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Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

latimes.com

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Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#441

Post by Levitz »

rayiner wrote: post #346
julianeon wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I think all funding in California education (other than terminal levels like 4 year bachelors and up) should be a function of the percentage of students that succeed at the next step. This has the unintended consequence of encouraging schools to eject students who are struggling. For example, if the student has a learning disability, declare that it's too serious for them to handle, and then transfer th…

> the "top" schools are just ones that reject, socioeconomically Top schools aren’t that way merely because of socioeconomics.

Well, depends. "Socioeconomics" has been utterly abused as a concept for political gain.

Are top schools that way for social and economic reasons? I mean what else is there to blame? Are they that way because of being different in the department of what progressives actually mean by "socioeconomic factors"? No, not really.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#442

Post by MyHonestOpinon »

jdw64 wrote: post #45

Looking at the world, it seems we all go through similar systemic issues. Naturally, in East Asian cultures where the fervor for education is overheated, this phenomenon tended to manifest much earlier. When specific exams are abolished or watered down under the banner of 'diversity and equal opportunity,' the wealthy actually gain a massive advantage. Of course, the exam system itself inherently favors the rich as w…

I agree. The rich kids will always have an advantage. But let me ask why are we playing this like a zero sum game? Do we not have enough education for anyone who is willing to put up the work?

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#443

Post by kayson »

happytoexplain wrote: post #72
StateflowsLabs wrote: post #2

"The surge in math deficiencies after dropping the SAT highlights a systemic issue: grade inflation. Without a standardized baseline like the SAT/ACT, a 4.0 GPA from a high school with relaxed standards looks identical to a 4.0 from a highly rigorous one. Paradoxically, removing test requirements harms underprivileged students the most. Preparing for the SAT requires a book and an internet connection. In contrast, bu…

I can't read the article - do they explain why they think this is a "paradox"?

This doesn't exactly answer your question, but MIT added test scores back recently and wrote a blog post explaining why: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our...

I think the "paradox" is that you'd expect disadvantaged students to perform worse on standardized testing.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#444

Post by ofjcihen »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #370
tracker1 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to get rid of "advanced" course options and push every student into the same bucket?

I'd be fine with that. It would provide an incentive to care about the bottom 75th percentile along with the spoiled rich kids

Just FYI I was dirt poor and from a crap neighborhood and qualified for and benefited from these AP classes. Not all kids who succeed only succeed because of their background.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#445

Post by borski »

rayiner wrote: post #405
borski wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it’s possible that a family might value education but not have the literal time, if they are working non stop, to take the kids to a further school? Or to take care of them afterward? You’re avoiding the point by saying “anyone who cares can,” and avoiding the economics entirely. Economics can force choices against your own best interests. If you have an hour between shifts and the school is 45 minutes away, y…

Most people aren’t “working non stop.” Out of non-disabled SNAP recipients with children, only 10% work full time, and only 33% work more than 20 hours a week: https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-f... (table a.26)

Most of the people I know who work two or more jobs also do not get SNAP. Sometimes, it’s pride, and sometimes, it’s logistics.

My sister is on SNAP; it took hours, literally, for me to sign her up, and I’m quite “technically savvy” lol

And every year the renewal takes at least two hours in NYC.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#446

Post by akramachamarei »

lokar wrote: post #97
chaostheory wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As imperfect standardized tests are, they are still more fair and less biased than using arbitrary judgement on extra curriculars

Bucket to the observed predictive power of the score, resolve ties with a lottery .

Would this be fixed buckets? I.e. would you treat 649-650 more predictive than 648-649? Presumably that wouldn't work. I'm sure there's some algorithm that could do this but it seems subtle.

Obviously, if a school has a cutoff score bucketing is easy, but with excess applicants ordering becomes necessary. I guess this sort of probabilistic score would induce an order for any given student relative to sufficiently superior or inferior applicants.... I'm now kinda curious to figure this problem out. Did not expect an algorithms problem to arise in this thread lol

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#447

Post by [deleted] »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #372
WarmWash wrote: post #159

Why do we have such an easy time accepting peoples intrinsic athletic ability and such a difficult time accepting people's intrinsic mental ability? To me this is a 1:1 comparison, but people lose their mind when I make the comparison. College isn't for everyone just like amateur league sport isn't for everyone. I feel like I am going to a minor league baseball game and seeing a shortstop on the field with the motor…

Because intrinsic ability is such a vanishingly small part of the equation that we can't know who could actually be the best until we actually give everyone a fair shot. There might be the rare generational talent that, starting in their discipline at age 18 with no prior exposure and poor nutrition, education, health, exercise, etc, could outcompete your average loser brought up with every advantage and private less…

[deleted]

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#448

Post by borski »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #311
jazzpush2 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the opposite experience, as it were, teaching in the UC system. The politics were mostly fine, but the students, especially those post-COVID, were the problem. Most of the students were always great. But it seemed like every quarter, there would be 5-10 problematic students whose, for lack of better term, entitlement, resulted in far more hours of work than worthwhile. And don't get me started on the false disa…

Give teachers authority again. It shouldn't be their problem if a student wants to fail the class.

The problem is that just like students, teachers are not all created equal.

My 3rd grade teacher wanted to fail me for “discipline” problems. In reality, she simply didn’t like me; I had no discipline complaints in other years.

I had undiagnosed ADHD and was gifted. She did not know how to deal with that, and actively disliked me.

Activist teachers are also a thing.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#450

Post by habinero »

hedora wrote: post #309
nkrisc wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s not a real choice. As household income decreases, the odds the child goes to the nearest school (regardless of how good it is) increases. Are you providing after school child care options or transportation to their school of choice? If not, then it’s not a real choice and kids from lower income households will remain disadvantaged. That is to say, the results will be mostly identical except now public mo…

> except now public money will be going to private entities Right, now you've come full circle to the core of my proposal: If the charter schools are not producing students that perform well academically, then they do not get paid . Instead, the investor that funded the charter school takes a bath. This is capitalism at its finest: - The local government provides a competitive backstop. If you do worse than that floo…

> If the charter schools are not producing students that perform well academically, then they do not get paid

Some people have never heard of Goodhart's law and it shows lol. It leads to terrible ideas like this which make the same mistake again and again.

I want you to think -- really think -- about the ambiguities in "perform well academically". How do you measure this? Test scores? Grades? If it's grades, then you've just given everyone at that school an incentive to never fail anyone, no matter what. If it's test scores, we already know that leads to teaching to the test, which hurts academics in general. It massively incentivizes cheating and fraud. It incentivizes kicking out any student who has any problems whatsoever.

For every complex problem there is an solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.

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