their genetic aptitude test is really problematic.

I'm not white and didn't grow up UMC but I say bunk. If you're a HS student of whatever race or background who can't score at least in 500s on both sections of the SAT after a couple of tries, you don't belong in a BA program. You need more prep, perhaps at a community college. You can argue about the whys and wherefores until the end of time without changing this inconvenient truth.

There aren't really general knowledge questions on the SAT. There are simple reading comp questions, only a little bit harder than those on MS state standardized tests mandated by ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act under Obama), questions stemming from knowledge of arithmetic and basic algebra geometry, and questions related to interpreting highly accessible charts and graphs. No trick questions designed to trip up poor minority students.

If you haven't acquired the requisite college prep skills in HS to get a decent SAT score, you need to that before commencing BA studies. Policy makers need to ensure that far more low-income minorities have the education to score well enough on good-quality standardized tests to demonstrate that they're ready to move on to BA studies on good form. I wasn't a cherry-picked minority at a private school or NYC magnet. But I had access to GT programs in ES/MS in my working-class community, and good AP classes in HS. The SAT was no great mountain to climb for me and my low-SES minority friends.

You’re wrong.