Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 647 posts

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#491

Post by ralusek »

Spivak wrote: post #357
paulpauper wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. when we hear about 'promoting opportunity' , what they mean is is we need more of groups X and Y and less Z. Motte and bailey at its finest.

Any change to the college admissions process will positively affect some groups and negatively affect others. There will always be some controversy over whether any change actually makes it fairer or whether the changes were made to achieve a specific outcome.

There is a deontological perspective here in which you seem to be uninterested. Not everything is best viewed from the perspective of how various groups would be impacted by a given system.

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#492

Post by 908B64B197 »

menzoic wrote: post #482
waterhouse wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. This is one of the reasons affirmative action is poisonous—it creates rational reasons for discrimination. Which will, of course, be exaggerated by actual racists; but it's much harder to argue "Discriminating against group X is bad" when it's public knowledge that group X has passed a lower bar.

Affirmative action doesn't require a lower bar. Why do people keep saying that? It's also been banned in California since the 90s.

> Affirmative action doesn't require a lower bar

How else can it be done?

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#493

Post by waterhouse »

menzoic wrote: post #482
waterhouse wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. This is one of the reasons affirmative action is poisonous—it creates rational reasons for discrimination. Which will, of course, be exaggerated by actual racists; but it's much harder to argue "Discriminating against group X is bad" when it's public knowledge that group X has passed a lower bar.

Affirmative action doesn't require a lower bar. Why do people keep saying that? It's also been banned in California since the 90s.

> Affirmative action doesn't require a lower bar.

The one strategy I've heard of that doesn't do this, and isn't something any rational organization who saw no intrinsic benefit to "diversity" would already be doing, is "spending extra recruitment resources to yield good candidates of the underrepresented groups". For example, you could send 5 recruiters to all-female colleges or majority-black colleges that aren't highly ranked in CS, in the hopes of turning up as many good programmer candidates as you'd get from sending 1 recruiter to a highly-ranked CS college. That indeed does not require a lower bar—although it spends resources in a way I'd consider wasteful.

But I don't think that's what affirmative action normally means, and I'm generally leery of allowing proponents to redefine the term more broadly (that type of thing enables motte-and-bailey argumentation).

Did you have another strategy in mind?

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#494

Post by ralusek »

menzoic wrote: post #482
waterhouse wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. This is one of the reasons affirmative action is poisonous—it creates rational reasons for discrimination. Which will, of course, be exaggerated by actual racists; but it's much harder to argue "Discriminating against group X is bad" when it's public knowledge that group X has passed a lower bar.

Affirmative action doesn't require a lower bar. Why do people keep saying that? It's also been banned in California since the 90s.

It literally mathematically requires a lower bar. If your criteria for hiring a software engineer is that an applicant demonstrate proficiency in a given set of tasks, for example, you will result in a pool of applicants sorted by proficiency. Say we have 100 slots open to hire people, and we would normally just take the top 100 applicants according to this proficiency criteria.

Now, introducing any criteria which results in a different set of applicants than the top 100 necessarily lowers the bar of proficiency. It doesn't have to be affirmative action, it could be any arbitrary change in criteria. "We want just as many people named Michael as people named Jim." Well, if that wasn't the case in the original set of applicants, you're no longer getting the top 100. Affirmative action by race is no different. It's not that there is a debate here, as I said, it is that you are necessarily lowering the bar of proficiency by introducing another set of arbitrary criteria.

Maybe there were 6 Michaels and 1 Jim in the top 100. In order to balance them out, there would likely have to be some Michaels removed, some Jims added, and some people from other common names removed. Every person that was removed for a Jim from outside of the original 100 was more qualified and excluded due to the arbitrary criteria. The bar was lowered.

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#495

Post by livinginfear »

mrh0057 wrote: post #484
livinginfear wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SAT results correlate highly with IQ, and IQ correlates highly with success in life. Still, people engage in all kinds of postmodern mental gymnastics to explain why an intuitively obvious fact is somehow false.

Your statement immediately has a problem. How do you define success? Then you have a second problem when you state a person taking one test is also good on a different test. Going much over 100 has little correlation with wealth which is what most studies use. Then you run into correlation doesn’t equal causation problem too.

> " How do you define success?"

Surely you jest. It really doesn't matter how you define success, IQ is a valid predictor of pretty much any definition of success you can think of. Income, academic achievement, you name it.

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#496

Post by usaar333 »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #178
throwaway284534 wrote: post #35

All this gnashing over test scores and booster programs is just showboating. If states really want to fix poor schools they should make school funding occur at the state level, rather than whichever random zip code you’re born into. Seriously, you can’t justify a wealthier neighborhood being entitled to better schools when they’re public institutions receiving state and federal funds. Evening out this funding is the…

That wont work. Increasing funding of a school does not improve quality. Allowing families to choose what school they go to, and as a result which school they fund, forces schools to compete on quality or go out of business. The only arguments I have heard against school choice are from teacher's unions that claim that nobody would go to their school if they had a choice. Good! That means you are failing at your job.…

Do schools compete on quality of education or on self-selecting their students? I suspect it's mostly the latter, given how parents evaluate public schools as well.

You end up failing at your job not by virtue of teaching worse (you might be teaching better), but in not figuring out how to bias your application/admissions process.

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#497

Post by dahfizz »

lostcolony wrote: post #125
stale2002 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . How did you already learn the material outside of class? Better education at home. You are basically saying if someone is more educated, that they will do better in education. Yes, that's the point. The more time and effort someone spends in their education, the better they will do in education.

No. I am explicitly pointing out that even if you learn everything taught in class 100%, and get perfect grades in it, you may not be eligible for some advanced classes. It requires outside investment. And then the advanced classes give you a leg up in terms of college admissions if GPA is a guaranteed entry point. That means the grade inflation of AP classes just serves as an indirect proxy for money, rather than a…

> It requires outside investment.

> That means the grade inflation of AP classes just serves as an indirect proxy for money,

So you think poor people just don't work hard enough? Only rich people care about their future and are willing to put in the effort to better themselves?

Sounds like some conservative propaganda to me....

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#498

Post by roamerz »

Spivak wrote: post #357
paulpauper wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. when we hear about 'promoting opportunity' , what they mean is is we need more of groups X and Y and less Z. Motte and bailey at its finest.

Any change to the college admissions process will positively affect some groups and negatively affect others. There will always be some controversy over whether any change actually makes it fairer or whether the changes were made to achieve a specific outcome.

At a superficial level yes. The actual impact to people and society I think is far greater and will have an overall negative affect on society and interracial relationships. Putting myself in the shoes of someone that was bumped out of something they earned through hard work and dedication because my skin color was not correct would make me bitter to those that implemented the policy as well as (hopefully less so) the person that got my seat. So now whoever made this policy has just maybe added a little racist chip on my shoulder where one did not exist previously. Multiply this many times over and all of a sudden we have a more racist society and reversing what I think the direction we have been going.

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#499

Post by spaced-out »

cmh89 wrote: post #410
rayiner wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kid working 25 hours a week to help their family make rent is going to have an easier time buckling down for one test than keeping up their GPA over four years. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2021/03/23/sta...

I agree that there are issues with GPA too, but despite saying that it's easier to take one test than it is to maintain a high GPA throughout high school, that's opinion. Teachers can work with over extended students to help them while they are in school I can't really speak to your opinion piece because its behind a paywall

>Teachers can work with over extended students to help them while they are in school

They can, but will they? Plus, it seems like GPA would be even easier for the wealthy to game, many fancy prep schools sell themselves on their ability to place kids in good colleges. If those kids no longer need to perform well on a standardized tests they just need a high GPA, that seems even easier from the school to guarantee.

Re: Why is the university of California dropping the SAT?

#500

Post by usaar333 »

crackercrews wrote: post #471
mannerheim wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California has a significant Asian population. In my experience, many older Chinese Americans are completely apolitical, but one thing they do care about is that their children get into a good college. They exerted significant pressure the last time repealing Prop 209 was proposed by calling and writing their elected officials.

The last time 209 was up for repeal was last year. Elected officials were not involved. It was up for popular vote, and it failed. I think the margin was even wider than when 209 was first put in place. The pro-209 campaign was outspent something like $27M to $1.6M but still prevailed.

It was a legislature introduced constitutional amendment; the legislature was heavily involved by virtue of voting to put it on the ballot.
Post reply on HN