Admissions Scandal Reminds Us Again of the College Caste System

From CNN:

. . . .The separation of young people into this two-track system matters so much because the outcomes vary so much for students at the most and least selective institutions. Among black and Latino students with above-average SAT scores, 81% at selective public institutions complete their degrees, compared with just 46% at the less selective public schools, the Center on Education and the Workforce found in "Our Separate & Unequal Public Colleges," a comprehensive study released last fall. 

The disparity isn't difficult to explain: The selective public institutions can afford to spend about three times as much on their students as the least selective institutions. Amid sustained cuts in taxpayer funding for public higher education, that spending gap is now about one-fourth larger than it was a decade ago. It's one reason why the gap in college completion is also widening between whites on the one hand and African-Americans and Latinos on the other, even though the latter groups have significantly increased their share of the total postsecondary population.. . . .

Old Delusions, Illusions, and Collusions Are Hard to Break

• Access to higher education has always had various layers of unfairness baked in that are designed to make sure that privilege remains privileged in America.  There is, of course, the use of a fake meritocracy based on the use of standardized tests, with scores that mirror the economic advantage or disadvantage of the children who are forced to take them as part of a demeaning scam that has gone on for a hundred years.  The scam part most people ignore.
  
  And there is the long history of legacy admissions, where top college access is passed down across the generations, regardless of how dim-witted the descendants of the white protestant elite might be (see the Bush clan).
  
  But the most recent FBI sting has uncovered a new depth of corruption among the rich and famous, as well as the whores throughout academia who are paid off to give preferential treatment to the spawn of the wealthy.
  
  And yet the the illusions, delusions, and collusions permeating higher ed down at the cellular level continue.  Look no further than this interview excerpt below, which was aired on PBS the day the news broke about the decades-long conspiracy to cheat and steal Ivy League access. it is clear from insiders, even reporters like Jeffrey Selingo, that the false belief continues that "in many cases, it wouldn't matter where they went." 
  

  
  

  William Brangham:

  At its core, really, this is about wealthy parents who are trying to buy in some ways even more influence for their wealthy children, right?
• Jeffrey Selingo:

  I mean, what's amazing to me is that, in some cases, it wouldn't really matter where these kids went to college, right? They have both the means, the financial means, but also the connections to live a great life because of their parents, no matter where they go.

  So it's kind of shocking that they really wanted that piece of paper from an elite college — an elite college, because, in many cases, it wouldn't matter where they went.
  
  

Sacks: SAT Inching Toward Oblivion

A clip from a nice piece in Newsday:

. . . . We have known for many years that the SAT is a relatively weak predictor of academic success in college, adding little to what admissions offices can glean from high school grades, class rank, writing samples and other assessment tools that predict performance in the real world, including the classroom.

Probably the single most important study in recent years reaffirming this conclusion was published in 2001. University of California researchers examined some 80,000 student records and found that high school grades and the SAT subject tests were significantly better predictors of college grades than the SAT.

And we have long understood that the exam quite powerfully reinforces and amplifies inequalities of educational opportunities between rich students and poor ones. The 2001 University of California study, for instance, found that the SAT subject tests and high school grades bore virtually no relationship to the socioeconomic status of individual students - quite contrary to the robust relationship of SAT scores to the socioeconomic background of test takers.

Given these shortcomings of the SAT, it's wondrous that so many colleges and universities have stuck by it for so long. Institutional habits die hard. Under threat of losing its largest customer, the University of California system, the College Board unveiled a new SAT just a few years ago. But those changes never addressed the fundamental flaws of the test and how colleges were using it - and misusing it - to make important decisions about admissions and financial aid.

Amid this turbulence, the NACAC report promises to be a watershed event in American higher education. A widely representative group of educators and higher education leaders authored it, chaired by Fitzsimmons of Harvard. And they produced the report at a time when many colleges and universities are grappling to find ways to make their institutions more inclusive and less the bastions of privilege.

In the current system, dominated by privilege, elitism and money, a marginally bright rich kid can get into a top college because of a well-prepped SAT performance, while the creative genius from an impoverished family is lucky to attend a community college - or to go to college at all.

College "quality" in the current higher education market is primarily determined by an institution's selectivity in admissions, which in turn is determined by the median SAT score of entering freshmen. The college rankings game, orchestrated by U.S. News & World Report, entrenches the dominance of median SAT scores as a measure of quality. . . .

Smith and Wake Forest Dump SAT

From the NYTimes:

Smith College, a women’s college in Northampton, Mass., and Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., will no longer require prospective students to submit SAT or ACT scores as part of their applications.

At both institutions, the policies will take effect with the class entering in fall 2009.

The number of colleges and universities where such tests are now optional — mostly small liberal-arts colleges — has been growing steadily as more institutions have become concerned about the validity of standardized tests in predicting academic success, and the degree to which test performance correlates with household income, parental education and race.

Some schools that have made standardized tests optional have found that they have attracted a more diverse student body, with no decline in academic ability.

“By making the SAT and ACT optional, we hope to broaden the applicant pool and increase access at Wake Forest for groups of students who are currently underrepresented at selective universities,” said Martha Allman, Wake Forest’s director of admissions. Wake Forest will announce its change on Tuesday; Smith announced it on May 16. . . .

Click chart to enlarge.

Children on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown

When John Locke observed the behavior of the homeless street urchins of 17th Century London, he noted their vigor, ruddy cheeks, and energy as they ran around barefoot and thinly clad, even in winter. Based on his observations, Locke recommended that middle class family shod their young boys in leaky shoes, thin pants, and to keep their rooms icy at night in order to make them as tough as the street children. What Locke could not have known from his limited Experience is that he had been observing the lucky and uniquely hardy street children, the fortunate minority who had not yet died from flu, hunger, pneumonia, and exposure.

All of this is simply to suggest that when we see the Caitlins and Seths appearing to thrive on the cut-throat non-stop resume building treadmill, where individual branding and constant test tutoring are required to claw out a path into Yale, stop and think about all the less hardy children who succumbed to the pressure or who believe that they are failures for not getting into one of the Only 20 Worth Going To. Maybe we should do something more attuned to requirements for mental and physical health.

A reminder from Karen Kisslinger at Huffington Post:

. . . . We can keep the challenge, excellence and the creativity in eduction and life without making ourselves and our children sick and overwhelmed. As it is, the student aristocrats of the American educational scene are those who just happen to have the constitution, genes and endurance to withstand workload and time pressures and the frequently denatured and toxic food supply. Other brilliant, creative, interesting people dwindle in the face of the demands they face, and we often don't get to see them thrive on their own, perhaps less busy or better nourished, terms. They are more likely to end up diagnosed.

Recently I went in to talk to the Head of a private school where I teach. I suggested to her that we might implement a four year Stress Reduction Skills program, which the students could put on their "resume" for college application. I suggested that colleges would look favorably on students who had been committed, over the course of their high school career, to learning relaxation and stress reduction skills other than binge drinking, binge eating and marijuana use. Taking fewer course would be an option for the stress reduction "track", and I suggested that this could be seen as a positive stress-less decision as opposed to a sign of less commitment and rigor in academics.

My suggestion was greeted with the kind of look government officials must often give when they say something needs to be evaluated for needs assessment and perhaps become the subject of a commission or special report before any changes could actually be made. That's a "BIG" idea she said, implying to me that it might be too big to take on at the moment....and there was a distinct implication that any one school might be vulnerable in being the first to implement such a program before others did to. That is: "If I relax first you might 'get ahead' of me."

So, I'm suggesting that we all agree together to relax more, which, as I teach my students, means we'll be able to do things BETTER, MORE PRODUCTIVELY AND WITH MORE FOCUS AND AWARENESS. Skill for relaxation and for acquiring positive traits of consciousness such as generosity and compassion need to be taken as seriously as other skills learned during the course of young people's education.