Your Kid Goes to Yale? So What?

Dennis Prager
    
I have told the following to numerous audiences:

I’m hardly a Hollywood celebrity, but almost no day goes by that I am not stopped by a few strangers who want to shake my hand and say something. Needless to say, I rarely know the religious identity of the individual, but if the person tells me what college their child goes to, I assume the individual is a Jew.

When I relate this to Jewish audiences, it invariably evokes a great deal of laughter. Jewish audiences know how true, albeit slightly exaggerated, it is. As I always add, to more laughter, non-Jews don’t tend to tell strangers what college their child attends (which is why non-Jewish audiences don’t find the story nearly as funny).

The story is humorous, but it conveys a serious and troubling fact: Many American Jews define their worth by the college their child attends. In American Jewish life, there are no bragging rights equal to being able to say one’s child attends a prestigious college.

Thanks to the recent revelations about wealthy people — few of whom are Jews — paying large sums of money to bribe coaches and others to get their children into elite schools, it is now clear this perverse affliction is not limited to any ethnic or religious group.

Why would people do what they know to be immoral and illegal just to get their child into Yale — or, for that matter, USC?

I am certain the biggest reason is bragging rights.

Apparently, many American parents define much of their worth as parents — and even as individuals — by what college their child attends.

If I am right, it betrays an extraordinary level of superficiality. That your child got into Yale tells us nothing about you either as a person or as a parent. In fact, it doesn’t tell us anything more about your child other than that he or she studied enough to get great grades and is adept at rowing or playing the oboe or some other extracurricular skill. It tells us nothing about your child’s maturity, common sense or decency, and most importantly, it tells us nothing about his or her character.

In other words, it tells us nothing about any of the important things about a person. Indeed, videos of Yale students screaming “f–k you” at a distinguished (and liberal) Yale professor over an email his wife sent defending “offensive” Halloween costumes — students who were then supported by hundreds of other Yale students (an episode even The Atlantic found repulsive) — leads one to assume that getting into Yale means nothing other than high grades or perhaps membership in the right minority. And it tells us a great deal about the low moral and intellectual state of Yale University — which went on to honor one of the students who screamed epithets at the professor.

In a blind test of character, if I had to hire either a hundred students attending the University of Wyoming or a hundred students attending Yale (or any other prestigious university), I would choose the Wyoming students in a heartbeat. And if I had to choose a spouse for one of my children from among Wyoming or Yale students, I would likewise choose the former. Why? Because they are less likely to think they are the creme de la creme of American society, they are more likely to be working while going to college, they are less likely to support students who curse professors, and they are less likely to think America is a crappy country.

There are, of course, fine young men and women at Yale, but their being fine has nothing to do with why they were admitted to Yale and is not fostered by Yale.

There is a second reason parents will do almost anything to have their child attend a prestigious college: money. They believe attending a prestigious school guarantees a far greater future income, and for those who equate a large income with meaning in life — or with happiness — this is determinative. For those who have a different value system and those who link happiness with a happy family life, close friends and a religious community (a particularly great contributor to happiness), that alleged extra money isn’t nearly as important.

Moreover, this widespread belief isn’t even true. As New York Times columnist Frank Bruni points out in his book “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be,” among American-born chief executives of the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500, only about 30 went to an Ivy League school or equally selective college.

And to the extent the belief that graduates of prestigious colleges will make more money is true, it is largely because young people who get into those colleges are driven to amass money, prestige and/or power. As Yale professor of computer science David Gelernter writes, “They go to Yale to become prominent, powerful, successful, and naturally (why not?) rich and famous.”

Such individuals will earn more than those who are less driven. But virtually any ambitious and capable individual in America will earn good money and if he or she leads a responsible life and saves money wisely, will retire with well more than a million dollars.

Tell your children from the day they understand language that you care far more about their character than about their grades or what college (if any) they go to. Only then will you have a child you can brag about.

But if this college admissions scandal is any indication, I wonder whether most American parents could actually say that to their children.

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Gov. DeSantis Should Prioritize School Choice

Florida families are through with one-size-fits-all education.

That’s what 78 percent of Sunshine State voters said, according to a new survey from the Foundation for Excellence in Education. And recent elections tell the tale: Four years ago, Florida mothers supporting school choice cemented former Gov. Rick Scott’s re-election, and only three months ago, school-choice moms decided the gubernatorial election for Ron DeSantis.

If Gov. DeSantis wants to satisfy his supporters, he must respond to parents’ obvious demand for school choice by expanding eligibility for choice programs, with a continued focus on low-income families.

This new survey offers insight on the best way to do that, by revealing how over 800 registered Florida voters view education policy and school choice. Right now, in addition to charter schools, Florida offers three choice programs: Gardiner Scholarships (education scholarship accounts or ESAs), tax-credit scholarships, and voluntary Pre-K programs. Floridians overwhelmingly approve of these programs, with support ranging from 75 to 88 percent, and an astonishing 72 percent supporting an expansion of Florida’s ESA program.

School choice is popular in Florida because it works.

A new study released by the left-leaning Urban Institute examines college enrollment and graduation rates for over 16,000 students who used Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program—the nation’s largest private school choice program. Researchers found that students enrolled in the program are up to 43 percent more likely than their public school peers to enroll in four-year colleges, and are as much as 20 percent more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree. These benefits were more pronounced for students who began using their scholarship in elementary and middle school, further corroborating the benefits of school choice.

It also makes sense that voters want expanded education scholarship accounts. ESAs let parents direct the public funds that would have been spent on their student in the public education system toward funding education tailored to their student’s individual needs.

Currently, Florida’s ESA program is limited to students with certain disabilities, but it could be expanded to help many others. Another report from the Foundation for Excellence in Education and EdChoice found that private school leaders view the high cost of tuition as the main obstacle for families wanting to send their children to private school. As a result, Florida private schools may be operating with over 125,000 empty seats in the next few years. But an expansion of Florida’s ESA program to include low-income students could reduce the tuition barrier preventing low-income families from accessing high-quality education without overstraining existing private school capacity.

Political winds seem to be fully behind Florida’s school choice agenda—as Republicans control the House, Senate, governor’s office, and state Supreme Court. But policymakers should proceed with caution.

While Florida boasts an impressive array of educational options, some programs are more established than others. Rather than trying to immediately expand choice to all students, which would come at a high political cost in such a closely divided state, policymakers should focus on providing access to high-quality education for the thousands of low-income students waiting for choice programs.

Florida lawmakers must act wisely but boldly, taking advantage of the favorable political environment to give more families what they want: the education that is right for their children. The school-choice moms are watching—and they’ll be at the ballot box in 2020.

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Education Assessments and the Future of Learning

When parents send their kids to school, they imagine public education will equip their little ones with the skills necessary to support themselves and make the world a better place. Unfortunately, standardized testing distracts students from developing the skills they need to succeed in the workplace and in life. Harvard dropout and education entrepreneur Rebecca Kantar is developing a solution: an education assessment rooted in evaluating how students think not just what they know.

American schools have employed standardized tests for over 150 years. In addition to the SAT, ACT, SAT subject tests, and AP tests which have become the standard for evaluating college readiness, No Child Left Behind and the Common Core Standards established additional standardized tests to evaluate how well students are prepared for college, and subsequently for life.

Yet standardized tests are measuring, and thus encouraging, the wrong aptitudes. While employers call for critical thinking skills, leadership, and character qualities, standardized tests require only right answers. How students achieve those answers means nothing so long as the student fills the right bubble within the time allotted.

Consider the stars of American public education: those who score well enough on the bevvy of standardized tests to attend college.

According to a 2018 McGraw Hill survey of 1,000 of these college graduates, fewer than half feel they’ve gained the skills they need in college to transition from academia to the workforce. Employers report that recent graduates are far from successful even in areas they believe they have mastered. While 66% of students felt they developed critical thinking/problem-solving abilities, only 56% of employers agree. And though 61% of students felt they learned leadership skills, only 33% of employers concur.

In 2018, Bloomberg surveyed 200 senior-level corporate and academic employers about their recent-graduate hires. According to the survey, nearly half of the respondents felt that recent graduates lacked the analytical reasoning, complex-problem solving ability, agility, adaptability, and ethical judgment they needed to perform well in the workplace.

In the words of Los Angeles education entrepreneur and Harvard dropout Rebecca Kantar, “What we test determines what we teach.” To meet employer demands and prepare students to excel beyond academia therefore, educators must start measuring what they need to improve: student thinking.

Kantar is working on an assessment to do just that. Kantar’s company, Imbellus, offers a new approach to education evaluation. Instead of asking students multiple choice questions and assessing right answers, Imbellus offers a virtual testing space, a near video game world, where participants are assessed based on their decisions and interactions.

“Through our virtual world, we assess cognitive skills that matter for this century, skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, imagination and systems-thinking,” Kantar said. “We look at every click, almost click, and action to understand the essence of how people process, develop ideas and make choices.”

Imbellus partners with data scientists and organizations known for their skills in areas such as problem-solving and creativity to translate participants’ decisions within the virtual world to their decision-making skills in real life. These assessments, Kantar argues, reflect the kind of soft skills employers demand and give students, educators, and employers insight into participants’ cognitive development.

“The beauty of the Imbellus technology is that we can track to an atomic level all elements of decision-making,” said Keith McNulty, Global Director of People Analytics at McKinsey & Company. “We can start to map it against known factors in the underlying assessment model. That type of scientific approach is a massive differentiator because it means that we can have the confidence that what we’re measuring is truly relevant to the job.”

And Kantar’s vision is on track for success. By December 2018, Imbellus earned $23 million in venture capital support from Owl Ventures, Upfront Ventures, Thrive Capital, and Rethink Education. Furthermore, McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, began using Imbellus assessments to find job candidates.

“If I win in the next 10-15 years, which is kind of the timeline I’m on,” Kantar said, “then high schools should be free to teach in ways that are relevant, practical, and interesting for their students, and students should have a better shot at graduating into a decent quality of life.”

Imbellus offers American education the shift in priorities it needs to start offering our kids a shot at a better future. Instead of preparing students to earn a score, Imbellus encourages educators to return to a liberal-arts view of education: a view that prizes inquiry, understanding, and application of ideas for individual improvement and the betterment of the world we inhabit.

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