Friday, October 27, 2017
Let’s Agree: Racial Affirmative Action Failed
wsj.com
And college admissions offices should reveal the true secret sauce (not test scores) for getting in.
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
We disagree in principle about affirmative action. One of us, a frequent fundraiser for Democratic candidates, believes that it’s better for colleges to have a diverse student body that more faithfully reflects the nation; and that we need to counterbalance the impact of poverty on education and opportunity, which often means giving special consideration to minority students. The other, a former Reagan staffer, believes consideration of race is intrinsically unfair and hinders race relations.
But we agree that race-based affirmative action hasn’t worked. Because of how it has played out in practical terms, it’s time for colleges to shift the policy from being based on race to income.
Affirmative action’s original intent was to incorporate more minority students, specifically blacks and Hispanics, into elite universities. But blacks and Hispanics have actually lost ground in the admissions race over the past 25 years, as recently reported by the New York Times . And while the original policy was intended to help minorities, Asian-American students feel they are taking the biggest hit. As a result, many have filed lawsuits against Ivy League schools such as Harvard, claiming that to gain admission, Asian-American students, on average, have to score 140 points higher on the SAT than white students, 270 points higher than Hispanic students, and 450 points higher than African-American students.
In tandem with shifting the basis for affirmative action, colleges need to be clearer about what qualifies students for admission. Many people believe that selective college admissions is, or should be, purely based on academic success. But the work of admissions officers is more complicated than finding the highest test scores. It’s more like casting a movie. They want to put together an incoming freshman class that has aspiring journalists for the school newspaper, great athletes for all the teams, debaters, musicians, actors, dancers, legacies, and development prospects.
Jack DeGioia, the president of Georgetown, told us that his school has to fill more than 140 separate “buckets,” reflecting the diversity of interests and backgrounds that will create a vibrant community. Of 19,500 Georgetown applicants last year, about half were academically qualified—that is, they scored over the threshold of test scores and grades to put them into the qualified pool to fill those buckets.
Standardized tests help admissions officers narrow their pools; they are still the most often used yardstick colleges have to compare applicants. But those tests are also very responsive to focused preparation. A new survey commissioned by Noodle found that Asian-American families spent more than twice as much money on test prep as any other group. This explains in part why Asian-American kids do so well on the exams. It’s not surprising that they are disappointed when their higher scores don’t result in admission to elite schools.
But the counterintuitive admissions secret—based on hundreds of interviews we’ve conducted with college admissions directors, deans and presidents over 25 years—is that an additional 10 or 20 points on the SAT above the (secret) threshold doesn’t improve one’s chances of getting in. That’s because admissions officers know that standardized tests are best at measuring how hard someone prepares for the test. They are less useful at predicting whether an applicant will be an academic star in college. Consequently, admissions officers place much more weight on the rigor of academic courses and teacher recommendations to help identify the most promising students.
The application essay is another tool for admissions officers, which they use to identify applicants who are generous, considerate and thoughtful—and to weed out those who obviously are not. Then they look for evidence of long-term commitments to extracurricular interests, volunteer activities and even after-school and summer jobs, to fill those buckets and leaven the college community.
One way schools could make admissions less “unfair” and a bit less stressful is to be more transparent about their scoring rubrics—the combination of GPA, SAT and course selection that get an applicant into the “possible” pile. Colleges could say: “To be a serious candidate for admission, you need a 3.2 GPA and 1200 SAT scores. Of course, if you are a potential All-American athlete, an all-state flutist, or have a family income under $35,000, we’ll probably make allowances. But importantly, once you’ve met that threshold, we really do not care if your grades or SAT scores are higher. At that stage, we’re looking for interesting, nice kids with a passion.”
In the 2003 pivotal decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote that colleges should not need race-conscious decision policies in 25 years; that was 14 years ago.
Now is the time to make the switch from a “minority” bucket to a “grit” bucket—for applicants of any race who’ve risen above economic adversity—and to be transparent about this change. Whether on the left or right, fair people cannot begrudge a boost in the admissions process for a young person who overcomes poverty and inferior local schools.
Rather than continue to pretend that college admissions is one giant academic meritocracy, let’s be more candid about the complex and idiosyncratic needs of each school. Let’s explicitly reward students who have overcome disadvantaged financial beginnings, but not give one race an advantage over another. This is where we begin to create better outcomes and build a fairer, healthier system.
Mr. Katzman is CEO of Noodle and founder of the Princeton Review and 2U. Mr. Cohen is an attorney and a co-author of “Getting In! The Zinch Guide to College Admissions & Financial Aid in the Digital Age.”
Quote of the Day: Brain & Penis
"Cannabis might increase [sexual arousal] frequency in the brain, but also decrease erectile function in the penis."
--npr.org
Thursday, October 26, 2017
How to Become an American - Note for a discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."
Wall Street Journal
Image from article: Sen. John McCain after receiving the 2017 Liberty Medal from former Vice President Joe Biden in Philadelphia, Oct. 16. PHOTO: WILLIAM THOMAS CAIN/GETTY IMAGES
Sen. John McCain’s denunciation of a “spurious, half-baked nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems” has been much quoted since he delivered it last week. But the punch line of his powerful speech at the National Constitution Center actually came in the next sentence: “We live in a land made by ideals, not blood and soil.”
With these lapidary words, Mr. McCain entered a debate as old as the American republic: When we say “we,” what do we mean? As the distinguished political scientist Rogers Smith showed in his 1997 book “Civic Ideals,” Mr. McCain’s proposition, which was also Abraham Lincoln’s , is only one of several answers braided through our history. Race, ethnicity and gender have been part of the story, as has Protestant Christianity. The debate continues today, framed (as it was a century ago) by dueling interpretations of immigration’s impact on our national identity.
Many elements of our national identity today enjoy a broad consensus. According to an AP-NORC survey conducted earlier this year, supermajorities of Americans cite a fair judicial system and the rule of law, individual liberties as defined in the Constitution, and the country’s governing institutions as being essential to the American identity. Strong majorities also include the ability to get a good job, pursue the American dream, and speak English as very important.
When religion and ethnicity enter the picture, however, the consensus vanishes. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans say that Christian beliefs are a very important aspect of our national identity, compared with only 29% of Democrats. Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants are the most likely to endorse this proposition. Similarly, 46% of Republican but only 25% of Democrats say that the culture of early European immigrants is central to our identity.
In such a large and diverse country, no single religious faith or ethnic origin can define what we mean when we say “we.” Only our shared constitutional and political principles can make our aspirational motto—e pluribus unum—a reality [JB emphasis].
The Constitution prohibits any religious test for public office. The spirit of the Constitution similarly forbids any religious test for citizenship—what Felix Frankfurter called democracy’s highest office. The same is true for family background. “Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists,” Franklin D. Roosevelt once told the Daughters of the American Revolution. He was aiming for a laugh, but he made his point: Ethnic heritage confers no rightful privilege in a constitutional republic.
Toward the end of the 12th century, the famous Jewish philosopher and legal scholar Maimonides received a letter from Obadiah, a troubled convert to Judaism who wondered whether he was allowed to recite the prayers referring to “our God” and “the God of our fathers.” Could he legitimately say, “You who have brought us out of the land of Egypt”? Some Jewish scholars of the time drew a distinction between converts and what might be called “native-born” Jews. A few even embraced the belief that there was an innate, inherited Jewish spirit or essence at the heart of this distinction.
Maimonides had no patience for any such claim. “There is no difference whatever between you and us,” he told Obadiah. You have accepted our laws and principles, and you have joined your fate to the Jewish community. You have come to Judaism the way Abraham brought those around him to Judaism, through reason and consent. “Do not consider your origin as inferior,” Maimonides concluded. Some Jews may trace their ancestry back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But you, Obadiah, derive from “Him through whose word the world was created.”
The Jewish “we” is constituted by belief and action, Maimonides insisted, not ancestry and blood. Membership in this “we” is open in principle to those who are willing to set aside past attachments and accept the obligations of the Jewish faith.
This is the right way to understand Judaism, and it is the right way to understand America. Immigration does not threaten our national identity, nor does religious and ethnic pluralism. We are not a community of blood. We never have been; we cannot be. It does not matter from whom we are descended. It does not matter which religion (if any) we espouse. The obligations of membership in the American community are to endorse its principles and institutions, to accept and obey its laws, to speak its language, to set aside prior political obligations that conflict with those of U.S. citizenship.
Anyone willing to do these things is eligible for first-class membership in the American community, not some secondary status. This is what is means to be a nation dedicated to a proposition.
Majority of white Americans feel discriminated against: poll - Note for a discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."
Charles Ventura, USA TODAY [original article contains a video.]
A majority of white Americans believe discrimination exists against them in the United States, according to a poll released Tuesday.
The poll, conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, found that 55% of whites surveyed believe that "discrimination against white people exists in the U.S. today.”
More than half of white Americans say there's discrimination against whites because of race. n.pr/2h7sKqa
Of those white Americans surveyed, only a small percentage say they've experienced discrimination firsthand.
Among whites, 19% said they've "been personally discriminated against" because of their race when applying for jobs, while 11% said it occurred when applying to or while at college. Thirteen percent of whites said they experienced discrimination when being considered for equal pay or promotion at work.
According to NPR, income seemed to "affect individual responses to the question of discrimination," with those making less money "more likely to say that whites are discriminated against."
The survey's findings come as President Trump has faced wide criticism over his administration's policies towards minority groups and his response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.
Part of the "Discrimination in America" series, the report also surveyed African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and LGBTQ adults. They were asked about their "own personal experiences with discrimination," with 92% of African Americans surveyed saying that they believe "that discrimination against African Americans exists in America today."
The comprehensive report also suggests:
- When asked if discrimination against their own group exists, 78% of Latinos say that discrimination against Latinos exists.
- Approximately 75% of Native Americans, 61% of Asian Americans and 90% of people who identify as LGBTQ said that discrimination existed against their own groups exists in America.
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