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Who Gets to Graduate?

nytimes.com

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Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#121

Post by clarkm »

205guy wrote: post #117
thaumasiotes wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm surprised more people are not calling you out on your elitism. How can you fail to grasp that people in disadvantaged situations don't get the support to succeed the way non-disadvantaged students do. Maybe she had a job in high school to help out her single mom and buy a smartphone to participate in her social circles. Kids in the better high school in the same town had brand new cars and phones and time to stud…

If that were the case you'd expect her to have a middling GPA but much better test scores. But in this story, it's the other way around.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#122

Post by thaumasiotes »

logicallee wrote: post #112
thaumasiotes wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We like to think the Ivies have a narrower range, though. This girl was admitted under UT's explicit policy of admitting unqualified students as long as they come from awful schools. That sort of thing can cause quite a large gap between, say, the 25th percentile student and the modal student. update: for reference: UT Austin 25th-75th percentile SAT math scores: 590 - 710 Cal Tech 25th-75th percentile SAT math score…

this follow-up is better. But you're asking me to guess! >How significant do you think it is that a quarter of Cal Tech students are below the 25th percentile? How far below do you think they range? I don't know. It would help if your figures didn't cut out at the bottom-quarter mark, i.e. if you gave some figures on the lowest SAT math score (and what about verbal?) admitted to these institutions, or some other indi…

I'm talking in terms of 25th and 75th percentiles because those figures are public. You're more than welcome to provide other numbers if you have a way of getting them.

And I provide exact numbers for the girl under discussion. Someone else was nice enough to point out that the ACT average for students at UT Austin is 28 (91st percentile nationwide), and the 25th percentile is 25 (80th). This girl got 22 (62nd). Compared to the average student at her school, that's abysmally low.

From memory, the range for verbal scores at caltech was 720-800, and the range at UT Austin was 120 points. The "true top end" at caltech probably isn't that far above 800, since the writing range was 720-790, so UT Austin is displaying much much more variation (120 points compared to 80). In contrast, there's going to be a lot more variation in math ability at caltech than the 30-point math range implies, due to the very low ceiling on the SAT-math. That makes it impossible to say how much variation there really is by looking at SAT scores.

On the other other hand, caltech being a technical school, you might suspect that they're targeting math ability, and the range should be narrower than it is for verbal. ;p

> Because nearly a quarter of students will be below the bottom quartile - at every school.

You could change this to exactly a quarter and you wouldn't be wrong (except in cases like, as we've seen, caltech and other high-end schools, where well over a quarter of the students are in the top 25th percentile by math SAT score). But the sentence preceding it is obviously false. Yes, a quarter of the group will always be in the bottom 25%. Does that mean they're not performing as well as the rest of the group? Of course it does. That's how we measured them.

If your top students and your worst students are very close in ability because of restriction in range, you can sensibly put them in the same classes. If, as at UT Austin, they're very far apart, you can't. I went to a large public university myself, and the course catalog was full of classes covering the same material but differentiated by "difficulty". What's wrong with describing the students who can't succeed outside of the bottom tier as "substandard"?

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#123

Post by 205guy »

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?

I thought it actually showed how to fix affirmative action. If you just admit the disadvantaged students, a higher percentage of them will sink. But if you help them with motivation, study habits, and positive outlook (which many lack due to their disadvantaged background), then they can succeed at the same rate, or nearly.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#124

Post by 205guy »

logicallee wrote: post #112
thaumasiotes wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We like to think the Ivies have a narrower range, though. This girl was admitted under UT's explicit policy of admitting unqualified students as long as they come from awful schools. That sort of thing can cause quite a large gap between, say, the 25th percentile student and the modal student. update: for reference: UT Austin 25th-75th percentile SAT math scores: 590 - 710 Cal Tech 25th-75th percentile SAT math score…

this follow-up is better. But you're asking me to guess! >How significant do you think it is that a quarter of Cal Tech students are below the 25th percentile? How far below do you think they range? I don't know. It would help if your figures didn't cut out at the bottom-quarter mark, i.e. if you gave some figures on the lowest SAT math score (and what about verbal?) admitted to these institutions, or some other indi…

I gotta chase thaumasiotes all over this thread and stand up to his elitism. He wrote:

"What's wrong with describing the students who can't succeed outside of the bottom tier as "substandard"?"

The article tells you what's wrong with that: it keeps people who COULD succeed from doing so by undermining their confidence and their motivation. Why are you really intent on knocking down the disadvantaged at every turn? Why don't you want to help them learn how to succeed?

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#125

Post by 205guy »

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…

Finally someone calling out thaumasiotes for his dubious anti-affirmative action screeds. And what a surprise to find he links to racist websites. Not.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#126

Post by roymurdock »

codingdave wrote: post #25
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…

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.

I was speaking in general terms because I did not want to pick out specific schools that are considered "better" and more academically rigorous than others. I simply wanted to acknowledge that the average freshman at Harvard or Williams probably sees a harder test than her counterpart at Ohio State. The price and prestige of a school are not always good indicators of quality, but I am very confident that selective schools that receive the top students have curricula to challenge those students. There are certainly exceptions: I go to a private university that is leagues behind some of the top public institutions: Berkeley, UCLA, UMich (among others) provide excellent educations, and they are much more academically rigorous than my private institution and many like it.

I am not saying that students who go to a private college are "better" or more likely to succeed. My point is that more selective (and generally private) schools are accustomed to receiving students that have been groomed for academic success throughout high school, and thus the bar for academic rigor starts out at a higher level. The crux of my original comment was to propose a solution for identifying just how high the bar is set on that first batch of exams, to see if you are ready. Knowing what is coming would prevent the overwhelming feeling of depression and "not belonging" that comes with failing a test in a new, scary environment. My point was somewhat obscured and vague, so thank you for challenging me to clarify.

As a rising senior in college, this is just a personal observation derived from my choices and conversations I have had with friends.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#127

Post by thaumasiotes »

205guy wrote: post #124
logicallee wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this follow-up is better. But you're asking me to guess! >How significant do you think it is that a quarter of Cal Tech students are below the 25th percentile? How far below do you think they range? I don't know. It would help if your figures didn't cut out at the bottom-quarter mark, i.e. if you gave some figures on the lowest SAT math score (and what about verbal?) admitted to these institutions, or some other indi…

I gotta chase thaumasiotes all over this thread and stand up to his elitism. He wrote: "What's wrong with describing the students who can't succeed outside of the bottom tier as "substandard"?" The article tells you what's wrong with that: it keeps people who COULD succeed from doing so by undermining their confidence and their motivation. Why are you really intent on knocking down the disadvantaged at every turn? Wh…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7856439

Because trying to lift these people up is one of the least cost-effective things we could be doing. It has knock-on negative effects all over, directly wastes tons of money, and produces very little to show for it.

You appear to be saying that while these students are in fact substandard, we shouldn't say so because it will hurt their feelings. How is admitting two (or more) tiers of students, banding them into classes by ability, and then telling them they're all in the top tier better than letting different schools admit students from narrower ability bands, so that when you tell them they're more or less as good as the other students it has the virtue of being true?

There was a scandal recently (I believe at UNC chapel hill) where the classes for football scholarship students were found to be fictional, just a bureaucratic vehicle for giving them grades so they'd qualify to keep playing for the school. Would you be willing to call those students substandard? What if it undermined their self-confidence?

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#128

Post by qq66 »

mikehearn wrote: post #101
x0x0 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In her class, she was 39th out of 559. She was in the 93rd percentile of the only group she could compare herself to. Prior to college, I would say she was a phenomenal student compared to her peers. The point of the article is that low-income kids, despite being intelligent and doing well among their peers, have a hard time transitioning to college. Universities could wash their hands of the problem and just reject…

Going to a 2-year college first and then transferring not only provides a smoother adjustment for students who might not be ready for university, it also costs a lot less and thus is more accessible to low-income students. I think it's a superior option for a lot of students, but one that universities actively discourage by heavily marketing the "4-year college experience."

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#129

Post by qq66 »

joshvm wrote: post #114
notsureifwant wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal interpretation is that a lot of this effect is driven by the fact that income (which I think we tend to think about as a proxy for standard of living, including quality of school system and safety of neighborhood, and not just what their family can buy) is often difficult to measure, and parental education might actually offer a much better measure of "standard of living" children experience (which is why…

Wealth is a poor indicator of education. Usually the questions will be how much do the parents earn, rather than where they live or their standard of living. My Dad has a doctorate in physics from a top university, yet he's pretty much given up normal employment and lives a happy sustainable life. Measured by annual income alone, he's probably below the poverty line.

On an individual scale, wealth is a poor indicator of education, but in the aggregate the correlation is very strong: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm

Doctoral degree-holders are unique in that they're the only group that earns less than a lesser-educated group (professional degrees).

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#130

Post by normloman »

3pt14159 wrote: post #58
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…

IQ is correlated to wealth and IQ is hereditary, so it follows that children from wealthy parents would, on average, have higher IQ than their classmates.

If intelligence is hereditary, then putting at-risk students in a special program would make no difference in their graduation rates. But it did. So maybe intelligence isn't as hereditary as you think. And maybe IQ isn't a great measure of intelligence.
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