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SAT score distributions in Michigan

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Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#211
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SAT math is geometry,a 10th grade class for average students. Scoring below 700 isn't due to lack of "push" it's lack of some combination of intelligence, nurture, health, teaching. Due to the cost and complexity of transcontinental migration, most Asians in US now, and Jews last generation, come from elites from their previous family homeland who successfully migrated to escape bad government or seeking greater oppo…

It's not clear if you're trying to contest with the parent or agree with him, but you are doing the latter.

> you are doing the latter

Not necessarily. If intelligence is genetic, then by OP's hypothesis, immigrants are more likely to be intelligent and pass that on to their children - whereas GP's hypothesis (seems to suggest) that intelligence is effectively random but determination is what's passed down from parent to child. Of course, it's probably a combination of both.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#212

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…

Your success in life is partially a reflection of how you were raised, just like your success in math.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#213
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, where one lives can impact the funding available to even provide basic education. We are too comfortable letting poor areas have underfunded schools.

This is a commonly held myth but the numbers don't bear it out. Poor areas tend to be in cities and cities tend to have lots of commercial buildings that pay tax but do not send kids to school. Atlanta, where I live, spends 30%* more per pupil in APS than the surrounding suburban counties do. That's typical for American cities. *Or so. I'm going off memory.

> Atlanta, where I live, spends 30%* more per pupil in APS than the surrounding suburban counties do.

If you look a bit deeper at public school funding in more well-off areas and you will usually find a system of tax-deductible private donations to the school, organized by a PTA or similar organization. Much of the spending difference vanishes when you consider that.

When you count the value of the PTA volunteer time by professional parents (which doesn't appear on the books), it tips the scales even further toward greater spend in well-off areas.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#214
I have no experience in data interpretation, so please be forgiving. But isn't it the case that:

    60,000 white students * 0.04 = 2,400
     4,000 Asian students * 0.25 = 1,000
These cohorts seem fairly similarly-sized, to my thinking. If you're thinking of either curriculum, culture, or parental involvement (I don't think it matters which), it seems to me that looking at this at the level of percentages is not the best heuristic for thinking about which students are prepared to attend top universities. There just aren't that many students who get whatever it is they need to achieve that.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#215

has the SAT gotten way easier on recent decades or have students just gotten that much smarter or better at taking it, and universities gotten a lot stricter about accepting students with lower scores? one of the commenters in the linked article mentions that their son, with an SAT score of over 1500, was rejected by a number of normal state universities such as the University of Texas at Austin (a great school but n…

Kids are applying to more schools today than in the past (pre Covid study) https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/09/a-majority-... It could be with the higher applications that just means the 1200 score naturally migrated higher, they really could not accept the same number of students at that score.

I had something like that commenter's score in the 1980's and was offered scholarships for four years for public universities in Texas and both gave me a private pre high school graduation tour so maybe the other criteria for this particular student (extracurricular activities, school scores, rank) were not comparable or that is just a random internet troll (disqus is particularly easy to spam based on other websites I've seen use it or maybe that's just the ubiquity of disqus, although it would not load for me:) ).

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#216
A related issue, that people are slowly starting to realize, is that there are big variations in life expectancy between races. Asians live 10 years longer than blacks on average (and about 7 years longer than whites) [0]. Also, women live about 4 years longer than men.

These differences may not seem big relative to total lifespan, but they are enormous relative to retirement span, and that has huge implications for the fairness of defined-benefit programs like Social Security. If we take 65 as the retirement age, then the average black male gets about 8 years of retirement, while the average Asian female gets 23 years.

That creates grotesque unfairness in Social Security payouts. The Asian female and black male might contribute the exact same amount to the program over the course of their careers, but the former will receive about 3x more in payouts than the latter.

I doubt our society is capable of repairing the grievous unfairness of life expectancy gaps. But we should at least not add racist insult to racial injury by using schemes like Social Security.

[0] : https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/life-expectanc....

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#217

Male variability hypothesis confirmed once again.

The question is whether it's biological (I doubt it) or cultural.

It's very likely biological.

Here's the thing - the variability of males on average isn't a socially constructed thing. What is socially constructed is what society values generally speaking - or what it values over other things. We value smart people and for good reason. But it's a social construct that we hold Nobel Prize winners over James Beard Award winners, for example.

Progressives should stop fighting science and play on subjective grounds (like what society values and why) where they can actually win.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#218

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

What if he just checked White vs Asian American. Do colleges even check that?

Probably lots of fraud the other direction. E.g.: A white person claiming to be Native American.

Colleges definitely look to the other way a bit to hit metrics / numbers, but what about the other direction?

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#219
post #193

If we look at not only academic, but also sports, i.e. ski, ice skating, soccer, tennis, swimming, ... etc., among competitive teams in middle schools or high schools, the number of Asian students are bigger than what one would expect from their population. You can even see this in winter Olympic: 1. https://www.thepostathens.com/article/2022/03/asian-american...

>bigger than what one would expect

What would one "expect", and why?

In any case, the numbers we find are not "bigger" in raw terms (or per capita) in many sports than say, Blacks. How about Olympic sprinting, or NBA basketball?

If work ethic is the primary determinant, why are they so absent from these sports at high levels?

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#220
post #84

I think as a society we need to admit different race, in general, have different culture, values, and strengths. I don't even think that's a radical idea, but somehow it is. I have been watching this football competition youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrbljwLslYI The fun and athleticism you see is awe-inspiring, but I haven't seen a single Asian person competing or even at the event. My guess is a m…

We should not, because race is a useless concept. There are traits individuals can have, some of which are immutable, and some of which correlate with what we call "race". But race itself is, even taking the most benign meaning possible, at best a surrogate. The sooner we get rid of that awful meme the better.

>We should not, because race is a useless concept.

This may be true, but I find it interesting that white people are the only ones who think this way.

Every other group has in-group racial bias, and actively organizes to that end.

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