Affirmative Action

[noahgibbs]

I just felt like I should write this down somewhere. After some discussion on jhaugh's journal and some talk with the housemate (bk2w), we actually figured out an Affirmative Action plan that the housemate and I both find acceptable. Not that it matters to anybody, but hey, I'll write it down anyway.


The nominal reason that being part of a racial minority should give preferential treatment in the admissions process is the extra educational challenges that such minorities face. The logic is that race correlates well with these educational challenges, which is reasonably fair as far as it goes. Basically like jhaugh's 'corrected personal brilliance' metric.

So what you'd really like to do, if possible, would be to stop measuring race, which provides only a decent correlation, and start measuring those educational challenges more directly. As it turns out, we have a pretty decent way to do that -- standardized test scores are used for admissions anyway, so it's just a matter of determining, say, the average SAT and ACT scores for a given school and determining how the individual student's score compares. So a 1400 SAT, while it's not bad at a place like Stuyvesant, would have even more weight in the admissions process at a place where the average SAT score was in the 800s...

You could argue that this penalizes students in very good schools since they can't compete with the same score from somebody from a worse school... But then, they've had the extra educational opportunities, so they should be scoring better than somebody equally intelligent. And I think the number of people with 1400+ SAT scores from horrendous schools is pretty limited, so it's not like good students from the best schools will be thrown out en masse. Those who *will* be penalized are the worse students from the best schools, which seems reasonable -- they're surrounded by the best available resources and still aren't making much of a showing.

So the argument that minorities are often poor, causing underfunded schools, causing less-educated students would be dealt with nicely. If that's true and the schools are of lower quality then the average standardized test scores will be very low, which will give an admissions boost to the best students from that school. And that'll be true regardless of race, and in a colorblind way.

The biggest downside I'm seeing is that by the time the graduates of such a program got old, their stories about how poor and downtrodden their upbringing was will get even more obnoxious. That's a risk I'm prepared to take.

Anyway. Not that it matters.

Comments

[sui66iy.livejournal.com]

Neat...

[griffjon.livejournal.com]

Sadly, tho, the SAT has been shown to disfavor minorities itself, and you have this personal brilliance monitor conflicting with a lot of other factors -- parental investment in education, valuation of the test by the taker, school quality, being hung over while taking the SAT, plus many more that will all alter the score without regards to any specific disadvantage the person has faced. i.e. to be sensitive enough to detect diamonds in the rough, you're going to have a lot of misses.

Perhaps a test more like an IQ test that tries to focus on raw ability? It's an interesting idea.

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Transient personal factors (being hung over, valuation of the test by the taker and whatnot) will be the same for other kinds of tests, don't really discriminate against minorities and will all everage out in the end. We can ignore those in this kind of planning :-)

Parental investment in education and school quality are actually what we're attempting to monitor here, so it's not really in conflict with the plan -- it's the point of it.

The plan isn't so much to get every brilliant student, but to detect about the same percentage we do now, but do so in a way that penalizes minorities less than the current system or (if possible) not at all.

I'd be surprised if an IQ test didn't penalize minorities in ways similar to the SAT.

And actually, if the SAT penalizes minorities, I'm not sure if that works for or against this plan. It depends how and why. Do you know the statistical details behind that summary (that the SAT penalizes minorities)?

[griffjon.livejournal.com]

I can't, but Google can:
http://www.jbhe.com/latest/37_b&w_sat.html

"
• Whites from families with incomes of less than $10,000 had a mean SAT score of 980. This is 123 points higher than the national mean for all blacks.
• Whites from families with incomes below $10,000 had a mean SAT test score that was 46 points higher than blacks whose families had incomes of between $80,000 and $100,000.
• Blacks from families with incomes of more than $100,000 had a mean SAT score that was 142 points below the mean score for whites from families at the same income level.
"

plus more useful comparisons.

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Wow. Yeah, that first bullet point definitely floors me. I'd say something about "putting a greater value on education, or at least formal education", but it appears I'm disproven. While it's entirely possible, even likely, that large sections of black culture value formal education less than the equivalent bits of white culture (fair enough, it's not always all that useful), I'd be surprised if that were true of very poor white people and very well-off black people.

So I suppose it's something else, though I couldn't tell you what. I'd specifically mention the bits of formal education that the SAT tests (obscure vocabulary, analogies using same) as perhaps being less-valued, but again, I doubt that's true of very poor white people and affluent black people.

I'm not sure how else to explain it, though. That makes very little sense to me. I'm not denying that it's true, of course.

[namshubwriter.livejournal.com]

The above arguement ignores other issues that could lead to disadvantages. For instance, perhaps the student recently moved to the school? Perhaps they are being bussed from far away, so have less time to study? Perhaps the family cannot affort to give them a decent breakfast, so they can't concentrate as well in school.

I'm not saying I have a better solution. This is one of the many issues where I don't feel I understand enough about the problem and the proposed solution to have a strong opinion.

[sheenaqotj.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm amazed by that data, as well. In light of it, I might have to re-evaluate response to your income-based affirmative action comment in jhaugh's journal.

[sheenaqotj.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine moved a lot during his high school years. He claimed that, when he lived in Alabama, there was a big split between the white and black students at a school. The black students uniformly came from _much_ poorer families and were treated as second-class citizens. He presented that as one example when affirmative action might make sense.

The method you suggest would still produce skewed results in this case (although your original economic theory would compensate for this well). Parents who really value their children's education would make an extra effort to compensate for shortcomings in the education system, as apparently yours did.

My father did, too. When I was eight, I was getting Cs in math, and claimed it wasn't my fault -- I just wasn't good at it. My father spent 3 hours a day (6 hrs on weekends) for a few months teaching me mathematics, giving me a jump start that gave me the advantage over my peers all through high school and partly through college.

Parents' priorities are probably the simple biggest factor in a child's education. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to evaluate that. Regardless, a child whose parents are determined to bring out the best in him should not really be penalized for that in the admissions process. He's also more likely to perform better since that's high in his priorities.

So... I can't think of any handy-dandy ways to differentiate. Perhaps a start would be to attract better teachers with better compensation and support them in inspiring all the young equally.

Heck, if teaching made as much money as engineering, I could be (very, very slightly) tempted...

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Let me make something clear that I probably didn't adequately. I'm proposing this only as an alternative to affirmative action in university admissions... There are many non-race-based problems that it neither addresses nor attempts to address.

The things you mention, while quite reasonable, are things that I don't think correlate much with race, aside from perhaps the breakfast thing (based on income). And I think that when income and school performance are corrected for, things like that will be as well. I'd call that more a factor of income than anything else.

[r-transpose-p.livejournal.com]

Having taken both the IQ test and the SATs, I must say the only difference is that one has a "verbal" section.

I always respond to the claim that the SAT is racist with "Which section?" (If I'm feeling really ornery I'll press until my opponent concedes the point that its a cultural bias, and not a genetic one. Pure semantics, but it seems like some pretty important semantics)

On a related note, this plan sounds remarkably like Bush's (very successful) plan to end affirmative action at the University of Texas. As I recall, he garrunteed admission to anyone in the top 10% of their high school class. Since schools in Texas are (apparently) pretty segregated, this had the net effect of admitting proportional numbers of minorities vs. non-minorities, without the "Whoa, wait a minute here.." effect of attempting to end racism by instating race-based college admissions.

Personally I was hoping that Noah's plan would have been to compare SATs (how much you picked up in school) to grades (how much you were culturally pushed to care about school). But hey, if that were a successful approach, CMU would be half-minorities.

(since we're discussing affirmative action, I've wryly adopted the convention of "asian != minority")

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Actually, the article that griffjon links gives stats by section in at least one place. It appears that at least the very top black scorers are equally common in math and verbal, but the very top scorers for all races combined are primarily verbal ("very top" == 700 and above). That would suggest that black top scorers do proportionately much better in math than in verbal. That vocab thing again? Not sure if that matters.

I didn't know about that plan. Sounds good, oddly enough. You couldn't really do it for an ivy league institution, not in that form, but I like the principle.

And actually, admitting based on how much better you are than your school chums is a pretty good measure of how much you picked up basically antisocially. My way figures parental pressure as "talent" and your way doesn't, so I'd favor your way :-)

My grades were pretty good, though, so I might not have made it into CMU under your plan :-)

[r-transpose-p.livejournal.com]

That is fucked up!

I'm going to continue to be very disturbed at those numbers until I figure out whats behind them.

[r-transpose-p.livejournal.com]

Pow! I have a theory.

Did they measure "percentage of black kids from families with incomes under $10K taking the SAT vs. percentage of white kids bla bla bla taking the SAT?"

Here's my new theory. If you're white and bad at school there's more opportunities for you. Ergo, you're less likely to take the SAT to begin with, and don't count against "average white SAT score".

Ever notice that janitors at (CMU/your place of employment/etc) are usually black/hispanic, but the much-higher-paying (and, incidentally, union-controlled) skilled-blue-collar workers (electricians, carpenters etc) are almost always white? Maybe there's a barrier to blacks entering high-pay skilled-blue-collar jobs, and so, to get ahead, they have to take the SATs and go to college. Am I suggesting that some major US labor unions might, in fact, be racist? Perish the thought!

[r-transpose-p.livejournal.com]

Boom!

Statistical evidence.

"Data from The College Board shows that 52 percent of white students who take the SAT are ranked in the top 20 percent of their high school class. This compares to 32 percent of black test takers. Some 46 percent of white students who take the SAT report that their high school grade point average is in the A range. This compares to only 22 percent of black test takers. These figures alone can explain the large racial scoring gap on the SAT."

[r-transpose-p.livejournal.com]

racism in organized labor

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Well, sorta. The question, then, is whether blacks are represented proportionally in the top 20% of their class. I'd guess not. Ditto on proportional representation of blacks among A students.

[r-transpose-p.livejournal.com]

Depends on how segregated schools are.

[queen-elvis.livejournal.com]

I think this is on the right track, but it seems like you could find a better way to measure how much a school sucks than how well its students do generally on the SAT. Especially if you believe the SAT is racially biased. (I look forward to leaving work and having the time to follow those links.)
California does a version of this, or did when I was applying to college, by using a points system and assigning extra points to people from high schools known to be shitty. In fact, I think that system might have been a response to the Supreme Court decision disallowing affirmative action.

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Makes sense. I'm not sure how else to do it reasonably, though. Assigning points based on known reputation is tough because so many lousy schools have little or no reputation, at least at the level this would be rated.

[namshubwriter.livejournal.com]

I should probably be so clear. Some of the other comments make what I was trying to say less important (and, certainly, less supported by references), but I'll try again...

It sounds like you are saying that SAT scores should be judged compared with other SAT scores in the same school where the student took the SAT. My understanding of your assertion is that this method could benefit students who were at a disadvantage due to the economic or social status of their community (as compared to students who go to other schools).

This assumes that every student that goes to the same school has the same opportunities. A student who moves to another school right before taking the SAT obviously would have had different opportunities. Although you could compare the student to the students in the school where they spent the most time, as sheenaqotj pointed out, some students move often. I'll grant you that this is probably a small percentage of students.

The other obvious place where this breaks down is if you have one school serving students of neighborhoods that are very different economically or socially. Students who are bussed from far away to a school may have the same teachers and school facilities as students who walk to school, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have the same opportunities. They may spend more time on the bus, they may live in a family that cannot afford to feed them well, they may have to help out in the family business, etc. In fact, if these students are compared with the students in their school, they are worse off in terms of getting into a university than they would have been if they went to a neighborhood school.


I agree with you that we need to move away from a focus on race as an indicator of opportunity. The problem is there are so many other factors. Are the student's parents involved in their education? That depends in part on how important they feel education is, which can be influenced by the parents' upbringing and culture. Do the parents have money for tutors, or do they have to work multiple jobs and can't even spend time with their children to help on homework?

Although not directly related to your proposal, I think a good deal of focus must be to help children learn before they get to the point where they are thinking (or should be thinking) about what they will do after high school. How do we help them learn? How do we give them the same opportunity? How do we deal with the fact that people are smart in different ways and learn in different ways (I'm good at math and science, but bad with vocabulary and spelling; I have friends who excel in language and art, but struggle in science).

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Your description of what I propose is basically correct. A nitpick: I'd compare their score with the average of the school where they take classes, which is frequently not the same as where they took the SAT. My school, for instance, just didn't have enough people taking it at the time for there to be a demand -- I had to drive a couple of hours to take it at another school.

Correlating with a school where they spent the most time is a good observation, or perhaps doing a weighted average based on where they've been or something.

"The other obvious place where this breaks down is if you have one school serving students of neighborhoods that are very different economically or socially"

Yeah, this one bugs me. It actually favors the majority schools with a large minority population that are treated poorly.

People that are farther away from a school and do poorly because of those factors will show up as academically worse. While this could be a racial thing in very specific cases -- a minority community sending their children to a more distant school for lack of one locally -- I'd argue that it's pretty colorblind overall. I'd also argue that there's no great way to account for it since distance alone doesn't guarantee hardship.

"In fact, if these students are compared with the students in their school, they are worse off in terms of getting into a university than they would have been if they went to a neighborhood school."

You mean because their test scores are worse? Or because their peers are better than if they went to a (bad) local school? I'd expect the reduced opportunities of the local school to approximately be cancelled out by the policy I'd proposed. But yes, there are forms of hardship which a student might endure to go specifically to a better high school that will actually make them do worse under this program because their peers are better. It makes learning by being a so-so student at a great school look worse by comparison.

You'd want to go to the best school you can excel at rather than the best school where you can scrape by. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

"The problem is there are so many other factors"

True. But current Affirmative Action programs don't do much (well, anything) about those factors either. I'd argue that if they need to be corrected for, Affirmative-Action-type programs aren't the place to do it. Several things you mention are related to family income, and I'm in favor of correcting for that too. Naturally, that means that disinherited rich kids (and lesser cases of same) are screwed, but they're pretty screwed under the current system, too.

I agree that the current education system isn't perfect. I agree that there's a lot that could be done to improve it. I'm missing what you're arguing for or against, though.

[capnkjb.livejournal.com]

I think one of the first things we have to do is stop devaluing education and intelligence, as the culture of this nation tends to encourage.

Really want an education

[jd5p.livejournal.com]

One problem I am seeing with a lot of these points, it seems like affirmative action gets pointed to as a way of increasing diversity at the university level (Making sure priveleged kids who grew up with priveleged kids can interact with something other than priveleged kids). If kids really want an education, there are universities that will accept them. After getting booted from CMU I learned an interesting fact, very few good colleges will accept you as a transfer if you don't have the unrestricted right to return to your previous school. Schools that will, ex. UofH Downtown, sometimes don't have normal admissions standards (you don't have to take the SAT or the ACT). You take a placement exam on entrance and all students are filtered based on that exam to remedial studies to bring them up to a nominal university level. If you reach that point and decide you want more for your life, you have a reasonable GPA at an accredited university to transfer to another from. It is often easier to transfer to a college after taking the basic freshman flunk out, assuming the accreditation transfers.
I guess some of this depends on what the purpose of affirmative action is. If you want to see greater diversity, the idea you mentioned has merit . . . at least more than the current setup. If you are trying to offset difficulties underpriveleged kids have in attaining an education, then the university level is the last damned place this should be considered.

My two bits, err I guess that was almost a buck there.

Re: Really want an education

[angelbob.livejournal.com]

Let me address what I think is your point here. Feel free to correct me.

As far as I'm concerned, my proposal has nothing to do with diversity and getting privileged kids to interact with underprivileged kids. It has much more to do with getting smart but undereducated kids, those with natural talent but not enough time in good classrooms, into good universities.

Should that be avoided for their own good? Dunno. I was a smart but undereducated kid, I overloaded second semester of freshman year by a fair bit and I was certainly not scholastically prepared for it. I also took Calculus without having had pre-calc -- so, for instance, I'd never had trigonometry when I did that, though I rectified that before Calc 2.

It sounds like you're saying that smart but undereducated kids should go somewhere that will assess them, fix the "undereducated" adjective they currently carry, and then get them into better classes, and perhaps let them transfer someplace good.

I disagree violently, but it sounds like the "get in way over your head and get good fast" plan worked better for me than it did for you. I certainly understand that it's not for everybody. But I'm in favor of making it broadly available -- as CMU does, at least compared to most such institutions, with their "take 'em all and let freshman year sort 'em out" admissions philosophy :-)

[griffjon.livejournal.com]

Well, arguably a large part of the bias is cultural, not racial. The racial is the first-glance, the cultural is ongoing.