I would prefer that we address the value of the tests... after first showing that these minority students... can take standardized tests and do just as well, in the aggregate, as white and Asian American students.... To some, that take may seem backward. But I think of it as progressive, and as a demonstration, I ask the reader to consider: What happened to the idea of “tokenism”?
In the not-so-old days, treating people of color as tokens — placing us in positions just to achieve numbers — was not only considered bigotry, but was also the kind of thing that was endlessly pilloried in the media as well as casual discussion.
Opposing supposed tokenism was central to the arguments of those rejecting George H.W. Bush’s nomination of Clarence Thomas to succeed Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. The concept has faded from general discussion of race issues, but still manages to pop up in conversations about Black Republicans, particularly Black supporters of Donald Trump. But on matters leftward, we instead talk of equity. We constantly hear the phrase “representation matters.”
Too often, we forge this equity by tokenizing people of color, declaring that we have achieved the proper representation after pretending that race or ethnicity entails alternate conceptions of excellence from those we unquestioningly expect of everyone else. And I think much of the motivation for that pretense is to allow white teachers and administrators to inoculate themselves against the accusation that they’re denying the existence and impact of racism. Maybe that helps them, but that’s another kind of low expectation.
March 16, 2022
"Making the SAT and ACT Optional Is the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations."
Writes John McWhorter (in the NYT)(adopting a term — "the soft bigotry of low expectations" — that originated with George W. Bush)
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I would prefer that we address the value of the tests... after first showing that these minority students... can take standardized tests and do just as well, in the aggregate, as white and Asian American students\
I'm fairly certain we have decades of data on standardized tests that vigorously support the idea 'minority' students do less well on standardized tests, so your plan is to never get your plan out of the starting gate?
Harvard suspended a black economics professor for denying that racism prevents black students from succeeding. The "sexual harassment" case was ginned up to get him out of the way.
Glenn Loury has supported him.
My wife has a business which provides college planning services for high school students. Test optional has become more popular at some universities for a variety of reasons. COVID protocols made testing somewhat more difficult the past couple years. Students with “lower” scores may not be providing scores which can drive the average reported score up for a college/university and enhances reputation. Some students who may not have applied to a particular college/university will now do so. So more applicants at some schools and since freshman class sizes are somewhat fixed - possibly lower acceptance rate which again enhances school reputation. So, possible upsides to the schools from a reputational standpoint and ability to provide admission on factors other than scores only.
"I'm fairly certain we have decades of data on standardized tests that vigorously support the idea 'minority' students do less well on standardized tests, so your plan is to never get your plan out of the starting gate?"
The plan is to deny white teachers and administrators the ability "to inoculate themselves against the accusation that they’re denying the existence and impact of racism."
The idiotic knock on tests being elitist was just that, idiotic.
Critics said, 'Blacks and other minorities can't relate to questions like, "If Biff has 3 Porsches and sells 1, how many Porsches does he have?"'
But you could just change the question to, 'If LeBron scores 6 points every quarter, how many total points will LeBron score?'
I guess that would be racist too, as everything is racist.
This is why every single minority in every field should be looked at with skepticism, and why every minority should be railing against affirmative action programs everywhere.
Travel the world a bit and get back to me. The U.S. is maybe the least racist country on earth...
"I would prefer that we address the value of the tests... after first showing that these minority students... can take standardized tests and do just as well, in the aggregate, as white and Asian American students"
Alas, there is a very, very, very good chance that that is impossible, that it can't be done any more than you can increase the amount of daylight by shifting it an hour later.
Watch these two parts of a reality TV survival show and then comment:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkSKosQOSmY
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS1g0aLiJjU
Some jobs in this world require people skills and charming, persuasive souls are best suited. Other jobs require raw skills: Swimming, climbing, hunting, calculus, nuclear physics, and rocket science.
This practice will result in either (1) the wrong people in the job making horrid mistakes or (2) phantoms behind the scenes supporting the incapable "faces" for the task.
It always does.
Timely. I ran across this over over the weekend.
Harvard Canceled its Best Black Professor. Why?
Glenn Loury makes an appearance.
McWhorter had better check his six. This kind of talk is treasonous.
adopting a term — "the soft bigotry of low expectations" — that originated with George W. Bush
I thought it originated with Daniel P. Moynihan, back in the mid-60s.
I would prefer that we address the value of the tests... after first showing that these minority students... can take standardized tests and do just as well, in the aggregate, as white and Asian American students
If, by that, McWhorter means adjusted for IQ, then yes. Certainly.
"Making the SAT and ACT Optional Is the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations."
Of course it is.
They've tried everything to lower college standards to meet their failed government school output. Get rid of grades. No spot quizzes, fewer tests, more multiple choice tests, fewer essays. In grade schools, middle schools, high schools, social promotion is the standard. Cut teaching history, reading, and math to replace with social culture. Quit calling on boys. Drug the boys. What is taught is a dead end of bullshit. We have shortchanged generations of children, notably Black children.
And by 'we' I mean society at large, yes. But specifically Teachers Unions, teachers, and parents of those kids. Or should I say parent, as in single.
You don't get rid of testing because your students have been so poorly educated they cannot pass standardized tests that check their knowledge needed to live in Western Civilization- yes, where they live. If you want improved test scores, get rid of the teachers unions. Fire bad teachers. Hire people competent in specific areas of study. But mostly- correct our downward Liberal spiral that destroyed the Black famiily in America.
Previous generations of Black American families, who lived with more racism and less freedom, used to have two parents to a family. The kids used to get educated. The kids used to be able to do the work. Enter the 60s and the Age of Liberal Causes and the we can note the downward trends that we see now in failed schools and lost generations. Thomas Sowell wrote about the state of our education in his great book, "Inside American Education" back in 1993. It is as relevant today as it was the day it came out. One of the best books on this topic- ever.
1971: The Odd Couple hosts a talented young Eskimo quarterback, who receives offers to play pro ball, but also receives a scholarship offer from a prestigious conservatory. Felix encourages the young man to pursue his music...until he hears him torture his cello. Felix confronts the conservatory recruiter, who admits he had never heard the boy play, but they need an Eskimo cellist....
There are plenty of charter and religious (esp catholic) schools that are mostly black where students do very well academically. The difference is that these schools have motivated parents and enforce discipline. Big city public schools do neither.
Kids with 2 parents (any race) do better in schools. White people can't force two parent households.
Gangsta culture discourages studiousness. This hits boys most. Thus not surprising that black girls in college as a % is not that far behind white girls.
Homes with books have kids who do better. Many black homes have no books at all. Obviously, one can fill your house with books from the library for free and read to the kids, so money is not the cause. We did that.
Black kids do the least homework, asian kids the most. Again, how did racism cause that?
There are lots of things that can be done. Blaming whitey is not one of them.
The SAT has long been found to predict first year undergraduate success for White students and even more so for Black students. The same applies to grad school and the GRE.
Other factors are more determinative of continuing success. But, if you can't make it through your first year ...
If you don't have the predictive value of standardized test scores, you cannot make the appropriate adjustments to help students succeed. You are also setting some kids up for failure at a very vulnerable age. Those who think they are helping minority students by avoiding the SAT are making a very big mistake. It is as if they do not want such students to become successful independent thinkers and scholars.
The position on standardized tests does not make sense to me. I understand the idea that black students do worse on standardized tests so the tests are perceived to be racist. But there has to be some kind of metric to compare students. Once the objective criteria are removed, all that will remain are subjective criteria. If you believe that racism is a major issue for these students, aren't more subjective things like high school grades, letters of recommendation, and so forth even more readily corrupted by racism?
“What happened to the idea of “tokenism””
They made it Vice-President.
"these minority students... can take standardized tests and do just as well"
Even McWhorter has yet to face the inconvenient facts.
Tokenism as a concept is now beside the point. Black students' merit is that they are black. The underrepresented are now represented at Harvard. Making tests optional strikes a blow for equity and against meritocracy. What's not to like?
Isn't he incorrectly defining "tokenism" as proportional representation based on race rather than qualification.
That's not "tokenism."
Tokenism is shoehorning a single Black person into a situation whether he belongs there or not as a token or representative of his race to show evidence of racial enlightenment by the shoehorners.
The plan is to deny white teachers and administrators the ability "to inoculate themselves against the accusation that they’re"... doing a shitty job.
Fixed it for ya.
The problem is this whole notion of antiracism consists of ensuring that you have the approved demographic mix (otherwise you are perpetuating structural racism). How can you achieve that if you use standardized testing as a significant factor in the admissions calculation? Answer: You can't, you'll end up with too many Asians and not enough Blacks and Hispanics (assuming your college is considered top-tier).
I'm not sure how test optional levels the playing field. The kids with decent scores will provide them. Therefore, won't the schools assume that if a student doesn't provide their scores, it's because they aren't good? Why, then, would they select that "no test" student for admissions if it's a competitive situation?
The things that admissions officers look at like quality of the high school, rigorous curriculum, GPA, are generally reflected in the test results. So, even without the tests, they have a good sense who is going to be successful at their school.
It seems that resolving inequalities has to start a lot earlier than at the college-testing level.
Get rid of standardized tests but keep affirmative action, athletics and legacy admissions? The standardized tests are the least unfair part of the process. And the soft parts of the applications (essays, extracurriculars, etc.) favor the wealthy.
Supposedly, Creighton University has done this. In the press release announcing it, the current CU President stated that Drake University had done the same thing; as if that was a positive. No way should Creighton look to Drake for leadership on anything.
I was friends with the late Fr. John Schlegel, S.J. who was President of Creighton. He knew I spent my first year at Drake. One day we were talking and he said, “I don’t know how that place [Drake] stays in business.” The Jesuits are very competitive and want to be the best. Creighton has been ranked number one in the Midwest for years.
Dropping the ACT and SAT as part of the college admission process is just an exceptionally bad idea.
rehajm, that could be because they have less incentive to do well, because they know racial preferences will help them get into good schools.
Leftists don't want to help minorities gain skills and score better on the tests.
They want to destroy merit and move to racial spoils.
Because they are racists and they do not do well in a world where merit has value.
This is probably the end of his career. Mercifully there is no comment section in which he would have been pilloried.
Those tests indicate people's aptitude for college.
Charles Murray wrote a book titled Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality. One point he makes there is that college reading is significantly more difficult than high-school reading. To illustrate that difference, Murray provided comparative passages from college textbooks and high-school textbooks. The difference was blatant.
A person who cannot read at the college level certainly cannot write at the college level. That person probably will fail in college.
Enrolling too many such students will have consequences for a college. If such students are disproportionately Blacks, then those consequences will be compounded.
One such consequence is that the many academic failures will be blamed on pervasive racism. The teachers, administrators and staff members are racists. The building names are racists. The artwork is racist. Even the rocks on campus are racist.
Whites students can't do as well in aggregate as Asian students, and that's just an IQ difference of one third of a standard deviation. Blacks are a full standard deviation down from whites.
I listen to McWhorter and Loury every podcast, and they're right on the ball, but explicitly refuse to consider average differences in IQ as a cause of everything because it would be too depressing, as they put it somewhere. I disagree. Variations happen all over and you never notice in everyday life. I have no idea which of my friends are the smart ones and which aren't.
The difference shows up only in the tails, the very smart end, where a small shift in the mean produces a large difference in population percentages. So it shows up in limited admission universities, for example, with Asian and Jewish overrepresentation, and there you are likely to get tokenism, to the disadvantage of those tokenized, who cannot keep up.
The right emphasis is on teaching good character. A guy who believes overs are out to suppress him will overlook all his possibilities in life in faavor of a chip on his shoulder. A guy with a good attitude has a job anywhere.
Forrest Gump wasn't a story about a stupid guy, but a story about good character.
And I think much of the motivation for that pretense is to allow white teachers and administrators to inoculate themselves against the accusation that they’re denying the existence and impact of racism.
No, it's protection for them from needing to do anything to make the situation better.
If black students are failing because of "systemic racism", it's not the public schools' fault
OTOH, if they're failing because the public schools suck, and the same kids in parochial schools do much better, then they would have to
1: Change
2: Do actually useful work
3: Lose their ability to divide society with spurious calls of "racism"
Now, if you care about the kids, you give them all vouchers that let them go to partial school that will educate them
If you are somewhere between indifferent and actively hostile to the kids, you do what the Democrats are doing
I am glad that McWhorter is thinking hard about tokenism. It is everywhere. DIE is soaked in it. Corporate diversity initiatives are all about tokenism. It is the guiding principle by which Democrat presidents pick Supreme Court nominees.
Nature or nurture? It’s a hard choice for the ones claiming “racism” to swallow because the true answer is more a look in the mirror moment for the “ oppressed.” Do Asians do better because of racism or is there a culture that demands work to succeed? Or is it also in the genes for that general group too? ( double privilege time) . Charles Murray warned that if you didn’t acknowledge group differences this would happen if you tried to educate all the same.
The ones that fail the worst cry the loudest - and it’s deaf ears time.
"The plan is to deny white teachers and administrators the ability "to inoculate themselves against the accusation that they’re denying the existence and impact of racism."
I'm not sure I even know what that means.
" after first showing that these minority students... can take standardized tests and do just as well, in the aggregate, as white and Asian American students"
So, John McWhorter has a plan, which we can put into effect just as soon as Hell freezes over? Or will we also need some flying pigs?
Much of the population cannot read at the college level. Their vocabulary and general knowledge are inadequate.
They read little in their free time. In high school, they did not really read their textbooks.
Even if they understand all the vocabulary in a passage, they lose the train of thought and get lost. They cannot summarize what they just read. They do not foresee how the text might proceed. Trying to read the text makes them feel miserable.
If a person scores poorly on SAT or ACT tests, then he probably cannot read at the college level. As he did in high school, he probably will not really read the assignments in college. He might try to listen attentively to the classroom lectures and discussion.
I'm with him on this. Let's close the the racist shitholes down. The 'Groes can have their endowments as "reparations".
rehajm,
Whether a particular race or ethnicity does more or less well in aggregate on something like the SAT and ACT is missing the point of the debate. The question is whether there is a better predictor of success in college. Is there a better predictor?
What happened to the idea of “tokenism”?
For Progressives, it lives only on the Supreme Court.
The plan is to deny white teachers and administrators the ability "to inoculate themselves against the accusation that they’re denying the existence and impact of racism."
Well, whatever. It is still predicated upon proving that "minority students" (and he doesn't mean left-handed red-heads) do just as well as everyone else on the SATs. Does he explain where he expects to get that evidence, or is he just assuming it?
A standardized test is the only way to measure the validity of one school's reporting to the validity of another's. Is an "A" student in one school the same as an "A" student in another? How would the top 10% of one school fare in the top 10% of another? Grades and class standing are only valid inside the school a student attends. Without some way of comparing what it takes to graduate in one school to another, college admissions might just as well be a lottery. High school teachers all have stories of kids who were mismatched with colleges and universities through diversity admissions. Kids who would have graduated from a second tier college who dropped out of top tier schools with only school loans to show for it. Let's create more of them.
It’s very easy to construct a standardized test in which minority students do just as well as or better than white and Asian American students. The game of basketball is a kind of standardized test on which black players have been shown to do much better on average than white players. The same is true of football but not baseball.
Has anyone tried to construct such a test for intelligence? I did well as a young rural Iowa student on the SAT and ACT, but I thought the urban students had an unfair advantage that could have been equalized by writing culturally different questions. For example, let’s see who gets this right:
A pitch fork is to a manure fork as a dinner fork is to a:
(A) Spoon
(B) Knife
(C) Tongs
(D) Chopsticks
(E) Skewer
.
It's interesting how McWhorter struggles with the clear-cut evidence that different races have different traits. Most white racists are aware that Jews and certain Asian subgroups get higher scores than European whites on these tests, and that Blacks are better at many sports. We may not like it, but there it is. We made the tests, we invented the sports, they're better at them. Oh, well.
But McWhorter just can't hack it. He's a smart guy, but he is just not ready to face facts. Maybe not able.
I have three black children ranging in age from 23 to 29. The relatively recent Progressive movement to convince blacks that they cannot succeed in anything except sports and music due to instutional racism -- i.e., they are predestined to fail -- started too late to harm my oldest, had a slight affect on the middle one, and has turned my youngest into a quivering blob of insecurity and lack of ambition. As intended.
Blogger Mike Sylwester said...
Much of the population cannot read at the college level. Their vocabulary and general knowledge are inadequate.
They read little in their free time. In high school, they did not really read their textbooks.
I think this is a recent (20 years) phenomenon. My older kids read age appropriate books as kids. That was going on 40 years ago. My youngest, born in 1990, does not read (or didn't) and I helped her write essays in college. The older kids were more readers. Maybe it's smart phones and "social media," which appeared since 1990.
Vicki Hearne suggested that minorities do poorly on reading comprehension tests because they can't believe things quickly. A sort of street smarts.
Please stop with the Asians are smarter than everyone else bullsh*t. It's not true.
Psychologists at the University of Cyprus studied Greek and Chinese students. They found comparable general intelligence despite a slight IQ advantage for the Chinese. There was NO innate intelligence advantage for Asians. This shouldn't be a controversial position!!! It is true that Chinese children outscored their Greek peers by about 5 IQ points. But this edge was derived almost entirely from the honing of spatial sensibilities in Chinese readers. The Chinese writing system somehow influenced spatial sensibilities. And even this enhanced visuo-spatial ability disappears (relative to Whites) in college.
And don't start with the bull crap about "larger Asian brains." The "scientists" making these claims have to "adjust" for body size.
CRT is sort of right, believe it or not. But the problem for black students is not the hard-edged racism of white supremacists. It’s damned hard to believe in our inherent superiority when Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, and Southeast Asians regularly eat out academic lunch!
Their problem is the soft bigotry of low expectations. It’s putting an asterisk next to every black person who graduates from an elite institution — did he or she get in through merit, or because the school needed some number of otherwise unqualified black people to satisfy quotas? Did they earn their grades, or did they get pity points on their tests and essays? It’s the Madison school board blaming the teacher when a student goes berserk and starts throwing punches.
@ Left Bank,
ETS looks at test items every year (for over the last 50 years) to address what you are talking about. The old shibboleth that the SAT is culturally discriminatory is nonsense. Any item that disadvantages minority students (even if culturally neutral) is changed in an attempt to improve the scores of minority students.
These people are statisticians with a business that they want to keep and they do so by bending over backwards to avoid any claims of unfair discrimination. If you notice people giving examples (like yours) ask what year that was from. Odds are it was from the 1950's.
Going test optional is a way to look like you care about race while really serving moneyed interests. Everything except the standardized tests can be easily gamed, especially extra-curricular activities. Thus, standardized tests are annoying to schools that would like to let in a few more super rich mediocre students. Go test optional--problem solved!
Blogger John Althouse Cohen said...
rehajm, that could be because they have less incentive to do well, because they know racial preferences will help them get into good schools.
Thanks John. I’m not willing to quickly dismiss your possibility…at the same time 1- entrance standardized tests are not supposed to measure knowledge or application but aptitude and 2- racial results on such exams are vigorous and persistent.
Plus- would any college oriented student deliberately sabotage a test score due to the expectation of racial preference?
I do not believe that African American students are less capable than white or Asian ones. I do believe the Great Society programs of the 1960s and for many years afterward isolated single-parent Black families in lower class neighborhoods and underperforming schools. The programs may not have set out to leave a majority of black students raised without fathers, but that was the effect. Children crave the respect of honorable men, and boys particularly want male role models.
That aside, the justification for the SAT and the ACT is this: boys. Boys do not enjoy school as much as girls, starting in first grade. They are not happy to sit quietly with their hands folded on top of their desks while the (female) teacher tells them lessons. (School sports were invented to motivate boys to keep going to school, duh.)
The thing is, boys catch up at their own pace, not infrequently in the later years of high school. It is not unusual to find boys who earn excellent grades in their junior year and senior years after fairly undistinguished early academic careers.
SAT and ACT scores correlate very well with student achievement in college. For students (mostly boys) like the ones I described, a high score on either of these tests can give college admissions officers some confidence in admitting such students.
I do not believe that African American students are less capable than white or Asian ones. I do believe the Great Society programs of the 1960s and for many years afterward isolated single-parent Black families in lower class neighborhoods and underperforming schools. The programs may not have set out to leave a majority of black students raised without fathers, but that was the effect. Children crave the respect of honorable men, and boys particularly want male role models.
That aside, the justification for the SAT and the ACT is this: boys. Boys do not enjoy school as much as girls, starting in first grade. They are not happy to sit quietly with their hands folded on top of their desks while the (female) teacher tells them lessons. (School sports were invented to motivate boys to keep going to school, duh.)
The thing is, boys catch up at their own pace, not infrequently in the later years of high school. It is not unusual to find boys who earn excellent grades in their junior year and senior years after fairly undistinguished early academic careers.
SAT and ACT scores correlate very well with student achievement in college. For students (mostly boys) like the ones I described, a high score on either of these tests can give college admissions officers some confidence in admitting such students.
"... after first showing that these minority students... can take standardized tests and do just as well, in the aggregate, as white and Asian American students.... ".
Really? Find a test that results in what you want them to find? Isn't the point to find tests that determine who is likely to succeed in college?
Women now substantially outnumber men in college. Should we seek a test that somehow skews the results until more women are excluded?
No thanks.
Does the ACT/SAT test correlate with success in college (at least in the first year)?
I understand there is a strong correlation.
Is the correlation valid for various ethnic groups?
I don't know, but there are mountains of data out there.
Let's say they do correlate.
Find something better, or leave the ACT/SAT alone...
Every child left behind and progressive prices/debt in shared/shifted -- in time and space -- responsibility.
The point of the SAT and ACT was to measure a student’s preparedness for college. It seems to me — and I am being dead serious, not my usual snarky self — it seems to me that a school that doesn’t require the SAT or ACT is saying that their curricula are so Mickey Mouse that even the totally unprepared matriculating student will have no trouble passing his or her classes.
"I would prefer that we address the value of the tests... after first showing that these minority students... can take standardized tests and do just as well, in the aggregate, as white and Asian American students"
That's not a legitimate criteria. Unless you're a racist pig
The purpose of the tests is to predict how well you would do in college. If they give correct answers for that, regardless of your skin color, then the only racism is if you reject the tests because you don't like the answers they give
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...
“What happened to the idea of “tokenism””
They made it Vice-President.
Winner!
Left Bank of the Charles said...
A pitch fork is to a manure fork as a dinner fork is to a:
(A) Spoon
(B) Knife
(C) Tongs
(D) Chopsticks
(E) Skewer
I choose E, Skewer
"it seems to me that a school that doesn’t require the SAT or ACT is saying that their curricula are so Mickey Mouse that even the totally unprepared matriculating student will have no trouble passing his or her classes."
Exactly. The purpose is to change the meaning of College. The new College is an institution that will take anyone, from a Pauper to a King, and form them all into a potential Nobel Level scholar. We do this by admitting them all, remediating many, and charging them all as much money as we can.
In real life academia, there are "graduate classes" in these, you can't pass unless you bust ass by both being able to comprehend the work, and are willing to stay up until 3AM to finish your homework. Also you must be able to fast think thru major exams. No pity for those who can't think fast under pressure.
but all of God's people can do that, right?
Things were bad in 1971 when entered the hallowed halls, and worse, far worse, when I retired in 2015.
I can testify that outstanding ACT/SAT scores could override mediocre gpa and non-existent extracurriculars from HS, so it seems like a personal affront to see them denigrated and deprecated.
The GRE and Miller were interesting. I excelled but by then was ready to graduate cum laude too, and wasn't going to any elite or selective grad schools anyway. There was a strong correlation between grad school performance and (reported) GRE scores FWIW--everyone struggled some, but some never stopped struggling and eventually gave up.
Even the mediocre schools and programs had some standards. Less so now.
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