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Who Gets to Graduate?

nytimes.com

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Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#81

Post by js2 »

incision wrote: post #14

For everyone who can't be bothered to read the article: 'The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t.' --- 'But the disadvantaged students who had experienced the belonging and mind-set messages did significantly better: 86 p…

This is a bummer:

Vanessa called home, looking for reassurance. Her mother had always been so supportive, but now she sounded doubtful about whether Vanessa was really qualified to succeed at an elite school like the University of Texas. “Maybe you just weren’t meant to be there,” she said. “Maybe we should have sent you to a junior college first.”

After reading the whole article, this is what really stuck with me. I just can't fathom a parent ever saying this to their child regardless of wealth or education. Why does her supportive mother suddenly undermine her at such a critical juncture?

Would the poor kids do better if only their parents consistently expected them to?

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#82

Post by thaumasiotes »

ForHackernews wrote: post #78
thaumasiotes wrote: post #3

further reading on getting dramatically underqualified students to graduate anyway: http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/blackelite.htm At some point, you wonder: what if we gave the same level of support to the qualified students?

That site looks like some really dubious ~~white supremacist~~ "race realist" propaganda page. Some headlines from the homepage: > Crime and the Hispanic Effect > Diversity and Excellence: Are They Compatible? > The Color of Death Row > Affirmative Action: The Robin Hood Effect. Edit, also: http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.music.classi... "I had never before heard of La Griffe du Lion. His article was…

and you think this makes the description of an intensive support program for low-performing students inaccurate because...?

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#83

Post by x0x0 »

js2 wrote: post #81
incision wrote: post #14

For everyone who can't be bothered to read the article: 'The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t.' --- 'But the disadvantaged students who had experienced the belonging and mind-set messages did significantly better: 86 p…

This is a bummer: Vanessa called home, looking for reassurance. Her mother had always been so supportive, but now she sounded doubtful about whether Vanessa was really qualified to succeed at an elite school like the University of Texas. “Maybe you just weren’t meant to be there,” she said. “Maybe we should have sent you to a junior college first.” After reading the whole article, this is what really stuck with me. I…

Her mother was right. Maybe weak students should -- like in CA -- go to a two year college that is a stepping stone between high school and college, with more oversight and structure; finish their gen eds; and transfer. The diploma says the same thing after 4 years.

And to be clear, it's not like Vanessa is a good student. fta:

   a month into the school year, Vanessa stumbled. She failed her first test in 
   statistics, a prerequisite for admission to the nursing program. She was 
   surprised at how bad it felt. Failure was not an experience she was used to. 
   At Mesquite High, she never had to study for math tests; she aced them all 
   without really trying. (Her senior-year G.P.A. was 3.50, placing her 39th 
   out of 559 students in her graduating class. She got a 22 on the ACT, the 
   equivalent of about a 1,030 on the SAT — not stellar, but above average.)
So basically, she only got a 3.5 in hs, and never learned math particularly well. It's not exactly a surprise she struggles at a good university.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#84

Post by thaumasiotes »

rlanday wrote: post #47
roymurdock wrote: post #23

Vanessa averaged A's in high school but tested a 22 on the ACT: she was the top of her class, but her class was very far behind the students in the rest of the country. Her high school was clearly ineffective and set her up for failure on her first test. Good for her for sticking with it and working through/around/with a terribly unequal system that disadvantaged her from the start. Perhaps instead of an SAT or an AC…

Do you not think the SAT/ACT work well for measuring aptitude? Quite a bit of research has gone into these tests, although the organizations behind these tests are not very forthcoming about what they measure (for example, the FAQ on the ACT’s website claims that the ACT is an “achievement” test and the SAT is an “aptitude” test, which is a bunch of crap, since they’ve both been shown to be highly g-loaded and are pr…

> the FAQ on the ACT’s website claims that the ACT is an “achievement” test and the SAT is an “aptitude” test, which is a bunch of crap

It gets funnier than that. The SAT IIs, with near-identical characteristics to the SAT, are also supposed to be "achievement" tests.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#85

Post by thaumasiotes »

js2 wrote: post #81
incision wrote: post #14

For everyone who can't be bothered to read the article: 'The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t.' --- 'But the disadvantaged students who had experienced the belonging and mind-set messages did significantly better: 86 p…

This is a bummer: Vanessa called home, looking for reassurance. Her mother had always been so supportive, but now she sounded doubtful about whether Vanessa was really qualified to succeed at an elite school like the University of Texas. “Maybe you just weren’t meant to be there,” she said. “Maybe we should have sent you to a junior college first.” After reading the whole article, this is what really stuck with me. I…

> I just can't fathom a parent ever saying this to their child regardless of wealth or education.

It's hard for me to imagine, too; for a long time I thought Beauty School Dropout was one of the funniest songs I'd ever heard for that reason.

However, like my sibling says, the mother is correct. This girl is quite far below a normal student at UT Austin -- it's not good for her to be in classes targeted at them, and it's not good for them to be in classes targeted at her.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#86

Post by eitally »

ccernaf wrote: post #42
codingdave wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, did you really just say that state schools are easy, while private school are complex, and then use the phrase "private school caliber students" to punctuate that judgment? I went to a private college. I am not better than my friends who went to state schools.

It's not even that any person is better than another... Classes at elite public schools like Berkeley, UCLA, UMich, etc. are more demanding than at any but a few private colleges.

And it isn't really fair to paint with even this broad a brush. The fact is that large public universities generally have a broader charter than small, elite private schools. This is a factor of how they're governed on the one hand (things like mandating x% of students are admitted from in-state, or enforcing affirmative action), and the fact that they [usually] have to provide a reasonably comprehensive set of study options on the other. I went to an "elite" state school and studied history & comparative religion. My wife went to a small private women's college (~750 students) and studied biology. The resources available at my uni, which has a $2b/yr operating budget, were orders of magnitude better than hers, but the education I received was far less personal and -- again speaking in generalities -- not as good as what she received with the small class sizes and personal tutelage from her professors.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#88

Post by wmgries »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #46
reubenmorais wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her mom's doubt certainly makes things worse, but I think the mechanism in motion in this case is best described by Eric Raymond's "Curse of the Gifted" [0]. She's smart, intuitive, and hadn't had any trouble in academia before. When things get really complicated in college, everything collapses, and it takes a lot of effort and support to get back on your feet. Having college educated parents helps with the support…

Quick fact check: she's not smart. She's smart only in comparison to the rest of her high school, and the article points out she was admitted under UT's affirmative action program, wherein (for Austin) if you outperform 93% of your high school classmates, they let you in. But the article also points out that she scored the equivalent of a 1030 on the SAT. She's barely above average for the ACT-taking population of Te…

So apparently getting a certain grade on a standardized test makes you smart? Having never met this girl, none of us have any idea if she's smart, but she's certainly not dumb for a score she got on a standardized test when she was like 16...

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#89

Post by frozenport »

ihnorton wrote: post #75
frozenport wrote: post #60

Speaks to the failure of affirmative action. She should not have gotten into this school, but instead went to an easier one where she would have passed the exam. Imagine how bad the second pick students are?

From the article: > It may seem counterintuitive, but the more selective the college you choose, the higher your likelihood of graduating. Selective colleges have the resources to give focused attention to people who can (demonstrably) do the work, but lack the necessary habits and structural support.

Yes, but they were clearly wrong...

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#90

Post by ForHackernews »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #82
ForHackernews wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That site looks like some really dubious ~~white supremacist~~ "race realist" propaganda page. Some headlines from the homepage: > Crime and the Hispanic Effect > Diversity and Excellence: Are They Compatible? > The Color of Death Row > Affirmative Action: The Robin Hood Effect. Edit, also: http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.music.classi... "I had never before heard of La Griffe du Lion. His article was…

and you think this makes the description of an intensive support program for low-performing students inaccurate because...?

Garbage in, garbage out.

I don't trust that site's analysis, and I don't trust them to accurately report the underlying data without cherry-picking or selecting dubious studies.

Given your comment history, you seem like somebody with an ideological axe to grind on the subject of racial and gender diversity, and I don't believe you selected this article from such an obscure source solely for its topicality.

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