SAT score distributions in Michigan • Hacker News Board

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#381

Post by TMWNN » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 7:29 PM UTC

ChemSpider wrote: post #146

"PRC... K12 performance on international tests like PISA is similar to what is found in the table above for the Asian category" Not true. Only a very few select schools China are allowed to participate in the PISA test. It would be like only allowing the top private Boston and Stanford high-schools to join.

>Only a very few select schools China are allowed to participate in the PISA test.

Correct.

Americans do well on PISA compared to their ethnic relatives.https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-new-2018-pisa-school-test-sco...> Asian Americans do better than Asians; whites do better than Europeans; Latinos do better than Latin Americans; and blacks do better than Africans.

As this post about Michigan students shows, Hispanics and especially blacks' scores drag the US average down. Both white and Asian Americans score higher than Canada (and white+Asian is essentially Canada's racial makeup), and higher than New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Norway, and the UK; Estonia is below US Asians but above white Americans. Norway is by far the wealthiest Nordic state but its average is only two points higher than the US national average, despite not having a demographic that is 13% of the population and scores 85 points below the white American average.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#382

Post by danans » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 7:30 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #242

danans wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>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. Do you have a cite with those numbers?

Here is an article that explicitly breaks down the phenomenon with LA public schools:

https://laist.com/news/education/los-angeles-unified-parent-...

California is unique in that it intentionally gives less funding to higher-family-income public schools, expecting them to make up the gap with private fundraising. The result is that after adjusting for private donations, per pupil spending in CA is roughly equivalent across income-disparate schools, as can be seen in the charts in that article.

Here is a visualization of the disparities in Georgia's school spending by county:

https://wallethub.com/edu/e/most-least-equitable-school-dist...

Pick one of the "High Income / Low Expenditure" counties - Forsyth - as an example. It has an average household income of $112,834. In that county, there is an entire parallel non-profit organization that raises private donations to fund programs in the school district. Here is an article describing their work:

https://www.forsythnews.com/news/education/education-foundat...

This is in addition to other private fundraising at the individual school PTA/PTO level, and via charities like the United Way (https://www.unitedwayforsyth.com/civicrm/contribute/transact...)

Here is the same type of organization but in Michigan: https://www.bloomfield.org/support/about/bhs-foundation-faqs

What all of these have in common is that the capacity for private fundraising is a function of local household income.

In places like California with progressive school funding, this private fundraising serves to "bridge the gap" in state funding between schools in richer (receive less public funding) and poorer (receive more public funding) areas.

In other states where state/local per-pupil public school funding is flat or even regressive, it can exacerbate the disparities between districts.

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#383

Post by TMWNN » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

>1. In the top band there are many more males than females.

Is 5% of boys scoring in the top band, compared to 3% of girls, really "many more males"? (Yes, I know that means that 60% more boys than girls scored in the top band. But the percentages are what matter here.)

EDIT: From a comment:

>Also, in the bottom band, there are many more males than females.

>It seems to be yet another confirmation of the greater male variability hypothesis

I feel foolish for not mentioning this. I think 18% of boys in the bottom band versus 14% of girls is "many more males" only in the sense that the 5% versus 3% figure above is, but taken together, yes, this is more evidence of male scores being the same on average but having a wider distribution.

>or is it considered a fact by now?

It sure wasn't in 2005! (For others' benefit, the commenter is alluding to what happened to Larry Summers as Harvard president. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_b...>)

EDIT 2: The blogger himself addressed it back in 2005! https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2005/02/summers-lynching.html>

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#384

Post by dilap » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 8:01 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #300

dilap wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of the opposite. I was a highschool dropout, highest level of math was basic algebra. I was able to change my mind about the whole education thing by buying a "prepare yourself for the SAT" book, studying it for a couple of months, doing well, and getting admitted to college. Ended up doing a math + physics dual major. (I'm really grateful that that avenue to college existed -- I could not have written an a…

Are you suggesting that we should close schools and ship that book to every family? Might have worked for you, but I can guarantee you that it will be disastrous for most students.

Nah, not at all -- just that the SAT is a reasonable test of ability that is in fact accessible to people w/o rich educational backgrounds.

If you're born poor or somehow outside of the social mainstream, standardized testing is your friend.

(I wasn't commenting one way or the other on K-12 education -- I had a mixed experience personally...I think it could've been done a lot better. My wife had a great experience. But she went to private school.)

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#385

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 8:06 PM UTC

hotpotamus wrote: post #361

glerk wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct number of X group who should be admitted is the number of individuals in X group who meet the academic standard to be admitted. How about we stop giving those arbitrary buckets so much importance and treat everyone like individuals?

Yes, and I wonder what the racial composition of such a standard would be.

[deleted]

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#386

Post by bilbo0s » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 8:19 PM UTC

throwaway8582 wrote: post #274

mgfist wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not racial, it's cultural, socio-economic, and historical. Things like redlining, jim crow, GI Bill (lack-there-of for black people after WW2) all directly lead to the huge educational/economic inequality we see today. That said, it's clearly not racial based, because you can take a look at various non-American black populations and see big differences in educational levels and cultural values. For example, Nige…

> For example, Nigerian immigrants (both first and second gen) are vastly more educated than the average American This is not a good example because the immigration process itself is highly selective. For the most part, only best and brightest from Nigeria are able to come to the US. Try comparing the average black American to the average Nigerian in Nigeria instead.

I thought that was interesting too. I mean, the reason Nigerians do so much better in the US than everyone else is because, of all the "black" population groups, the immigration process is most strict on Nigerians. There is a reason it is more strict on Nigerians than Barbadians, or Bahamians, or Kenyans. And that reason is not because Nigerians are smarter.

You compare the average Nigerian in Nigeria to the average Kenyan in Kenya, or Jamaican in Jamaica, or black American in the US, and you'll see an entirely different story.

There is something to these racial differences, and it can't be explained away by, "Well, if i only consider the top 0.01% of whatever group then they can do as well as the run of the mill 25 percentile Asian!"

Now I will concede that "mixed" kids outperforming all other non Asians was a surprise. But other than that one positive surprise, all this information is surprising in the other direction. Asians outperform at a level that is undeniable. No one is even in their league. Heck, no other racial grouping even catches the "mixed" kids. And unless I'm reading that data wrong, at the top, Asians are doing 3 times better even than the "mixed" kids. And 5 to 25 times better than any group other than the "mixed" kids.

We have to up our education game, because that is pathetic if this data is factual. (And I have seen no reason presented in these comments to believe it is not.)

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#387

Post by treis » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 8:40 PM UTC

danans wrote: post #382

treis wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Do you have a cite with those numbers?

Here is an article that explicitly breaks down the phenomenon with LA public schools: https://laist.com/news/education/los-angeles-unified-parent-... California is unique in that it intentionally gives less funding to higher-family-income public schools, expecting them to make up the gap with private fundraising. The result is that after adjusting for private donations, per pupil spending in CA is roughly equivalent…

>Parents in these 34 most-affluent LAUSD elementaries donate an average of $876 per student, our analysis shows.

That's like 1/5 of the gap between APS and the next highest school district. It looks like the wealthiest in LA are able to make up for the difference. But I am suspect of this article. The parental contribution is only 0.4% of the LAUSD budget but somehow it's making up a 20% funding gap between low and high income schools. Very suspicious that they're cherry picking but I don't have the time to dig in.

>Pick one of the "High Income / Low Expenditure" counties - Forsyth - as an example. It has an average household income of $112,834. In that county, there is an entire parallel non-profit organization that raises private donations to fund programs in the school district. Here is an article describing their work:

Google says APS spends 17k per pupil while Forsyth spends 10k. For 20 schools with 200 kids they'd need 28 million in contributions to equalize. Raising $115k by selling ducks is a drop in the bucket in comparison.

Also, APS does their own fund raising. Brief googling reveals that they've raised 7.4 million through this one site alone:

https://www.donorschoose.org/aps?active=true

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#388

Post by rawgabbit » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 8:49 PM UTC

raydev wrote: post #353

BeetleB wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also doesn’t this also beg the question as to why non-Asian parents apparently won’t teach their kids to be good academics? Because they don't value their kids being good at academics. I've lived in multiple countries. In the non-US ones, people don't brag about being bad at math (even when they are bad at it). As an adult, if you couldn't add/subtract/multiply two large numbers on paper without a calculator, that…

I have a (completely unresearched, unfounded, probably not accurate) theory that the exceptional prosperity in US that the boomer/early-gen-x generations saw, which had ultra-cheap housing relative to income across the US, ultra-cheap everything in the US, industries expanding so fast that schooling became less important in the US, all of that was a fluke. For a couple decades a majority of people in the US had effec…

After WWII, Europe's industry was effectively destroyed. The USA enjoyed prosperity as it was the only industrial power left standing. The unemployment rate from 1951 to 1953 were 3.3, 3.0, and 2.9 percent. [1]

Anyone who wanted a job got a good paying job. It was possible in those days for the average American to support a household as the sole breadwinner. What is happening now is that those halcyon days are over. Things are more competitive. We have not approached the cut throat levels as they have in South Korea. American jobs today pay less and have less benefits than in the 1950s. We are headed towards a two tier economy. Full time employees with benefits. Gig workers who wander from job to job with no benefits.

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#389

Post by hotpotamus » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 8:50 PM UTC

glerk wrote: post #373

hotpotamus wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and I wonder what the racial composition of such a standard would be.

Take a look at the table in the linked post and you might get an idea. The real question is why are you so interested in these buckets? Why are you trying to impose them on the rest of us?

I don't find the table all that helpful. I don't know the exact numbers, but given the number of black kids in the country, and the limited number of seats at Harvard, couldn't you construct a class of nothing but black students from the top SAT bracket and still have to deny most of them?

As far as why I'm interested in these buckets - it's because this seems to be a very pressing matter of national concern - isn't there a supreme court case regarding this issue on the docket now?

Re: SAT score distributions in Michigan

#390

Post by lukas099 » Thu, Oct 06, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #119

dilap wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of the opposite. I was a highschool dropout, highest level of math was basic algebra. I was able to change my mind about the whole education thing by buying a "prepare yourself for the SAT" book, studying it for a couple of months, doing well, and getting admitted to college. Ended up doing a math + physics dual major. (I'm really grateful that that avenue to college existed -- I could not have written an a…

Jim Webb who was a Marine officer in Vietnam, a journalist, a novelist, and then a Democratic senator from Virginia saw standardized tests as his route to social mobility from a poor background in the rural south.

I've long thought that our intuitions about IQ tests are backwards; they are the most fair and least biased method we have to sort applicants for things. The more 'holistic' the process, the more that subjectivity (and therefore bias) creeps in. The only way around it is affirmative action, which leads to the current state of affairs.