Reply to Cheating Scandal Triggering TJ Change

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The $$$ test prep industry was aggravating the disparity in representation at TJ.

It wasn't the only issue, but it certainly was easier to address than the long-term effects of redlining. 
[/quote]

What were the long term effects of redlining?

The population of non whites in fairfax was tiny
88k white, 9.7K blacks and no separately measurable hispanics to speak of in 1950 (also 100 asians and 40 all others combined)
260K white, 13.8K blacks and no measurable hispanic population in 1960 (also 900 asians and 94 all others combined)
435K white, 15.8K blacks and no measurable hispanic population in 1970 (also 2200 asians and 1100 all others combined)
539K white, 36K black , 26K all other minority combined in 1980.

How did they redline against the hispanics that weren't here?
And why didn't they redline against the largest non-black minority group, asians?

It wasn't test prep that was aggravating racial disparity at tj.  It was any sort of merit based testing.  For a few years people got it in their heads that tests were racist.

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Redlining is just one example of how systemic racism still affects people today. There are many ways that people end up with limited opportunities.

Expensive test prep certainly aggravated the disparity. Look at the results from the test prep companies. 
[/quote]

So how did they redline against hispanics that weren't here?
Why didn't they redline against the largest non-black minority group, asian?[/quote]

Redlining is just one example of how systemic racism still affects people today. [u]There are many ways that people end up with limited opportunities. [/u]
[/quote]

The only example presented was redlining and that seems like a stretch because of the demographics of fairfax during the redlining period.

So what systemic racism limited opportunities for brown immigrants of latin american descent but did not limit opportunities for the brown immigrants of indian descent?
They are both immigrant groups.  
Systemic racism did not make the indian immigrants welathy and the hispanic immigrants poor.
Systemic racism did not make one group of parents well educated and the other not.
What is the racist system here that elevates asians ABOVE whites in academics and suppresses all other groups?  
Why do racist systems seem to like indians so much?[/quote]

Here is what I originally wrote but lost that comment and missed that part when I rushed to retype. 
“it certainly was easier to address than, say, the long-term effects of redlining.”

And I never said all disparities are due to systemic racism. Here is what I said: 
“There are many ways that people end up with limited opportunities.”

There are many, big issues in our society that aren’t easily fixed in a public school admissions process. BUT they can certainly try to reduce disparities caused by expensive test prep. 
[/quote]

And it turns out that you are completely wrong about testing.

https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SAT_ACT_on_Grades.pdf[/quote]

?? 
I didn’t say anything about testing.

Testing with equal opportunity to prep is ideal.

It’s the $$$$ test prep that is inequitable. 
[/quote]

unfortunately that doesn't exist and people will always find a way to game the system[/quote]

Seriously don't let yourself off that easy.  Khan academy books are like $20, the videos are free.  [/quote]

and are not even in the same league compared to what the prep centers offer (actual test answers)[/quote]

We've gone over this.  You are lying.  
[b]When pushed on this all we get is that some test prep centers asked previous students about the questions on the test they just took.  If they published the test questions, then they wouldn't have this advantage.[/b]

There is nothing in those expensive test prep courses that you don't see on khan academy.  What the expensive test prep courses give you is a lot of handholding and walking you through stuff.  This does make test prep easier but there is no secret sauce at those test prep centers.  [/quote]

You get more useful information about how an applicant fits into a school that values innovation if they take a test for which they can’t prep. 
[/quote]

First of all, the school obviously values skin color more than "innovation"  
Otherwise they wouldn't have made the change they did.

Second, how does a secret test measure innovation any better than an IQ test?
Things like creativity and innovation correlate pretty well with IQ.  
We know how to measure IQ, we don't need to ambush people on tests to measure it.[/quote]

IQ tests are not supposed to be prepped for either. The information is not useful if the test taker has seen the questions before, so they are also “secret.”

I’m surprised that an adult who appears to be interested in education cannot seem to understand why a test that can’t be prepped for would be useful in determining which applicants would be good matches for a school like TJ. A school like TJ will most benefit students who can think on their feet, not students who have been spoon fed information which they then memorized. 
[/quote]

DP.  Kids who are the best fit for TJ are going to be the ones who can think on their feet, but also have a lot of discipline and work ethic.  It would be more ideal to have a TJ test similar to AMC 10, where both a lot of self-studying and prep as well as native intelligence are needed to earn high scores.

I do agree with you that a test that cannot be prepped for would be useful for measuring raw aptitude.  I also think it's naive to think that any test can't be prepped for and that any test wouldn't have information leak out one way or another.  There's a reason that they need to constantly rewrite and re-norm the WISC, and there's a reason that the scores drift upward pretty drastically at the end of each cycle.  It's not that kids are getting that much smarter over the span of 10 years.  It's that the novel tasks end up leaking out and becoming not so novel.  [/quote]

Supremely pro-reform poster here who is much happier with the current admissions process than the old one.

I think the point mentioned above here has a lot of merit - and I mean that in the actual sense of the word, not the contrived "the only thing that matters are measurables" sense.

Where I could get behind the use of either a standardized exam or optional exam submissions is if those scores are:

a) not publicly available, even through FOIA; and 
b) used as part of a genuinely holistic process, such that (for example) a FARMS student achieving a 93 on such an exam would be rated higher than a non-FARMS student getting a 94.[/quote]

So you want to use an unmeasurable standard of merit?

Whenever I hear people say they don't want objective measures of merit, it really just sounds like they just want absolute discretion to choose whoever they want.

Why don't you want test scores to be public?
Transparency is usually something you want more of not less.
If you have to hide facts to support your goals, perhaps you should have different goals.

We can give FARM student explicit test bonuses, no need to be holistic.  
We know how to select for poverty without abandoning objective measures of merit.
The problem is that when we do this we end up with a pot of poor asians and that is not the kind of diversity they are looking for.
That's what happened in every other jurisdiction that thought that SES was the pathway to more black and hispanic kids.  They got more black and hispanic kids but it was mostly at the expense of white students rather than the over-represented demographics (sure you swapped out a bunch of wealthier asians for poorer asians but you also swapped out wealthy white kids for poor asians).

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