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UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

latimes.com

211–220 of 235 posts

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#211
post #16

These false flag diversity initiatives are there to entrench the privileged white elite who are threatened by the children of often 1st generation immigrants. From the article: UC admissions officers have said they were able to thoroughly evaluate the flood of applications without test scores, using 13 other factors in the system’s review process, such as a student’s high school grade-point average, the rigor of cour…

The only way to be color-blind is standardized tests. It's possible that standardized tests are biased. Then fix them! I didn't have rich parents. So I had never gone abroad. A rich parent can send their kids on "charity missions" to poor countries to rack up those "extra curricular points".

Desiring a color-blind society is now considered racist on campus. You have to see identity first and at all times in everything, and to treat people differently based on their identities.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life in the '80s in the Soviet Union space was marred by widespread food shortages. Here is a fairly accurate video of how the usual grocery shop looked like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8LtQhIQ2AE When the sporadic food supply truck would show up, people would line up for hours, many only to leave empty handed when the load would inevitably run out. In 1989 Boris Yeltsin visited Texan grocery store and was posi…

> This is the very tangible result of suboptimal choices. I agree - I've always liked that story about the grocery store. I don't think bad policies are something that can be straightforwardly extrapolated into a course to the Soviet Union though. The US has had price controls in the past but backed off. Even large welfare states like Sweden eventually hit a point where they stopped or turned back the expansion of th…

These are all good points. Perhaps it is time to inquire why did SU run an inefficient state-run economy for 40 years after the manic dictator was gone. Without going into too many details, the justification, even the imperative, for said policies was made in the moral dimension. As tragically exemplified by SU, there are policy systems that feed on failure. The more the policy fails to deliver the desired results, the more it's taken as evidence that the moral problem the policy purports to fix is actually deeper rooted and requires even more radical policies. Until you get to the point where the entire economic activity is controlled by the state because individuals, full of moral failings as they are, can't be trusted with charting their own course.

I have to say that my American friends have a much higher confidence in the pendulum theory. Coming of age near the end of a 40 (70?) year historical tailspin, I have a somewhat less optimistic view.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#213

I found what is funny / pathetic about this is that there are tons of psychology / education / especially educational measurement top experts in the UC system, and they know how wrong it is, while they just keep mouth shut. The whole anti-standard-testing movement is pushed by ideology leftists and corrupted bureaucrats, but the supposed experts just quietly watch the world burn. Lol. Update: I found experts in the U…

Does the SAT cover confirmation bias?

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#214
post #48

Wonderfully empowering for the admissions administrators! Schools will be needing to keep on a lot of low-level staff: >record-breaking number of freshman applications for fall 2021 — more than 200,000 >evaluate the flood of applications without test scores, using 13 other factors And will be able to produce whatever demographics are demanded by the politics of the moment: https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu…

Seems like a great way to completely screw over asian students.

That was one of the goals.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the very tangible result of suboptimal choices. I agree - I've always liked that story about the grocery store. I don't think bad policies are something that can be straightforwardly extrapolated into a course to the Soviet Union though. The US has had price controls in the past but backed off. Even large welfare states like Sweden eventually hit a point where they stopped or turned back the expansion of th…

These are all good points. Perhaps it is time to inquire why did SU run an inefficient state-run economy for 40 years after the manic dictator was gone. Without going into too many details, the justification, even the imperative, for said policies was made in the moral dimension. As tragically exemplified by SU, there are policy systems that feed on failure. The more the policy fails to deliver the desired results, t…

Sure, the US is certainly not immune to that dynamic. For example dysfunctional regulation restricts the housing supply (in certain areas), causing the prices to be high. Then left-wing politicians will point to the high prices as a failure of capitalism and oppose new development.

But the political coalitions here (and even the economics) are somewhat complicated. For example, California recently passed several bills to de-regulate housing, which were initiatives of (a sub-faction of) the left-leaning party that controls the state. And the right-leaning party is not a technocratic one like Singapore - an important sub-faction of the right-leaning party goes against advice by economists themselves, on macro issues and increasingly on trade also.

The non-economic factions are more poised to benefit from dysfunction, and in my view, also more likely to cause dysfunction, and so enable each other. So my view is also more similar to a tailspin than a pendulum. Just that it is not as simple as trying as hard as possible to displace the establishment, because the people best positioned to replace them are often worse.

There is another, darker, argument, which I've seen presented by some fairly well-informed people. It goes something like this: the industrial revolution, with its huge inequality, financial crash, and the eventual fall to authoritarianism around the world, is, in fact, the natural order of things. And this has been papered over by massive economic distortions by governments starting with WWII, along with perpetually increasing debt levels as interest rates decline (which since debt and savings are two sides of the same coin, allows overall savings to increase and makes things less zero-sum).

With this premise, there is no natural politically-stable state to return to, and the path for managing outcomes that maintain public support for capitalism becomes even more narrow. I'm still thinking about it, but (unfortunately) I've found the arguments pretty compelling (from billionaire capitalist Ray Dalio [1], among others).

[1] https://economicprinciples.org/

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#216

I found what is funny / pathetic about this is that there are tons of psychology / education / especially educational measurement top experts in the UC system, and they know how wrong it is, while they just keep mouth shut. The whole anti-standard-testing movement is pushed by ideology leftists and corrupted bureaucrats, but the supposed experts just quietly watch the world burn. Lol. Update: I found experts in the U…

All of this could be true if the test had zero, or even negative, value in measuring the ability to learn & desire to excel. Picking any test, and curating for those willing to and capable of the work required to pass it, would create this result. That’s the problem with this justification. It doesn’t have a functional limit. “DIY University” covered the history of how this mechanic brought down the Ming dynasty in j…

How does one examine the retention of memory in the individual? I agree with the exclusive entrances in regards to exams, but how does one demonstrate knowledge of necessary concepts in order to show one is eligible for progressing in the learning? Tests are a form of qualification. One may have the desire but, if one does not have the aptitude to retain abstract intellectual ideas, how does it benefit anyone for one to be participating in the progress of human knowledge?

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are all good points. Perhaps it is time to inquire why did SU run an inefficient state-run economy for 40 years after the manic dictator was gone. Without going into too many details, the justification, even the imperative, for said policies was made in the moral dimension. As tragically exemplified by SU, there are policy systems that feed on failure. The more the policy fails to deliver the desired results, t…

Sure, the US is certainly not immune to that dynamic. For example dysfunctional regulation restricts the housing supply (in certain areas), causing the prices to be high. Then left-wing politicians will point to the high prices as a failure of capitalism and oppose new development. But the political coalitions here (and even the economics) are somewhat complicated. For example, California recently passed several bill…

Liberal market based societies / economies have many failings, and would be a very interesting conversation to explore some of these.

To refocus on the UC situation, and at the risk of putting words in your mouth, the general idea is that UC is exploring a set of policies, which may or maynot work for them, worst case they fail and some of the other XXX universities in this country will raise to the occasion and take their place. What's the big deal?

The SU slow moving disaster is relevant insomuch there are moral systems out there that have a mind of their own and are impervious to feedback, if not downright feeding on failure. They are so self evidently righteous that no cost is too high and no institution can afford to not implement them. With no control group left to highlight failures and moderate excesses, the whole society tailspins and the only hope becomes, tragically, total collapse.

The extent to which SU story is relevant to current UC / US situation, anybody's guess. My only job here is to be a witness for past errors.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#218
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not saying that, and had not considered that question. But FWIW my guess is that the two groups you list have similar demographics (racial, socioeconomic etc.). What I was saying: GP suggested having a threshold used for qualification, and then selecting from qualified candidates using other criteria. If you support this proposal, there's an upper limit to the threshold you choose. If you choose too high a th…

I actually had in mind selecting at random from the pool that meet the minimum criteria.

You could also randomly select with a bias to meet any particular requirement of gender, ethnic background, poverty etc. but possibly that's not currently legal in California.

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#219

I found what is funny / pathetic about this is that there are tons of psychology / education / especially educational measurement top experts in the UC system, and they know how wrong it is, while they just keep mouth shut. The whole anti-standard-testing movement is pushed by ideology leftists and corrupted bureaucrats, but the supposed experts just quietly watch the world burn. Lol. Update: I found experts in the U…

> The Task Force found that approximately 25% of low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented minor students earned their guaranteed admission into UC because of test scores. The Task Force’s report showed that test scores are better predictors of success for underrepresented minority students, first-generation students, and those whose families are low- income. Using recent UC-specific data, the Task Force found that test scores remain predictive of success even after student demographics are taken into account. That is especially true when compared to high school grades, whose predictive power has gone down due, in part, to grade inflation.

This seems very weasely worded to suggest that standardized testing benefits low income, first-generation and minority students, but since it doesn't actually say that in a straightforward way I'm left feeling that in reality it doesn't. Which would make sense, and is probably the main reason for this change.

Am I just being too suspicious?

Re: UC slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative

#220

Sounds like a UC degree is getting less and less valuable from a signaling perspective. They ignored the research results of their own team and professors which conclusively showed standardized testing was the highest signal for academic success across all races. Talk about political bureaucracy

Please clarify. My understanding is that it's the opposite. Eg, quoting https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3102/0013189X2090211... > Yet, the emphasis on test scores over grades in policy and practice recommendations stands in contrast to research showing high school grade point averages (HSGPAs) are stronger predictors than test scores of college outcomes (Bowen et al., 2009; Geiser & Santelices, 2007; Hiss & F…

And what about predictions based on GPA and test scores?

As has been in use at UC and just about everywhere else, up until now.

In math terms: just because predicts(A) > predicts(B), it does not follow that predicts(A) > predicts(A ∪ B).

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