Should the admissions process be colorblind?

[Anonymous]

If, on the other hand, you will assign important weight to the interview and play dates, I wouldn't trust or have faith in your proposed system...since this becomes potentially vulnerable to the very concerns you are trying to avoid.

[Anonymous]

I don't know. It's a thought experiment. I guess I'm more interested in the ramifications of such an approach than its practicality. Maybe infeasibility makes the question moot. I think it's been an interesting discussion anyway.

[Anonymous]

This is stupid. First of all, admissions people need to see how a child (and their parents) interact with others and actually interview them. That has to be done in person. And you all seem to forget that private schools have this thing called tuition? And endowments that need to be built? Of course a large number of people who apply and get into theses schools will have money, and a lot of them will be white. These schools cater largely to the ruling class, and we all know it. If private schools admitted SOLELY on the basis of some "objective" criteria (assuming such a thing were possible), how do you think they would stay in business? Face it people, this isn't a meritocracy, and there are factors you just can't control, so give it your best shot and stop obsessing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here re: process

By colorblind, I didn't mean that only scores would matter. It may not be practical, but I was thinking more in terms of a process in which the final set of people making the admissions decisions would not have any information regarding race/ethnicity. So schools could still collect that checkbox information if they want for statistical purposes, but this information would not be available to the group that meets to decide whom to admit. A different set of people would manage the playdates and parent interviews and write up notes. Each application could be assigned a case number instead of being referred to by the child's name.

My suspicion is that you would still get a group that's pretty diverse on ethnic/racial grounds, based on the number of well-educated, minority ethniticy parents around here, but I have no hard evidence to support that belief.

I think you're naive about this. Not only would it be very difficult to create a truly colorblind process, it doesn't figure in the tremendous advantage upper-middle-class whites have accrued over the decades. The AA parent of the child applying to the private school most likely grew up in a segregated school system, couldn't buy a house because government regulations and private banks favored white people (Read American Apartheid by Massey and Denton), and therefore didn't have the wealth (Black Wealth, White Wealth by Shapiro and Oliver I think) to provide the kinds of opportunities that my family (descended from long-term white privilege) was able to provide me. So the whole process is slanted against people whose parents, grand-parents, and great grand-parents never got a fair break, regardless of whether it is a level playing field now.

Furthermore, the admissions process is not just about who is the most worthy but constructing a good class which means that different people bring different things. When I teach two sections of a course, one can be very good and one can be torturous to sit through. While my teaching obviously affects the quality of the class, the environment of the class is affected by who comes to it -- are they engaged, do they like to discuss, do they like to think or would they rather memorize? I want a variety of people in my class. There are reasons to want all kinds of people in class because of what they contribute to the class -- not whether they are "deserving" or not.

[Anonymous]

I think many on this board agree (including the hypothesis proposers) with you. Since the outcome of such a trial would be preposterous. These things (preferences) are important to private schools so when a black, white, asian or (fill in the blank) gets admitted DCUMMIES with child and WPPSI 99 need not assume that some one has taken a seat reserved for their child. This is categorically not the case.

[Anonymous]

Since the angst expressed on this board revolves around which "child is smarter" and therefore deserves entry to our elite schools over another child for the sake of argument let's pretend to be an admission's officer ( I am not making any assumptions that these officers play this game) for a moment:

Define a smart 3 and 4 year-old?

What metrics (be specific) define smartiness in a 3 and 4-year-old?

How will you define and measure this?

How will you use this information to draft letters of accept, decline or wait list (include cutoffs if necessary absolute and relative) ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know. It's a thought experiment. I guess I'm more interested in the ramifications of such an approach than its practicality. Maybe infeasibility makes the question moot. I think it's been an interesting discussion anyway.

Some research that might be informative on the possible ramifications of such an approach: http://opr.princeton.edu/faculty/Tje/EspenshadeSSQPtII.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you're naive about this. Not only would it be very difficult to create a truly colorblind process, it doesn't figure in the tremendous advantage upper-middle-class whites have accrued over the decades. The AA parent of the child applying to the private school most likely grew up in a segregated school system, couldn't buy a house because government regulations and private banks favored white people (Read American Apartheid by Massey and Denton), and therefore didn't have the wealth (Black Wealth, White Wealth by Shapiro and Oliver I think) to provide the kinds of opportunities that my family (descended from long-term white privilege) was able to provide me. So the whole process is slanted against people whose parents, grand-parents, and great grand-parents never got a fair break, regardless of whether it is a level playing field now.

As a non-white person, I think you overestimate the advantages that your history of privilege gives you today and underestimate the strength of middle- and upper-middle-class communities "of color."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. I want my child to go to a diverse school so I want there to be all kinds of people there.

Are you white?

[Anonymous]

I love how people who are practically begging to get their kids admitted to private school continuously find fault with the process. Most admissions officers will ALWAYS take into consideration test scores, diversity, sibling preferences, parent interviews, playdates, family connections, teacher recs and donors. So your choices are to get over it, don't apply, send your child to public school, homeschool--or better yet, found your own private school with your own rules. But for there are plenty of us who would love to get our DCs into these top schools--and we're not whining every step of the way.

But I ask that the whiners do me a big favor. The next time there is an Open House, Parent Tour or Parent interview, PLEASE list all your grievances about diversity, big donors, test scores, sibling preferences, etc. Then the AD can cross your DC off the list, so there is less competition for my DC to get in. Thanks in advance!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since the angst expressed on this board revolves around which "child is smarter" and therefore deserves entry to our elite schools over another child for the sake of argument let's pretend to be an admission's officer ( I am not making any assumptions that these officers play this game) for a moment:

Define a smart 3 and 4 year-old?

What metrics (be specific) define smartiness in a 3 and 4-year-old?

How will you define and measure this?

How will you use this information to draft letters of accept, decline or wait list (include cutoffs if necessary absolute and relative) ?

I was going to ask the same question about how you determine merit in 3 and 4-year-olds. I would add that my high schooler, at one of those "elite" private schools, has repeatedly noted that the range of abilities in his classmates is the largest in the kids who started in PK and K. Kids admitted in Middle School and High School are more consistently at the upper end of academic ability, suggesting that the WPPSI was not a particularly good sorting instrument.

[Anonymous]

Is a better question simply whether race should explicitly be taken into account in admissions decisions? Of course, people may have prejudices (whether against a particular group or in favor of an affirmative action approach) that may inform their thinking, but I think there is a limit to how much you can delve into the minds and hearts of people making these very subjective decisions. As for how entitled the white population has been for generations upon generations, I think we're all imposing a bit of our own closed-minded view as to how much of the world we wish to take into account in making this criticism. Of course there has been a terrible history of racism in the US. I'm white, though, and my family was too busy working farms and dying in potato famines in Ireland to do much about it at the time. I'm the first in my family to go to college, and only a few have graduated from the Irish equivalent of high school. Perhaps all of the stereotypes are a bit off the mark.

[Anonymous]

I believe your're right. The early years are the fundraising, endowment protecting and cash cow period while the latter years in high school is the polish to round out the ultimate graduating class and fill in the holes and needs at this elite schools. They will draw from la creme de la creme here (Rhodes Scholar type athletes for their ball teams, etc)!. The legacies, siblings, wealthy donors do serve their purpose in the embryonic feeder years of pre-K to middle school. Nothing wrong here I suspect as this is a business. Survival of the fittest.

[Anonymous]

I appreciate and respectfully acknowledge your Irish immigrant history background and the move to America for opportunity that you have admirably seized. But, this pales in comparison to the experience of Africans torn from their families as slaves in chains in the new world for generations -- of holocaust proportion -- and now emerging from Jim Crow and civil rights legislation (for human being and citizen status) in this country less than 50 years ago.

[Anonymous]

I appreciate and respectfully acknowledge your Irish immigrant history background and the move to America for opportunity that you have admirably seized. But, this pales in comparison to the experience of Africans torn from their families as slaves in chains in the new world for generations -- of holocaust proportion -- and now emerging from Jim Crow and civil rights legislation (for human being and citizen status) in this country less than 50 years ago.