It doesn’t have to make sense if your chief objective is virtue signaling.
And it’s even worse than all of this. Many public schools have eliminated advanced courses -- having deemed them “racist” -- that offered students in underperforming schools an opportunity to distinguish themselves in their college applications.
As seems typical, policy changes purportedly enacted to help a certain population do more to hurt them than anything else. Not to mention the backlash they create.
Great stuff. I do think you also made a glance at another issue, too many humanities people in journalism who’s eyes glaze over as soon as you start talking numbers.
It's pretty straightforward. If you're an elite, Ivy institution whose brand is all about mingling with "future leaders" and the ruling class of tomorrow, the rise of poor and working-class Asian children of immigrants who've been absolutely crushing the SATs presents a big problem. If something like half of an incoming class is composed of these students, it makes it difficult for admissions offices to include enough children of the current (largely white) elite, who will go on to be in influential positions in politics, media, finance, etc. in the next generation (and will be donors, influential alumni, etc.). This is not only *not* about admitting more poor black and brown kids, it's about keeping the "merely" bright kids of laundromat and bodega owners from diluting the social capital of the Ivy league "experience." It is deeply classist on an axis that is also, alas, racist. It is also about keeping elite college presidents from having to testify in front of the Supreme Court (reputation management -- like stock price -- being the obsessive goal of any executive board or body).
I wonder if it is in part due to the general (current) proclivity for whining among Gen Z….boo hoo I don’t want so much of my future to rest on one test….I might be having a bad day or suffering from emotional trauma bwaaaahhhh….or the test itself might traumatize me. Gasp!
It seems that on every metric of education one can measure oneself on, Asians keep coming out on top. Many of these Asians are from poor immigrant families that view higher education as a path to upward mobility. These elite institutions right now are trying to get rid of any quantifiable metric of educational achievement so that when the Supreme Court ends affirmative action next year, these institutions can still try and keep Asians fixed to a quota.
I wonder if this is promoted because of underlying fears that they are going to get rid of affirmative action. I think it’s too bad it, because if anything else, they should expand affirmative action to include kids who are white but low income, along with everyone who is covered right now.
I think the trouble is that affluent liberal white people want a system, where they can feel good about things being equal,without them having to give up anything.
Long after I’m dead inequality will not be any better because we as a society are ignoring the elephant in the room which is the breakdown of American Black families. This is not racism as immigrant African families are doing well.
This isn't my issue and I don't know a lot, but it seems clear Asian and East Asian immigrant kids have been getting royally screwed. There were a ton at my high school. They had SAT prep, but not because they were rich, but because their parents and communities banded together to form a cottage industry of affordable tutoring.
I remember my best friend, first-generation Chinese-American, crying when she was rejected from Columbia: she was brilliant and so talented and not at all the cliche of robotic overachiever. I assumed she was rejected because NO ONE ever gets into Columbia, but as an adult, I've met complete idiots who're like, "I went to Columbia!" We had only one girl from the school get into Harvard in like 8 years. I do think affirmative action has a role to play. But doing it at the expense of immigrants is awful.
So the Supreme Court just heard arguments in a pair of cases that question the constitutionality of affirmative action for college admissions in America. The expectation is that they’re going to shoot it down.
If I was an elite-school admissions officer and I wanted to pursue a plausibly deniable strategy of minimal compliance with the court’s new agenda, I would definitely prefer to be dealing with GPAs than SATs.
If you want a problem to go away, then one of the ways you can do it is to stop measuring for it.
In manufacturing, if you are having poor yields because your parts are failing a test, you can do a few things:
1. Fix the process, so that the parts stop failing the test
2. Ignore the results, and use the parts anyway. Your production numbers improve, but it looks bad when someone looks back and wonders why the end product continues to have issues.
3. Stop running that test. When the end product fails, refuse to let anyone do a root cause analysis that shows why it failed. Now everyone who built the product looks good, because all the tests passed during the process. When the end product keeps failing, it can be blamed on user error.
I think we have been choosing option 2 for a long time, but now we are slowly moving towards option 3.
Well done. These ‘liberal’ writers whom the author refers to wouldn’t understand a correlation coefficient if it knocked them down on the street.
It doesn’t have to make sense if your chief objective is virtue signaling.
And it’s even worse than all of this. Many public schools have eliminated advanced courses -- having deemed them “racist” -- that offered students in underperforming schools an opportunity to distinguish themselves in their college applications.
As seems typical, policy changes purportedly enacted to help a certain population do more to hurt them than anything else. Not to mention the backlash they create.
My question is how long after removing the SAT will it take for the powers that be to recognize this and to then get rid of GPA too.
Letters of recommendation and essays only maybe.
Great stuff. I do think you also made a glance at another issue, too many humanities people in journalism who’s eyes glaze over as soon as you start talking numbers.
It's pretty straightforward. If you're an elite, Ivy institution whose brand is all about mingling with "future leaders" and the ruling class of tomorrow, the rise of poor and working-class Asian children of immigrants who've been absolutely crushing the SATs presents a big problem. If something like half of an incoming class is composed of these students, it makes it difficult for admissions offices to include enough children of the current (largely white) elite, who will go on to be in influential positions in politics, media, finance, etc. in the next generation (and will be donors, influential alumni, etc.). This is not only *not* about admitting more poor black and brown kids, it's about keeping the "merely" bright kids of laundromat and bodega owners from diluting the social capital of the Ivy league "experience." It is deeply classist on an axis that is also, alas, racist. It is also about keeping elite college presidents from having to testify in front of the Supreme Court (reputation management -- like stock price -- being the obsessive goal of any executive board or body).
I wonder if it is in part due to the general (current) proclivity for whining among Gen Z….boo hoo I don’t want so much of my future to rest on one test….I might be having a bad day or suffering from emotional trauma bwaaaahhhh….or the test itself might traumatize me. Gasp!
This is controversial?!?
Humans spend an inordinate amount of energy trying to convince themselves that blindly obvious truths aren't blindingly obvious.
It seems that on every metric of education one can measure oneself on, Asians keep coming out on top. Many of these Asians are from poor immigrant families that view higher education as a path to upward mobility. These elite institutions right now are trying to get rid of any quantifiable metric of educational achievement so that when the Supreme Court ends affirmative action next year, these institutions can still try and keep Asians fixed to a quota.
Good points.
I wonder if this is promoted because of underlying fears that they are going to get rid of affirmative action. I think it’s too bad it, because if anything else, they should expand affirmative action to include kids who are white but low income, along with everyone who is covered right now.
I think the trouble is that affluent liberal white people want a system, where they can feel good about things being equal,without them having to give up anything.
Long after I’m dead inequality will not be any better because we as a society are ignoring the elephant in the room which is the breakdown of American Black families. This is not racism as immigrant African families are doing well.
Wanted to get readers' thoughts on this article.......It's a new substack to me, wirtten by Matthew Green. Not that long.....
Would really appreciate comments from others. Thank you.
https://matthewgreen.substack.com/p/ibram-x-kendi-on-the-racial-educational
This isn't my issue and I don't know a lot, but it seems clear Asian and East Asian immigrant kids have been getting royally screwed. There were a ton at my high school. They had SAT prep, but not because they were rich, but because their parents and communities banded together to form a cottage industry of affordable tutoring.
I remember my best friend, first-generation Chinese-American, crying when she was rejected from Columbia: she was brilliant and so talented and not at all the cliche of robotic overachiever. I assumed she was rejected because NO ONE ever gets into Columbia, but as an adult, I've met complete idiots who're like, "I went to Columbia!" We had only one girl from the school get into Harvard in like 8 years. I do think affirmative action has a role to play. But doing it at the expense of immigrants is awful.
So the Supreme Court just heard arguments in a pair of cases that question the constitutionality of affirmative action for college admissions in America. The expectation is that they’re going to shoot it down.
If I was an elite-school admissions officer and I wanted to pursue a plausibly deniable strategy of minimal compliance with the court’s new agenda, I would definitely prefer to be dealing with GPAs than SATs.
If you want a problem to go away, then one of the ways you can do it is to stop measuring for it.
In manufacturing, if you are having poor yields because your parts are failing a test, you can do a few things:
1. Fix the process, so that the parts stop failing the test
2. Ignore the results, and use the parts anyway. Your production numbers improve, but it looks bad when someone looks back and wonders why the end product continues to have issues.
3. Stop running that test. When the end product fails, refuse to let anyone do a root cause analysis that shows why it failed. Now everyone who built the product looks good, because all the tests passed during the process. When the end product keeps failing, it can be blamed on user error.
I think we have been choosing option 2 for a long time, but now we are slowly moving towards option 3.
Let’s be sure to add a metric for leadership or personality or something nebulous to downgrade those Asian applicants.