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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

#551

Post by lokar »

akramachamarei wrote: post #446
lokar wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sup…

And you don’t want a 100% cutoff. You need to admit some people just under the threshold since the scores are relative. You need fresh data to keep the model tuned.

Some kind of weighted lottery

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

#552

Post by rayiner »

jnovek wrote: post #472
rayiner wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

There is so much context here that you’re missing — have you ever been poor before?

Everyone in my wife’s family grew up poor and many still are. My wife lived in a converted barn for part of her childhood.

Regardless, the data is the data! Only 10% of parents on SNAP work full time.

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

#553

Post by rawgabbit »

niwtsol wrote: post #460
trunnell wrote: post #435

I'm in the SF bay area w/ middle school and high school age kids. Between San Jose and San Francisco, 15%-30% of kids are in private school (it's 30% in SF where the public schools are extra dysfunctional). That's far above the California statewide average of 8% in private school. Among our peers, somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of kids are doing advanced math outside of school, typically either Russian School of Math…

Could you elaborate on the reasoning they "strongly discourage math outside of school"? I'm genuinely curious how that would be a stance they take.

Not the OP. I assume the public school teachers don't want to answer when the student says "my Russian math teacher said to do this" instead of the common core math that is being taught.

https://www.mathschool.com/blog/parent-resources/what-is-rus...

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

#554

Post by jrflo »

cryzinger wrote: post #527
jrflo wrote: post #266

It's weird to me that standardized tests were demonized as anti-equity rather than GPA. You can always get extra help with homework, projects, etc. if you have a better funded support system. Single subject/unit tests in high school are also much more narrow in scope and easier to prepare for. A standardized test on the other hand is so wide in breadth that raw abilities will shine more.

The SAT/ACT prep school industry is a thing. I grew up with many, many kids whose (wealthy) parents sent them to SAT prep summer school every year from age 12 to 17.

Oh for sure. But there's also a huge industry for private tutors, homework help, writing help, etc- which more directly translates dollars to GPA points. My thinking is that the translation between dollars to SAT/ACT points is much less than that.

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

#555

Post by rayiner »

sosodev wrote: post #417
rayiner wrote: post #292

MIT dropped the SAT requirement only to bring it back a few years ago: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our... . Dropping standardized test requirements is disconcerting. Of all of the institutions that should be making decisions neutrally based on the evidence, it’s universities. The fact that even institutions like MIT changed their admissions policies according to ideas that aren’t backed b…

Isn’t this contradictory to your point? They dropped it, collected data, and then reverted when the evidence suggested they made the wrong choice.

The data has showed that standardized tests are highly predictive for decades. Schools made the change despite the data. Then they changed back not because the data changed, but because it became apparent they couldn’t tolerate the burdens of not screening students properly.

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

#556

Post by rayiner »

undeveloper wrote: post #522
rayiner wrote: post #292

MIT dropped the SAT requirement only to bring it back a few years ago: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-our... . Dropping standardized test requirements is disconcerting. Of all of the institutions that should be making decisions neutrally based on the evidence, it’s universities. The fact that even institutions like MIT changed their admissions policies according to ideas that aren’t backed b…

didn't MIT, like most other schools change this only in wake of COVID? A pandemic resulting in a significant amount of your potential applicants from applying is pretty good reason.

That was a coincidence. MIT announced it was dropping the SAT on March 20, 2020, just a day after the first statewide lockdown order. The announcement says that they had already planned to make the change before COVID: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/a-special-announcement... (“And last, but certainly not least: I know we are making this announcement during the COVID-19 pandemic. We had already been planning to make this change…”)

The UC system dropped the SAT in May 2021, in a settlement of a lawsuit that argued standardized tests were discriminatory.

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

#557

Post by tptacek »

M3L0NM4N wrote: post #531
BobaFloutist wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually zip code.

There's no IQ correlation with zip code? Think again

Almost everything is correlated with zip code, most especially SES, so this comment doesn't really say anything.

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

#558

Post by adolph »

hedora wrote: post #53

This doesn't surprise me at all. From what I can tell, California's education system has moved from "equality" (which I would define as providing similar opportunities to all the kids) to focusing on "equity" (which I think they define as dictating the same outcome for all kids). To get an idea of how off the rails this has gotten, go read up on their statements trying to justify banning high school calculus. They ex…

> If a local district starts losing funding, then it would have to close / shrink schools, and people from outside the educational system would be allowed to establish independent (secular) charter schools within the district.

K-12 education funding is strange. It has social welfare like elements like an entitlement, but is provisioned as a conditionally compulsory service like a jail.

It suffers from similar cost/benefit illegibility as healthcare, with its triangulation of patient, provider and payor, only remove decision making from the patient and on the provider side add local politics to upper management and union rules to workers.

Maybe that it works at all is testament to people caring about kids.

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

#559

Post by bsder »

ethbr1 wrote: post #523
thot_experiment wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy that such a load bearing job isn't better funded and more respected. Arguably the most important job in society and the level of respect, pay and to some extent training (at least a lot of places require a masters for what that's worth) is absolutely not commensurate with it's importance. I dropped out of high school for the same reason, I had a teacher that failed me for writing an essay in three different sty…

Multiple things can be true, because the goal is to optimize in aggregate. - Some teachers are bad (and some students will have them) - Overriding teachers with policies intended to control the bad ones impairs and burns out the others Consequently, the reasonable path is somewhere in the middle. Create feedback systems designed to identify and weed out the worse teachers* and avoid overloading everyone else with out…

> it consistently amazes me that few systems, teaching included, regularly poll their end users (students or employees)

That completely ignores the social and political aspects.

You need to understand that the people who have the authority to do so do not want to document bad teachers, ever. Documenting bad teachers makes political waves and principals and superintendents never want to make waves because that impedes their ability to both do their job as well as get their next job.

Even if a teacher is very bad, they may be well-liked or be an important part of the community. If you attempt to remove that teacher, they may rally support from the community that can be extremely noisy and inconvenient.

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

#560

Post by dirtikiti »

j_w wrote: post #504
dirtikiti wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> School choice is bad because the only people who benefit from school choice are already wealthy - they can afford to transport their child to the school of their choice. So what? If "level the playing field" means my kid gets a sub standard education because you have to constantly lower the bar, I don't want to play your game. This stuff isn't new. Everyone understands the importance of education, and everyone und…

Okay but if you care this much about school choice why not move to an area with better schools? That's a tool most people already have. And yes, most people who are complaining about "school choice" have this tool to some extent. Will your living conditions be exactly the same? Probably not. > At some point, it has to be about personal responsibility and not blaming everyone else for your failure to be a good parent.…

That's exactly what my single parent did. Took responsibility for being a teenage parent, joined a trade union, paid more for a crappy apartment on the edge of a good school district, and busted their ass everyday to provide.

I don't see what you're arguing here? You're the only one playing a stupid game.

If school choice is a thing, everyone can choose where they send their kid to school... they don't have to pay more for a crappy apartment on the edge of a good school district.

And to top it off, the only poor people this actually affects are poor people who live in an area where there is an actual choice of schools to be made.

Which means there is most likely access to transportation.

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