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加大取消标准考试

已有 3193 次阅读2020-5-25 09:18 |个人分类:美国华人|系统分类:转帖-时事政治经济


Dropping The SAT And ACT Is About Politics, Not Diversity.
The University of California system is suspending its SAT and ACT testing requirements for freshman applicants through 2024 and eliminating them for California students after that. This is supposedly being done in the name promoting a more diverse student body, but its own research says the move won’t do that and may well be counter-productive.

At the request of the UC’s President, Janet Napolitano, the system’s Academic Council formed the Standardized Testing Task Force in 2019. Its mission was to examine the impact of standardized testing on UC admissions. It was chaired by Dr. Henry Sanchez of the UCSF Medical School and Dr. Eddie Comeaux, an African American education professor at UC Riverside who specializes in “Racial equity and justice in education” and “transformative cultural consciousness in student affairs”. Their report is here.

The Task Force “consulted dozens of studies concerning standardized tests, their predictive value, and their impact on access and diversity” and interviewed experts from the fields of testing, admissions, and education. It did not recommend dropping the SAT and ACT.

Why not? First of all, it concluded that: “At UC, test scores are currently better predictors of first-year GPA than high school grade point average (HSGPA), and about as good at predicting first-year retention, UGPA, and graduation.” Across all GPA’s the test scores are good predictors of the important measures of success at University of California campus: “For students within any given [high school GPA] band, higher standardized test scores correlate with a higher freshman [undergraduate] GPA, a higher graduation [undergraduate] GPA, and higher likelihood of graduating within either four years (for transfers) or seven years (for freshmen).”

What about trends over time? The standardized tests are becoming better predictors of academic performance over time. “Further, the amount of variance in student outcomes explained by test scores has increased since 2007 . . .”. Over the same period, high school grades have become poorer predictors of academic success at UC, probably due to rampant grade inflation. Imagine how much greater the pressure for inflated grades at high schools will be, with standardized tests out of the picture.


Why The Asian American Students Lost Their Case Against Harvard (But Should Have Won)
On Tuesday a federal judge ruled against a group of Asian American students who claimed that Harvard discriminated against them in their admissions policy. The full decision is here. There is no question that Asian American students face a disadvantage in gaining admission to Harvard. The question is why and whether Harvard is responsible for it.

The reason that it is harder for Asian Americans to get into Harvard is that their “personal ratings” (a subjective evaluation of personal qualities) are, on average, significantly lower than for white applicants. The federal judge, Allison D. Burroughs, wrote: “the Court therefore concludes that the data demonstrates a statistically significant and negative relationship between Asian American identity and the personal rating assigned by Harvard admissions officers, holding constant any reasonable set of observable characteristics.

However, the Judge also held that the plaintiffs could not prove that the lower personal ratings are the result of “animus” or ill-motivated racial hostility towards Asian Americans by Harvard admissions officials. 给华人打低分不是 ill-motivated towards Asian Americans?
This leaves the question of why Asian American applicants were being deemed to have, on average, poorer personal qualities (完全主观,什么是 poor, excellent ?)than white applicants. The court entertained two theories. Judge Burroughs wrote that: “It is possible that the self-selected group of Asian Americans that applied to Harvard during the years included in the data set used in this case did not possess the personal qualities that Harvard is looking for at the same rate as white applicants . . .”

It is disappointing that a federal judge would indulge in that sort of conjecture. Surely the burden should be on Harvard to prove that its lower evaluation of the personal characteristics of Asian Americans is not the result of racial bias rather than vice versa. The court must be aware of various stereotypes of Asian Americans as “grinds” and math geeks who lack personality. The burden should be on Harvard to prove that such stereotypes are not at play here.

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