Saturday, December 18, 2021



Improving Access or Lowering Standards? Abolishing the SAT

One of the major possibly semi-permanent effects of the pandemic is that a huge number of colleges and universities have dropped requiring prospective students from submitting courses on the SAT or ACT examination. Proponents of the move can cite several reasons for the change. These exams cost time and money to take, and thus are an obstacle to applying for college, more so for those with limited incomes. They seem to disadvantage minority applicants except Asians, who tend to have average scores significantly lower than for white applicants.

Moreover, most studies show that the best predictor of postsecondary academic success is high school performance, as measured by grades, courses taken, even extracurricular activities. Hence the trendsetting University of California, whose Berkeley campus is ranked first by Forbes, has nixed requiring the exams, not to mention many other prestigious private schools and many flagship public institutions.

As in most things, however, there is an alternative point of view. While it is probably true that the best single predictor of collegiate academic performance relates to high school grades (and also the quality of the high school attended), there has been generally a positive correlation between SAT or ACT test results and subsequent college performance—kids with high SAT scores usually do better in college than ones with low scores. In my own personal experience in evaluating honors student applications, those with very high SAT scores usually do very well in college, on average better than those with less impressive test results. More information is better than less, and test score information can help reduce college mismatch—admitting students who subsequently struggle to succeed while incurring large college debts.

What happens when a school becomes test optional? Perhaps not as much as you might expect. A Chronicle of Higher Education story provided some data from the University of Virginia that I found very revealing. For the class beginning last fall, 57% of applicants submitted test scores in spite of the fact that it was not required. I suspect these students thought they would do relatively well on the test, and, other things equal, it would enhance admissions prospects. It turns out 72% of those admitted were test-submitters. Doing the math, I calculated that those submitting test results had nearly twice as good of a chance of being admitted than the 43% not submitting results.

My guess is the admitted students on average had higher high school grades and perhaps other attributes (student leadership roles, athletic prowess) attractive to UVA. Modern day observers are largely unaware of nefarious admission practices in the first half of the 20th century that discriminated against some students, notably those of Jewish descent, and how the SAT test was viewed as an objective measure of academic merit that would remove or reduce discretionary decisions made by admissions bureaucrats in enforcing prejudicial behavior—see great books by Jerome Karabel (The Chosen) or Daniel Golden (The Price of Admissions).

A concern of some, including me, is that in our quest to achieve such commendable objectives as racial justice, greater intergenerational income mobility, and more economic diversity in picking students to attend top schools, we may lose sight of the fact that truly superlative “higher” education can be fully achieved only by students who are cognitively superior and highly motivated. There may be a trade-off here: achieving full socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic diversity may be possible only by sacrificing high academic standards. If we are too aggressive in pursuing non purely academically meritorious standards, we may lose America’s reputation of having a disproportionate number of the best educational institutions in the world. Perhaps this is a price we should pay to right past injustices—but there is a price.

There is also I think significant differences in the prevailing views within the academy and the general public in these matters. This is perhaps best illustrated by the rather sharp rebuke of California’s political leaders in the legislative and executive branches last year when the people of the Golden State constitutionally rejected, rather decisively, efforts to allow affirmative action play an important role in admissions and hiring decisions at public universities. Life is a series of tradeoffs, even in college admissions.

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2 California Teachers Accused of Encouraging Student’s Clandestine Gender Transition

Two teachers in a California school district are accused of coaching a student into coming out as transgender behind the backs of the student’s parents, according to video footage circulating on social media.

School staff reportedly changed the student’s name and pronouns and called Child Protective Services when the parents objected to the gender transition, according to a Twitter thread by LibsofTikTok posted early Thursday morning. The thread included video of the girl’s parents addressing the school board of Spreckels Union School District on Wednesday.

The student’s mother, identified as Jessica Konen in the video of the school board meeting posted on its YouTube page, claimed that her daughter’s indoctrination began with a LGBTQ club at Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, California.

Konen’s husband Gunter described a meeting with the middle school’s principal and an unidentified teacher where he learned of his daughter’s social transition, video showed. He claimed the school called Child Protective Services on the parents due to their objections to the actions of school staff. The agency later dropped the case.

During a California Teachers Association conference held in October, two teachers who taught in the school district described how they recruited students and concealed the students’ activities from parents, according to recordings and documents obtained by writer Abigail Shrier, author of the 2020 book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.”

At least one of the teachers taught at the middle school attended by Konen’s daughter.

“District policy was to deceive parents, and activist teachers ran with that to drive a wedge between parent and child in the name of trans ideology,” Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for the group Parents Defending Education, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“This is obviously an egregious case, but the sad truth is that when it comes to trans policies, parents are being deceived by their children’s schools all over the country and the pain felt by the parents in this district is shared by countless parents nationwide,” Sanzi said.

Lawsuits have been filed across the country over school policies that parents claim have encouraged educators to carry out clandestine transitions.

“Public schools and administrators are taking it upon themselves to make these decisions without involving the parents and in fact cutting them out.,” Ryan Bangert, senior counsel and vice president of legal strategy for the Christian legal aid group Alliance Defending Freedom, said when asked for comment.

Spreckels Union Superintendent Eric Tarallo did not reply to an email requesting comment.

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University with Rigid Mandates Closes Campus After ‘Rona Runs Rampant

Despite mandates in place for masks and vaccinations, Cornell University is closing its campus as fast as it can after a coronavirus outbreak on campus.

The Ivy League college reported 903 infections between Dec. 7 and Monday, according to CNN.

The school’s COVID-19 dashboard put Cornell’s status as “red alert.”

Officials said a “very high percentage” of the documented cases are due to the Omicron variant.

“Virtually every case of the Omicron variant to date has been found in fully vaccinated students, a portion of whom had also received a booster shot,” Vice President for University Relations Joel Malina said in a statement.

Cornell has decided to essentially shut down its campus, located in Ithaca, New York. The college has 25,600 students.

As part of its plan, the college is moving final exams for the fall term online, closing all libraries and canceling all activities, President Martha Pollack told students in a letter.

“While I want to provide reassurance that, to date, we have not seen severe illness in any of our infected students, we do have a role to play in reducing the spread of the disease in the broader community,” Pollack said.

“(The) point is that higher transmissibility leads to exponential growth, which outweighs the linear decrease in percent of severe cases. To avoid this type of situation, it is imperative not to let such infections run unchecked, but to take steps that limit transmission,” she wrote, according to WNBC-TV.

Malina said the college’s actions are designed to “help students who have tested negative to return safely home for the winter break, and in an effort to limit the spread of the Omicron variant to vulnerable populations.”

The school requires all students to be vaccinated except for those who have been granted religious or medical exemptions.

Unvaccinated students must be regularly tested, as are many vaccinated students. Cornell requires students to wear masks indoors.

Ninety-seven percent of people on campus are fully vaccinated, according to the college’s COVID-19 dashboard.

The ceremony for fall semester graduates that was scheduled for Saturday has also been canceled, according to NPR.

Princeton University is also moving all of its fall semester final exams online, according to Bloomberg.

Princeton urged students to go home “at their earliest convenience.”

“We hope to avoid letting the final exam schedule interfere with students’ travel home for winter break,” Jill Dolan, dean of the college, and W. Rochelle Calhoun, Princeton’s vice president for campus life, wrote in a letter to students. “We certainly don’t want you remaining on campus in required isolation through the holidays.”

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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