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Comment by drivebyhooting

9 hours ago

You can ask AI. Access to elite colleges is super conditioned on going to private elementary schools. North of 2x.

To simplify: C = elite colleges

P(C| private high school) = 2 P(C| affluent public high school)

P(C | private elementary) = 5P(C | affluent public schools) = 35 P(C)

Sure, but Chetty et al were measuring based on the top-1% of income, the private elementary schools are acting like filters based on income. Yes, they can buy more access to things that will weigh heavily on an admissions acceptance, but that's a filter by parental income which is well known...

I suppose the argument is that a hard working kid from a lower income family can test into a private elementary school on a scholarship?

  • No. Spar this with AI. The 2X multiplier is AFTER controlling income.

    What you’re saying is just a comfortable lie to make people feel better about public schooling.

    • It didn’t control for wealth though just income. It also didn’t control for parental education or familiarity with elite colleges. It didn’t control for parental expectations (seems likely that a parent who spends money on private school will be more likely to expect their child to attend an elite college).

      It didn’t control for the value parents put on education in general.

      It didn’t control for children’s expectations (seems likely that a high school student who wants to attend an elite college will be more likely to push to attend private school).

      It didn’t control for extracurricular activities (it seems likely that private school parents will be more likely to encourage their kids to participate in extracurriculars that look good on an elite college application).

      It did control for SAT scores through, so the one thing this study is definitely not doing is examining the effectiveness of public vs private schools at effectively educating children.

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>P(C | private elementary) = 5P(C | affluent public schools) = 35 P(C)

That can’t be true. A group’s probability cannot exceed the overall probability by more than the reciprocal of its population share. A 35× ratio therefore requires the group to represent at most 2.86% of the relevant population. For comparison, NCES reported that 9.3% of students in grades 1–5 attended private schools in 2016.

  • For sake of conciseness I didn’t explicitly say elite non-religious private school.

    Please check your rebuttals against AI before you post it.

    • The study you’re referencing didn’t examine elite schools just non-religious.

      And if you’re only counting elite schools there are so many uncontrolled confounders that this is a patently stupid argument.

      Elite schools are selective, a large part of what they are selecting for is kids who are likely to get into elite colleges to keep their success rates up.

      Of course kids who are screened for being likely to get into an elite college are more likely to get into an elite college.

      The only realistic way to control for this is to look at kids who got into elite schools but decided not to go.

      >check with AI

      Kick rocks. I’m not normalizing this shit. Why didn’t you check with AI. It would have told you that omitting key information to save a few keystrokes was a bad move.

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