Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support • Hacker News Board

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#91

Post by gizmo686 » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #54

gizmo686 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other problem is that affirmative action (as currently practiced), is a very blunt instrument to mitigate the problems you describe. If your concern is fairness to people from underfunded schools, then discrimanate in favor of students from such schools. Currently, colleges do the opposite, since they use their historicall records to favor students that come from schools which have a history of producing students…

How is affirmative action currently practiced? Not sure what you’re alluding to.

You could view my proposed course of action as affirmative action, and I am sure there are other approaches I haven't thought of without the problems I describe.

The current practice I refer to is biasing decisions based on race.

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#92

Post by sanitizer » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:25 PM UTC

octopoc wrote: post #79

ejstronge wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your assumption is wrong Perhaps... > It is because the extremely high percentage of Black kids living under single parenthood family [1] This is wildly unsourced - what data do you have (ideally across nations/racial categories) for this?

According to the link, 65.3% of black kids live in single parent families vs 34.8% of all kids living in single parent families. This is for America only, which is the context of this story and this thread.

Even so, I want this to be a country where single parents can thrive and get the help they need. I think all children are entitled to health care, food, and school. I would add shelter, but that is a tougher nut to crack, and that free food (at school) and free health care for kids are themselves low-hanging fruits when it comes to supporting the children and making an environment where they can thrive.

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#93

Post by biotech » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:26 PM UTC

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #50

A lot of commenters here are demonstrating that they do not understand the difference between racism and racial discrimination. Racsim is the systematic oppression of people. It's carried out in instutions, culture, and processes: individual people do not perform racsim. (Individuals can discriminate.) Racism depends on country / region. In the US, racism exits against black and brown people. It is a system set up fo…

That is one definition of racism, but it is not even the most common definition. Individuals can be racist/perform racism. You don't get to change the definition that most people use just because you don't agree with it. Check the dictionary, you will clearly see that "racial prejudice or discrimination" is right there.

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#94

Post by opportune » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

creaghpatr wrote: post #42

aaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about not discriminating at all ?

Personally, I'd love to see Harvard set aside 75% of their spots for a lottery of students who meet an insanely high threshold (98% percentile in the SAT, for example, or some other objective measurement), and then use the other 25% for athletes, legacies, diversity, etc. That way you may not get in, but you know you won't get cut because you got assigned an arbitrary 'personality' score if you scored high enough; en…

Over half of all students accepted to Harvard already have test scores in the top 2%

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#95

Post by 40acres » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

educationdata wrote: post #52

40acres wrote: post #7

This argument, while important, is the low hanging fruit of the affirmative action debate in my opinion. We would not need affirmative action if legacy based admissions wasn't so prevalent in top schools. We would not need affirmative action if every school district in America recieved proper funding to support teachers and enable smaller class sizes, test prep for students to take specialized exams, and after school…

Your assumption is wrong. Even if there is no legacy based admissions, even if every school district in America received proper funding for everything, Black students will still have significantly low educational attainment and achievement. It is because the extremely high percentage of Black kids living under single parenthood family [1], and there is no educational / societal intervention can reverse its impact on…

Great point and I'm glad you brought this up. Like I mentioned, America has many gaping wounds which I believe can be traced back to institutional racism. When talking about the prevalence of black kids raised under single family homes we have to take into account why these kids may be raised that way. Is it a character flaw of black families? I don't think so. I'm black and familial ties run DEEP in almost every family I know: especially those with Southern roots where most of black America still resides.

I think the answer to this question can be found in looking at incarnation rates. Right now there are about 1.5 million black men who are "off the grid" because they are locked up in prison[0]. How many of them have kids? How many men who were previously locked up were incarnated while their child was of elementary school age, and could not be there to provide the stability that is so crucial in the first five years of a kids life for them to succeed? Even if they came back into their kids life at 7 or 8 years old they missed out on kindergarten, which many study have shown that kindergarten performances correlates to school performance later in life.

0: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missin...

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#96

Post by monetus » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

fipple wrote: post #77

ejstronge wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your assumption is wrong Perhaps... > It is because the extremely high percentage of Black kids living under single parenthood family [1] This is wildly unsourced - what data do you have (ideally across nations/racial categories) for this?

This is such a well known fact that calling it unsourced is like calling a claim that the sun rises in the east unsourced. https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in...

And to make things even worse, they don't have the same electoral potential. Stripping voting rights from felons is incredibly immoral, IMO.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-v...

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#97

Post by dustinmoris » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:29 PM UTC

Diversity quotas are the dumbest invention of the 21st century. All they do is create racial discrimination against a group of people. If you want to have a balanced admission process, which isn't biased towards a certain group of people (good schools, parents with money, Asians, etc.) then simply change the entry exams from tests which require someone being very book smart (= coming from a privileged background with access to higher education) to someone who just generally is very (street) smart. Smart people will always pick up what they need in order to succeed university, with or without a previous academic background.

A blind process wouldn't discriminate and doesn't need quotas. Instead of asking questions with the hope for the right answer, ask questions to explore the right thinking which can be equally achieved no matter what someone's background is.

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#98

Post by mirajshah » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:29 PM UTC

educationdata wrote: post #52

40acres wrote: post #7

This argument, while important, is the low hanging fruit of the affirmative action debate in my opinion. We would not need affirmative action if legacy based admissions wasn't so prevalent in top schools. We would not need affirmative action if every school district in America recieved proper funding to support teachers and enable smaller class sizes, test prep for students to take specialized exams, and after school…

Your assumption is wrong. Even if there is no legacy based admissions, even if every school district in America received proper funding for everything, Black students will still have significantly low educational attainment and achievement. It is because the extremely high percentage of Black kids living under single parenthood family [1], and there is no educational / societal intervention can reverse its impact on…

I think you need to source the claim "There is no educational / societal intervention that can reverse its impact on Black kids' education"

Consider, just as one example, the paper "Are High-Quality Schools Enough to Increase Achievement Among the Poor? Evidence from the Harlem Children’s Zone" (Dobbie and Fryer 2011) https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/are-high-qual...

Here is the abstract:

"Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), an ambitious social experiment, combines community programs with charter schools. We provide the first empirical test of the causal impact of HCZ charters on educational outcomes. Both lottery and instrumental variable identification strategies suggest that the effects of attending an HCZ middle school are enough to close the black-white achievement gap in mathematics. The effects in elementary school are large enough to close the racial achievement gap in both mathematics and ELA. We conclude with evidence that suggests high-quality schools are enough to significantly increase academic achievement among the poor. Community programs appear neither necessary nor sufficient."

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#99

Post by 2bitencryption » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #47

40acres wrote: post #7

This argument, while important, is the low hanging fruit of the affirmative action debate in my opinion. We would not need affirmative action if legacy based admissions wasn't so prevalent in top schools. We would not need affirmative action if every school district in America recieved proper funding to support teachers and enable smaller class sizes, test prep for students to take specialized exams, and after school…

"The best elementary schools in the nation are driven by property taxes, how many people do you know bought their house because of the school district?" Sometimes I wonder how much of this is everyone mistaking causation vs. correlation. School districts with high property taxes tend to have a number of other features in common, like: stable 2-parent households; high incomes; ability to afford private tutors and enri…

Anecdote time:

The high school I went to served two neighboring communities, one uber wealthy, the other lower class.

As such, the uber-wealthy income taxpayers allowed our district to pay teachers in excess of $150k. I think our gym teacher made $200k. Several of my high school teachers were former university professors. And besides being qualified, these teachers were in general top-notch educators of high school students.

I didn't notice any difference in achievement between the portion of students from the lower-class area and the portion of students from the wealthy area.

Re: Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Admissions Win Justice Dept. Support

#100

Post by PurpleBoxDragon » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

40acres wrote: post #7

This argument, while important, is the low hanging fruit of the affirmative action debate in my opinion. We would not need affirmative action if legacy based admissions wasn't so prevalent in top schools. We would not need affirmative action if every school district in America recieved proper funding to support teachers and enable smaller class sizes, test prep for students to take specialized exams, and after school…

>We would not need affirmative action if every school district in America recieved proper funding to support teachers and enable smaller class sizes, test prep for students to take specialized exams, and after school extracurriculars, both academic and non-academic to prepare them for college.

What counts as proper funding given many school systems get massive amounts of money that is lost to corruption and past debts (which are themselves likely attributed to corruption). And how will money fix the problems of lack of parental involvement and a culture that disparages seeking further education.