Comment by JCTheDenthog
5 hours ago
>In your scenarios, equity proponents would tend to advocate for things like extra testing time, access to tutoring, etc.
So you claim, but in reality proponents of equity instituted a system that gave Black students a roughly 450 point advantage over Asian students on the SAT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/opinion/white-students-un...
Note that the NYT, in their pure, non-partisan spirit of fairness and equity, somehow found a way to describe this as an unfair advantage for White students.
> somehow found a way to describe this as an unfair advantage for White students
Make up your mind? If their having to score higher than Black students is unfair, how is "Asian-Americans had to score 140 points higher on their SATs than whites" not also unfair?
What if raw SAT score doesn't perfectly reflect lifelong achievement? As I noted elsewhere in the thread, wealth (translated to parenting time, tutoring access, better schools, etc.) can help do better on the SAT. How does one account for that?
I didn't say it was fair, I was pointing out the NYT being racially biased (as per usual). Imagine at a school that Jenny gets 10 cookies from the teacher, Timmy gets 3, and Johnny gets two. Billy sees all this, but he has a crush on Jenny, so when he tells everyone on the playground about it he doesn't say "Jenny got way more cookies than Johnny, that's so unfair!" Instead he says "Timmy got more cookies than Johnny, that's so unfair!". That's the ridiculousness that I'm pointing out here.
>What if raw SAT score doesn't perfectly reflect lifelong achievement?
It was never intended to?
>How does one account for that?
It's impossible to account for everything. As much as the thinkers of the Enlightenment and their successors have attempted to quantify and measure everything, it's simply not possible in reality. If someone could devise a better means of measurement than current standardized tests like the SAT and ACT, I would happily welcome them.
But one thing is pretty clear and certain: the SAT is a far better measure of mathematical aptitude that high school grades, and until better measures can be found and implemented I fully support continuing to use it for college admissions and college math placement.
> I was pointing out the NYT being racially biased
But we apparently agree that "somehow found a way to describe this as an unfair advantage for White students" is actually accurate on their part?
(The article also openly explains why, if you go past the headline a bit.)
> It was never intended to?
Then we shouldn't use it as such.
1 reply →