Colleges turning their backs on the SAT and ACT scores

I don't know what to say other than this is an asinine statement. If this is your opinion, it sucks.

 

What sucks is you absolute inability to see any argument or rationale from any side other than your own mypoic view point. You completely fail to see how standardized tests for college admission opened the University gates for tens of thousands of us that were excluded or restricted from Universities. That the SATs provided a level playing field to over come the old boys network and blue blood family control over the Nations best schools. That without a means of baseline test college admissions can become not just arbitrary, but intentionally discriminatory and lead to quotas.

Now, those advocating the discontiunation of a standardized test are saying that given a measuring device that equates all students on the basis of knowledge and achievement is unfair because we don't like the results. That's bigotry.

 

Unless you can read my mind, there's no fucking way you know the way that I'm thinking. I understand your argument. I don't agree with it.

 

Wow....this little conversation has taken some odd twists and turns. Always interesting to hear folks perspectives and opinions on how a selective admission process actually works. Especially, the view that making the test element optional is somehow a "noble" gesture, or in any way a positive step toward inclusion. Particularly when talking about the kind of school mentioned here.....the elite, selective admission colleges. The truth lies in the unspoken part of the enrollment management (NOT admission) process.

The biggest wall to certain socioeconomic group students attending these schools ISN'T simply gaining admission. Heck, folks like me fall all over ourselves, fighting to raise the "diversity ratio" of our incoming classes. The biggest impediment is....paying the bill.

Twoback (by the way, I really respect your passion on this subject), if you want to find the real story, find out how many of these schools still utilize the standardized test element to determine who gets their competitive (academic....not need-based) scholarship dollars. Remember....the scores haven't been ELIMINATED....they've been made "optional." Ya know, sort of like optional mini-camps in the NFL.

In addition, don't draw TOO many assumptions about how inclusive this makes the entire process. If you don't have the chance (as a prospective applicant) to really bear down and hang a nice score.....what are you left with?? GPA's (which, in the age of AP classes....not available in many urban high schools...are often unfairly weighted toward bigger money districts or private high schools)? Class rank (again...based on the history of all those from the student's HS, who've enrolled before them.....hardly an equitable solution)?? Personnel interviews w/ school "officials" (usually an alum....most overburdened admission offices don't have the resources to do the interviews themselves....or the prospect has to foot the bill to travel TO the campus....hardly an inclusive practice).

Again, the tests are flawed. But there's WAY more to this than the "Aren't we wonderful?", self congagulatory stance taken by the schools mentioned in these articles.

 

It's not mind reading, it English reading. I read what you've written.

Then why the fuck did you call it asinine and that my opinion sucks? A difference of opinion is one one thing, but your dimissal of an argument, that has validity and rationality, because you don't agree is a sign of a weak intellect.

 

Abbott, we're not going to debate intellect. I never argue with a fool because an outsider can't tell the difference.
I don't agree with you, it's just that simple. That's an intellectual response to an asinine statement, in my opinion.

 

I never said they don't have the aptitude or innate ability. That's an inference you draw. I don't know why they don't succeed where others have, I have my opinions but it is not based on a genetic lack of capacity. But it is a fact that they don't succeed at the same rate as others. When you hold it constant for income or socioeconomic factors, others succeed at a greater rate. African American of middle class means at suburban schools do not, on average, perform better than less affluent nonblacks at lesser quality schools.

You want to draw the inference that those results mean they can not cut it, fine, all I'm saying is that they do not cut it. And because the outcomes are not equitablity distributed for one group, everyone else losses.
It's an outcome driven argument.

And let us be clear, the SAT test has been re-written so many times that it's silly. Everytime they rewrite or re-enigneer the test to make it more equitable or fair or scocially more acceptable, the results rarely change beyond the margins. "It couldn't possibly be the test itself" fine, but they keep changing the test and the results don't change.
How about looking at the MCATS, or LSATs? Is there a racial divide on post undergraduate standardized tests?
After the Imus fallout people are calling for an open and honest discussion of race. Fine. Look at facts. Don't assume anything.

 

Abbott, who are you to say that anyone is smarter than anyone else. How long did it take you to get through college, if you got through it? What you are basically saying is that African Americans aren't bright. That's a racist sentiment.

 

I don't think you and I will have a meeting of the minds on this issue. I don't think you'll ever beleive that I am not racist as defined by the belief in the superiority and inferiority of humans based upon some sort of racial classification.

 

Then how would you define yourself?

 

I'm not sure there's a word that describes my social outlook. As far a the so-called race relations thing, I do beleive that that African Americans had been excluded so long from mainstream American culture that they adopted their own. That African American cultural development since 1968 has been part sociopathic and shallow. For 100 years following the civil war blacks were 2nd class citizens, at best. Over the last 40 years America has legally and mostly socially opened up to include blacks as equal memebers of society. As the legal and social barriers have fallen, there have a small minority that have taken thorough advantage of the opportunities. Mostly though, the Northern inner city and Southern rural blacks have withdrawn into a disfunctional culture. Where prior groups that were thrown into America, voulntarily, thrived after a generation or 2 of assimilation, education and hard work, blacks seem to reject those values in favor of immediate gratification and lack of foresight. Obviously this is a generalization. Many African Americans do succeed, but mostly after significant help that was and is unavailable to any other identifiable group.

In short, from reconstruction through the initial Civil Rights Era, America failed it's African American citizens. Since then, African Americans have failed themselves, in spite of a lethera of equitable opportunites and programs.

It's not biology, it's cultural.