The Coup That Almost Succeeded - TPM – Talking Points Memo

[philmore]

@Hatmama

BUT, the SAT tests are still biased in many respects against POC and other cultures. I

Actually, no, they are not. That conversation ended by the late-Eighties. SATs benefit children of color and poor children the most. “Bias” is not a matter of opinion, when you’ve done your statistical work; on item analyses, run through every gender, race/ethnicity, urban suburban, rural, low- middle - and high SES and a dozen others. Their very tight specifications mean reliability and predictive validity, all comfortably int he .9 range, which is pretty unassailable. SES only accounts for 14% of the variance. Having been in the business a while, that is quite good. .

It is unlikely all the testing companies around the world all conspired so that. . . Asian kids do the best. If you don’t want admissions officers to have more power - and actually they do better than most understand - then you don’t want the SATs not in the mix. This goes to the heart of the profoundly anti-intellectual, know-nothing anti-testing crowd. And isn’t it interesting that testing companies from around the world all see pretty much similar trends? You know who talks about this fact? African-American intellectuals, educators. As they have for half a century or more.

“We need diversity” yes, of course - who seriously argues about that? For the Freshman class at Harvard, African-American students account for 18% of the population. African Americans overall account for 14% of our country’s population. The same is true, also, for our federal workforce, 18% African-American. The river keeps moving.

I apologize in advance if I’m being a bit twerky. But I do this work, have done it for decades, and the level of cluelessness and dishonesty in some corners is infuriating.

[dogselfie]

[godwit]

The mullahs always do have a minister for arts education or some such that they can trot out to explain through her burka/chador that she feels no oppression whatsoever, don’t they?

[philmore]

See my other post. By the way, the SAT is being widely reinstated. The SAT used to have poor predictive validity, but that was some time ago. The same holds for the ACT. Then there are all those tests Pre-K through Grade 12.

@sao

The studies are easy to do, because the data is all on computers anyway.

With all due respect, that’s just nonsense.

@sao

Even for colleges where SAT scores have some predictive power, if they aren’t equally accurate for all races and genders, that’s a problem.

See my piece on item analysis. They are equally accurate. Their reliability numbers are comfortably in the .9 range.

FWIW, I’ve had to work with the College Board. Absolute bastards, liars. Constantly pleading poor-mouth. They have a 9 hole golf course on their property. But they got their numbers down. And why shouldn’t they? They and the other testing companies have rounded up the best psychometricians in the world.

[sao]

In the 80s, it was hard to do the analysis of predictive ability and bias, so the SAT people did them Now, it’s not. Any university can run a regression on their own data. I know, I did one of these, informally (ie not published).

No university likes to publicize that one of their admission criteria was biased or meaningless, so the studies don’t get published, but they get done and universities ditch the SAT as a result.

Bias is also a problem. If one group is more likely to study for the SAT and another less likely, then it SAT will over predict the studiers and under predict the non-studiers. To use the SAT, the university would have to discount scores in the over predicted group and accept lower scores in the under predicted group. This makes people in the overpredicted angry and claim discrimination, so it’s much easier just to ditch the test.

[sao]

I think admissions tests are a reasonable idea, but the SATs are just awful tests. I mean, testing writing with multiple choice questions?

[dogselfie]

I don’t know where you live, but in Texas art classes have been reduced or eliminated. Some schools dropped physical education - the kids might get to run around a bit at lunchtime but that’s it.

Starting in 4th grade, my art teachers worked on our cursive handwriting. That makes way more sense than a reading or English teacher trying to do it.

[philmore]

Bias, poor predictive validity were real issues in the early-Eighties, but by the end of the decade the landscape changed enormously. In the 80s I started working in a large urban testing and evaluation department. The river moved. Was there a quarter century, until around '14, but assessments of all kinds remains a main area of my current work.

Universities have been publishing their admissions grids since the 70s. Testing companies have published untold thousands of rigorous research in the past 40 years. They are easy to access. Untold number of books on diversity. I still have a bunch of 'em.

[philmore]

They got their numbers to work. But times change.

@sao

but the SATs are just awful tests.

For a lot of people. For a lot of poor kids of color, it’s their ticket to the middle class. Anyone who tells you otherwise has no idea what they are talking about.

[dogselfie]

I’ve gone feral, more or less

@drtv when an extroverted friend asked how I could bear it during the first shutdown, I reminded her that I’m an introvert: “I was BORN for this!”

[sao]

@philmore

Universities have been publishing their admissions grids since the 70s. Testing companies have published untold thousands of rigorous research in the past 40 years.

The testing companies have a motive to prove a lack of bias and they use large averages. Individual colleges can do a quick regression on their own data. I’ve done this, while working for an Educational Policy Research group. The college for which I did this showed the SAT had very little power to predict who would do well in that college. It was a state university with a fairly diverse student body, albeit probably not typical of the country, because the state’s demographics aren’t. The study was never formalized or published, but I know the report was circulated internally and that a few months later, the university announced it was going test-optional. Over the years, I’ve seen news articles suggesting that other colleges have done the same thing, the same way — quietly.

I was in favor of the SATs before I did the research. But a good hard look at the data made me change my mind. While I did not look at racial bias (my remit was predicting success in the college, based on admissions data and the SAT was so useless I promptly discarded it as a predictor), my bet it that if colleges find an underprediction based on one demographic group (and there’s gender, race and hispanic/not) then they have a potential court case if it gets out. They could get sued for discriminating against other groups, because they accept the underpredicted group with lower scores. If they don’t correct for underprediction, the underpredicted group can sue, if they can prove the college knows of the underprediction. This is why I think the SAT is disappearing. On average, it might be a decent predictor, but unbiased prediction for every demographic combination in every college? I’m skeptical.

We need to find ways of identifying kids who will be well-served in college (and make it affordable for them), but using a test as bad as the SAT is not a good way to do this. The SAT subject tests are far better.

Using the Accuplacer tests would be, for the college I looked at, a pretty decent metric. Kids who could pass the Accuplacer Algebra test were much better prepared for college. The thing that makes me mad is that kids go to mediocre schools, get Bs in math and fail the Accuplacer Algebra test, meaning they have to pay college tuition for remedial math that earns them no credit towards graduation. If they wanted to do any subject that requires basic math (most of the better paying majors), they start a year behind and won’t graduate in 4 years.

If the Accuplacer tests replaced the SAT math test, then high schools would be far more motivated to ensure their students could pass it. Because the real disgrace is the education these kids get.

[sao]

@philmore

For a lot of poor kids of color, it’s their ticket to the middle class. Anyone who tells you otherwise has no idea what they are talking about.

I’m not saying placement tests aren’t helpful for poor, smart kids from lousy schools, but there are other options. The SAT is disappearing because it’s a bad test.

[philmore]

@sao

he SAT is disappearing because it’s a bad test.

No. The SAT is not disappearing. It is being widely reinstated. It’s not a lousy test. “Lousy schools” is an entirely different matter.

[sao]

A quick Google shows 76% of colleges are test-optional, including Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Yale. Last year, only 44% of students submitted SAT scores.

[m_00_m]

Some ‘’‘problems’’’ with that is that in that situation there’s always going to be some lackeys, goons, hangers-on, and other barnacles he can abuse to get the reinforcement he craves, and that he has no self-reflection (he even literally said once, “I never look at myself - I may not like what I find”).

My ideal punishment for him is that not only is he stuck in a cell with the TV permanently kept on loop of him haltingly shuffling down that West Point ramp, but every day he’s forced to attend an HR seminar where a fat black lesbian tells him he can’t leave until he gets proper pronoun usage exactly right.

[philmore]

Harvard and MIT have re-stated the SAT. JHC.

I guess a test if good if it has reliability and predictive validity both in the .9 range; with poverty accounting for only 14% of the variance - a good test unless you don’t like it.

You have spouted a lot of nonsense here. Have a good day.

[sao]

As I said, I was pro-SAT until I did some research. For the college’s data I looked at, the SAT’s predictive value was negligible. That is fact, not nonsense.

Harvard is test optional until 2026. One presumes they will reconsider their decision based on whether the SAT added any value.

[philmore]

@sao

As I said, I was pro-SAT until I did some research. For the college’s data I looked at, the SAT’s predictive value was negligible. That is fact, not nonsense.

In the early 80s, you stated. Forty years ago. Give it a rest.

[sao]

I said maybe it was in the early 80s, I did my research not long ago. 2019 data, I think. Additionally, the data you might be looking at might have been without HS GPA. However, I found HS GPA more predictive than the SAT and, with that data, the SAT added next to no additional value.

However, we’ve highjacked the thread enough.

[drtv]

HA! So true! I felt zero obligation to do anything I didn’t want to do. It was Blissful!