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SAT score distributions in Michigan

infoproc.blogspot.com

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Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#101

Post by blululu »

uup wrote: post #39
mrep wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except local property taxes only pay for about half of k-12 education. The other half comes from federal and state governments and the way they give out funding is to selectively counteract that misallocation such that 47 states actually allocate more per-student funding to poor areas than to wealthier ones on average according to this article [0] and it has been this way since at least 1995. [0]: https://apps.urban.…

> only pay for about half That's a lot. From your own link, a vast majority of schools are regressive, i.e poor people get less.

The 50:50 figure is in aggregate. You would not be able to infer if the distribution is a regressive based on that number alone. The linked article does not say that the vast majority of schools are regressive.

"A handful - Nevada, Wyoming and Illinois are weakly regressive, and the majority have a weakly progressive distribution of funding to poo vs non poor students"

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#102

Post by uup »

sokoloff wrote: post #85
digdugdirk wrote: post #71

The race distributions are interesting, sure. But the full report has some better data points for drawing conclusions. Of particular interest to me was the income/parental education differential (obvious increases, but interesting to see by how much) but especially a category for results by when the test was taken - weekend vs in-school. Students who took the test on a weekend were nearly 300pts higher, and the "met…

Isn't that likely driven by a selection bias? "Everyone in school A takes the test in-school" vs "School B does not offer the test, so a subset of school B's students take the test on a weekend." From that alone, I'd expect school B's test results to substantially outperform school A's results.

The test was mandatory for all HS students to take, but I do think there is an element of selection bias. Those who took the test on the weekend may have been more invested in the result. They certainly dedicated at least an extra weekend's worth of time.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#103

Post by [deleted] »

uup wrote: post #39
mrep wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except local property taxes only pay for about half of k-12 education. The other half comes from federal and state governments and the way they give out funding is to selectively counteract that misallocation such that 47 states actually allocate more per-student funding to poor areas than to wealthier ones on average according to this article [0] and it has been this way since at least 1995. [0]: https://apps.urban.…

> only pay for about half That's a lot. From your own link, a vast majority of schools are regressive, i.e poor people get less.

[deleted]

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#104

Post by lexapro »

athew wrote: post #18

I find it very surprising that the term "Asian" lives in this twilight zone where nobody is sure if it includes India, the second largest country in the region. For the SAT distribution tables, the term Asian includes Indians I assume, while the following table from the German professor does not break out India. smh.

India is clearly in Asia. So yes, by definition Indians are Asians.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#105

Post by lupire »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #42
abduhl wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The SATs, particularly the mathematics score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically. What is the equitable solution to this then? You seem to be implying that SAT score differences are not inequitable but we know from recent research this is not true.

Standardized tests aren't perfect but there isn't anything better. There's no better way for a poor kid with high drive to compete with rich kids. That's why MIT decided to bring back scores in admission. There isn't a better solution.

Lower the ceiling and admit by lottery. End the artificial scarcity in education. Tax the rich to fund it.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#106

Post by arolihas »

armchairhacker wrote: post #15
fullshark wrote: post #2

This anecdote is really something https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2022/10/sat-score-distribution...

The kid got accepted to UMass Amherst and Northeastern University. Those colleges are really highly-rated for CS, and Northeastern in particular has recently become really selective. The college rejections are weird, yes, but I don’t feel bad for him

Yeah, an Eagle Scout who did debate and very well academically going to a pretty good public school for computer science isn't some travesty. I am a little surprised at some of the results but I guess admissions have become more competitive over the past decade

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#107

Post by treis »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #100
treis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having trouble coming up with the right words to make my point. But, to me, this application says "my parents made me do a lot of shit" more than it says that this person is exceptional. What's this kid's resume if he's born in the hood to a single mom instead of a Boston suburb to an associate partner at IBM? IMHO it's sour grapes from someone that tried to game the system but didn't get the prize they wanted.

What's your point, anything you do that doesn't flow from some deep internal fire so powerful it overwhelms any external circumstance "doesn't count"?

My point is that "quality of parents" shouldn't be the way we pick the elite

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#108

Post by sokoloff »

uup wrote: post #102
sokoloff wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that likely driven by a selection bias? "Everyone in school A takes the test in-school" vs "School B does not offer the test, so a subset of school B's students take the test on a weekend." From that alone, I'd expect school B's test results to substantially outperform school A's results.

The test was mandatory for all HS students to take, but I do think there is an element of selection bias. Those who took the test on the weekend may have been more invested in the result. They certainly dedicated at least an extra weekend's worth of time.

It was "mandatory", but still had only an 85% compliance rate. I would bet that almost none of the most academically inclined students were in that 15%.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#110

Post by basic_test_prep »

aabajian wrote: post #11

The SATs, particularly the mathematics score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically. The stratification is more granular than Asian versus Black or White versus Native America. For example, Jewish students excel beyond the Caucasian average while Cambodian and other Southeast Asian Immigrants perform significantly below the national average for Asian Americans. The challenge…

> score, is very much a reflection of your parents' willingness to push you academically.

Test prep has diminishing marginal returns.

On the flip side that means just 1 hour of prep makes a big impact.

This is what research has found and why a lot of focus is on getting kids to do any studying for anything at all.

Many kids do zero homework and zero studying. Getting them to 1 is the hardest part.

This is the biggest actionable problem for these exams. It doesn’t require race or culture or whatever at all. The research says it requires specialized instruction during school - something to achieve focused studying, as opposed to merely watching the clock go down. Difficult for the hardest students but on average, in aggregates, performs well.

My point is that there are a lot of Asian students at Harvard who did 10 hours of test prep for the SAT. They didn’t go to cram school. There are also students who DID go to cram school. I myself studied about 10 hours for the SAT.

You don’t need cram school to improve test scores. You need some studying instead of none at all.

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