I remember how it was -- JR
Thursday, March 02, 2023
Discredited Research Cited in Legal Briefs for Supreme Court’s 2 Racial Admissions Cases
Sometimes a narrative is just too good to give up, even when the facts don’t support it. This seems to be the reason why some supporters of racial preferences in college admissions keep citing bad research in legal briefs before the Supreme Court.
In the two cases challenging the race-based admissions practices of Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, more than a dozen briefs cite “The Shape of the River,” a 1998 book by William Bowen and Derek Bok, to support such race-based admissions.
That research, however, largely has been discredited. The authors of the briefs citing it either haven’t done their research or think they can pull a fast one on the Supreme Court as the justices consider the two cases, Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina.
“The Shape of the River” hit bookshelves in 1998 to great fanfare in liberal media outlets because it purported to prove that racial preferences in higher education help black students to make more money after graduation. Indeed, it claimed that racial preferences were responsible for the growth of the black middle class, and that without those policies, blacks would suffer.
The book also purported to disprove the “mismatch effect”—the documented phenomenon that lowering admissions standards for racial minorities actually reduces the number of minorities entering academia and high-paying professional jobs.
But the book did no such thing.
The authors, Bowen and Bok, studied the graduation rates and post-graduation careers of students at 28 colleges, concluding that racial preferences were a great benefit to black students. In fairness to them, their study did prove one thing: Racial preferences favored black applicants at the expense of white and Asian applicants. That was a big deal because up to that point, many liberals denied this result.
But from there on out, the book’s major conclusions weren’t reliable. Its core claim—that the mismatch effect didn’t exist—was based on several serious mistakes.
First, the authors failed to separate black students admitted to elite institutions because of academic merit from those who were admitted under racial preferences. The authors could have disaggregated that data, but they didn’t. As a result, the study didn’t include data about the specific group at issue—an error that made the study, in the words of economist Thomas Sowell, “the statistical equivalent of ‘Hamlet’ without the prince of Denmark.”
Second, the authors looked only at students’ SAT scores and considered no other academic credentials. Is a student at Penn State with a score of 1200 as academically advanced as a student at Princeton with a 1200? Probably not.
Students are more than a single test score—Bowen and Bok argued as much before they wrote “The Shape of the River”—so we learn little, if anything, by assuming that two students with the same test score are the same.
Third, Bowen and Bok didn’t even compare students with the same SAT scores; they compared scores in broad bands. As professor Gail Heriot, a leading expert on racial preferences explains, comparing bands “is what statisticians do when they set out to muddy the waters.”
This error meant that Bowen and Bok didn’t actually test the mismatch hypothesis that they claimed to disprove. The hypothesis, to quote Sowell again, is that “the larger the differential in academic qualifications between black and white students at a given institution, the larger the racial differential in failure to graduate tends to be.”
To test this hypothesis, Bowen and Bok would have needed to look at the data from individual institutions. Instead, they looked at aggregations of data from institutions with different students and different SAT levels.
Incidentally, another study, “America in Black and White,” actually did look at data from individual institutions, and it confirmed the mismatch effect.
It gets worse for Bowen and Bok, however, because their own data demonstrated the mismatch effect despite their efforts to hide it.
Another study, “Reflections on ‘The Shape of the River,’” looked at Bowen and Bok’s report and found some shocking hidden conclusions. For example, Bowen and Bok reported that 8 of 10 black students in the study collected a diploma—a number well above the national average.
However, flipped on its head, this same statistic tells a different story. Whereas 2 of 10, or 20%, of black students failed to graduate, only 6% of white students failed to graduate. In other words, Bowen and Bok’s own report showed that even at elite institutions, the dropout rate for black students is 3.3 times that of white students.
One wonders what other revelations might be hidden in Bowen and Boks’ raw data. Researchers are unlikely ever to know because, in bold defiance of academic transparency, the authors refuse to make their raw data publicly available.
These are only a few of the errors in “The Shape of the River.” So many studies have done so much damage to it that serious researchers of affirmative action won’t rely on its claims about the mismatch effect.
And yet, the book remains a favorite citation for ideologues and activists. In the current cases at the Supreme Court, more than a dozen amicus briefs cite “The Shape of the River” in defense of racial preferences.
This looks like a commitment to narrative over facts.
The great irony of this wrongheaded commitment is that it actually harms the black students it claims to want to help. If not for racial preferences, we’d have more black doctors, engineers, and professors than we have today, as Heriot explains here.
It’s no good that this commitment to a false narrative is winning out over reality, at least for some people. But for others with more open minds, it provides an important warning: Beware of experts peddling statistics that confirm your beliefs; doubt them always, and double-check their work.
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Anti-Trumper at University of Virginia
Former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney has accepted a teaching position at the University of Virginia after Wyoming voters threw her out of office last year.
Cheney spent her last term not representing them, instead focusing on exacting a political vendetta against former President Donald Trump while serving as a prominent member of the partisan Jan. 6 House select committee.
The former high-ranking House Republican joined her Democratic Party cohorts when she tried to convince everyone she and they were saving the world.
Voters in the Cowboy State did not feel like they needed to be saved by her and her new friends — or from the former president.
People who were concerned by actual issues replaced her with Rep. Harriet Hageman, and most everyone seems happy with the new arrangement.
But without a pulpit from which to shout her message that democracy is in danger of being replaced by the ghost of Hitler, Cheney has no audience.
According to a statement from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, she will now be able to force her message onto impressionable young people.
Not only can Cheney tell young people how to feel about democracy and Trump, but she can do it while remaining near the swamp that is Washington, D.C.
“We’re thrilled to share [Cheney] will be joining us as a Professor [of] Practice,” the school said on Twitter after Politico first reported the news.
Cheney predictably used the words “our democracy” in her statement to UVA. “There are many threats facing our system of government, and I hope my work with the Center for Politics and the broader community at the University of Virginia will contribute to finding lasting solutions that not only preserve but strengthen our democracy,” she said.
The message was on-brand, so at least the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney is consistent. There is something to be said about that.
Some people who came across the school’s announcement on Twitter pointed out UVA’s proximity to Washington, while one offered a perfect course suggestion for Cheney: “Orange Man Bad 101.”
The title of teacher might not come with the same prestige and megaphone as Cheney’s old job, but it is sure to give her a little bit of clout with the only people she seems to care about: Democrats and establishment Republicans who are obsessed with pleasing them.
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Delaware lowers passing score on bar exam in push for racial diversity: 'Not supposed to be a barrier'
The Delaware Supreme Court lowered the passing score on the state's bar exam amid other changes reportedly intended to increase racial diversity among the state's lawyers.
The 200-question multiple-choice exam will be offered twice instead of once a year beginning in 2024 – and its passing score will be lowered from 145 to 143, according to local outlet WHYY.
The number of essays on the exam will be decreased from eight to four, and the number of essay topics will be reduced from 14 to 10.
The clerkship requirement is also being lowered from 21 weeks to 12 weeks, and the mandatory list of 25 legal proceedings that potential lawyers must attend has been shortened to 18 out of 30 possible items.
The late application fee for law school graduates and attorneys admitted in other states has also been decreased.
In the court's announcement of the changes, Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz Jr. pushed back against any assertion that they reflect a "lowering of standards" and referred to them as a "modernization" of the admission process aimed at aligning with the standards in other states.
Seitz, who began the diversity project that led to a report that suggested changes to the exam, maintained that such revisions will enhance competitiveness in attracting legal talent to the state that serves as a hub of business litigation, according to Reuters.
"Delaware is the only state to hold the bar exam just once a year," Seitz said. "This can frustrate applicants because if they fail to pass the exam, which may be required for them to keep or land a job in Delaware, they have to wait a full year before they can try again."
"The bar exam is not supposed to be a barrier to entering the profession but is supposed to be a test of an applicant’s ability to successfully practice law in Delaware, and I believe these reforms will help better reflect that purpose," he added.
Chuck Durante, who serves as president of the Delaware State Bar Association, praised the changes, according to WHYY.
"These changes are designed to remove certain unnecessary impediments to applications to the Delaware bar, to rip some barbed wire from the welcome mat, some traditional barriers that had developed into something quite artificial," he said.
Durante further noted that "attitudes must continue to evolve in Delaware," according to the outlet.
"White people generally who have their antennae up, who understand what is happening in society, have learned the meaning of microaggression. They’ve learned the meaning of how to be welcoming, how to be professional, how to make this community better suited for diversity in its professional class, including its lawyers," he said.
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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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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