Banneker versus School Without Walls
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Anonymous
THIS. I've tutored many AA kids from low SES backgrounds in this Metro area who destroyed the SAT. They scored in the high 600s and 700s. But then they either had access to GT programming in ES and MS in suburban public school systems or attended parochial schools on fi aid. |
Anonymous
Probably. Cheating is rampant and acceptable. |
Anonymous
The data is clear that: - The SAT is most effective at predicting parental income. - The SAT does a worse job than high school grades at predicting student success in college. - There are clear changes that could be made to the SAT that would reduce the racial and SES gaps by making the test harder, changes that the college board as resisted. In fact, the trend for the past couple of decades has been to make the test easier in ways that objectively increase the SES and racial gap. Also, it's absolutely clear that the SAT was developed expressly for the purpose of offering a veneer of science to support 1920s white supremacy. You seem unwilling to confront any of those clearly demonstrated facts, instead claiming that the SAT is "easy" and "at an 8th grade level" --- seemingly unaware that the US average SAT score is 1051, and that this national number is artificially high when compared to DMV-area schools because the test if administered for free during school hours, so far more kids take it than in other areas of the country (where only college-bound kids take it, and they pay to take the test). I get that FOR YOUR KIDS the SAT is easy. Me too. I was a national merit scholar, took the test only once and never studied at all. But competent policymaking is not about making policy based on my individual experience or yours. It's about looking at data to understand what's actually going on in the world and making policy accordingly. Denying obvious issues with the SAT (which are amply supported by data) and taking refuge in anecdotes about your individual experience doesn't help anyone. |
Anonymous
DP. The current SAT is so far removed from the test of previous generations that it shouldn't have the same name anymore. So equating it with eugenics of the 1920s is just bizarre. |
Anonymous
So you claim. Please provide peer-reviewed cites for all your claims. |
Anonymous
The SAT is most effective at predicting parental income. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797612438732 The SAT does a worse job than high school grades at predicting student success in college. Correlation coefficient of grades: .53. Of SAT: .51. Not peer reviewed, but this is the College Board's own data. https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/national-sat-validity-study-overview-admissions-enrollment-leaders.pdf There are clear changes that could be made to the SAT that would reduce the racial and SES gaps by making the test harder, changes that the college board as resisted. In fact, the trend for the past couple of decades has been to make the test easier in ways that objectively increase the SES and racial gap. https://www.hepg.org/her-home/issues/harvard-educational-review-volume-73-issue-1/herarticle/a-method-for-reestimating-sat-scores_23 And a followup directly addressing ETS claims about Freedles work https://www.hepg.org/her-home/issues/harvard-educational-review-volume-80-issue-1/herarticle/the-case-of-freedle,-the-sat,-and-the-standardizat And Carl Bingham's history and the purpose behind is work on testing is widely known, but if you need a primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Brigham |
Anonymous
Funny you should say that. Per the College Board, SAT is no longer an acronym for Scholastic Aptitude Test, it's just a word that happens to be all caps. Why? Because the "Aptitude" being tested was originally conceived of as genetic and impacted heavily by race. Yes, the test has changed a lot over the years, but telling non-white parents that they should just trust that everything's good now with a test ORIGINALLY EXPLICITLY DESIGNED TO KEEP THEIR ANCESTORS OUT OF COLLEGE is really asking quite a lot, particularly given that the test continues to show racial and economic bias. Somehow I doubt that all of the SAT proponents on this thread would embrace a test designed explicitly to show that white people were inferior, despite any tweaks to the test. Particularly if there was ongoing evidence of bias in the test. |
Anonymous
This European asserts that "competent policymaking" isn't about sending hundreds of thousands of American HS graduates who are poorly prepared to handle the academics at 4-year BA programs to college annually. Where I come from, if a student can't handle the 7th-9th grade level type reading comprehension and math tested on the SAT, s/he is not considered BA material by university gatekeepers, full stop. This is true whatever his or her skin color and parents' income. Students can get extra prep to meet admissions standards with help from the government, or go on to vocational training. What they can't do get is carte blanche to head to a 4-year undergrad program in search of remedial education, or the chance to flunk out subsidized by the taxpayer through federal student loans programs. Denying the obvious issues with the failure of a great many applicants to clear a reasonable academic bar for admissions by taking refuge in asserting the right of the poorly prepared to attend 4-year college programs must be about your individual experience and political leanings. Common sense tells me that the fact that Banneker's lagging SAT scores are sufficient to send dozens of graduates to 4-year programs annually, although they're obviously not prepared to handle the requisite course work, is far more problematic than the less-than-perfect design of the SAT. |
Anonymous
Except that they’re neither “objective” nor “unbiased”. If you want to argue that they should be the “standard” because they correlate with particular types of academic performance for specific— and delineated— populations, fine. That’s a completely different argument from the one that many seem to be asserting, though. |
Anonymous
You are right PP and that is why there is a high drop out rate with kids from poorly performing schools. That is after they owe thousands of dollars in debt from the 1st year. It would be better to send them to vocational school to be an electrician, plumber, etc…which would propel them into the lower middle class. |
Anonymous
| It might also propel them into the UMC. This country isn't short on skilled and management savvy plumbers and electricians who own their own businesses, employing other plumbers and electricians. That's how my grandfather, who never graduated from HS, got ahead. He earned more than my dad in middle-age, a college prof with a PhD. |
Anonymous
Who appointed you to determine what the arguments are? The SAT has been around long enough by now, and has been reinvented enough times, to have emerged as a reasonably objective and unbiased test when taken my HS students who have the brains, drive and academic prep to undertake BA work on good form. If you're determined to see formal education structures in this country, and the standardized tests that measure progress within them, as racist, elitist, classist and discriminatory, you'll surely find your grist for the mill. More power to recent immigrant communities in this countries, particularly immigrants from Asia, for focusing on academic performance, vs. whining about unfair standardized tests that favor whites and the well-off. |
Anonymous
Well said, pp. I think about this subject a lot, and frankly, I agree. I wonder how exponentially worse the outcome may be for the student who isn't prepared for the rigors of college. That said, I very much doubt that those scoring 900's on their SATs are going to highly competitive colleges. |
Anonymous
(But the median scores of white kids are lower than those of Asian kids on the SAT and other standardized tests. A fact that is conveniently glossed over or framed as "white/Asian" scores. If white people want to go on about "racial superiority" they are very loose with the facts). |
Anonymous
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You'd be surprised. There are Banneker graduates with SATs in the low 500s going to "competitive" college, those admitting less than half the applicants, due to affirmative action. There are also many Banneker grads with SATs in the high 500s and low 600s getting into colleges where Asian applicants who are at about the same place on the socioeconomic spectrum (low SES) need SATs in the 700s to be admitted.
All things considered, I'm hoping that the Supreme Court will knock back heavy-handed consideration of race in college admissions with a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in an appeal of the NC Chapel Hill ruling in the spring. The architects of affirmative action in the CRM didn't consider the arrangement to be a permanent solution. Perhaps the time has come for the rest of the states to copy Michigan and California in ditching affirmative action in higher education in favor of shifting vast resources into preparing low-income minority students to compete with whites and Asians in college, vs. getting a pass to be admitted with inferior preparation. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/us/politics/affirmative-action-university-of-north-carolina-court.html |