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Stuart Taylor responds on latest Mismatch brohura
Topic Started: Dec 15 2015, 04:03 PM (283 Views)
Quasimodo

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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/12/15/scalias_poorly_worded_comment_has_merit_129030.html

Scalia's Poorly Worded Comment Has Merit
By Stuart Taylor Jr.

December 15, 2015

Justin Antonin Scalia 's dreadfully worded comments last week during oral argument about racial preferences in college admissions understandably offended many people.

But what he was obviously trying to say made an important point that had nothing to do with racism -- a charge hurled at Scalia by people including Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, who once again wallowed in shameless demagoguery.

Scalia began by saying that "there are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas, where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less advanced school, a slower track school, where they [would] do well."

This was seen by many as a racist suggestion that blacks are inherently unfit for top schools. And phrases like "less advanced school" and "slower track school" sounded derogatory.

But Scalia clearly meant to say that perhaps it does not benefit blacks to use large racial preferences to get them into a highly selective university where, all the evidence shows, such preferentially admitted students don't do well.

He continued for a few more awkwardly worded sentences to sketch the consequential theories advanced in works including a 2012 book by Richard Sander and me, “Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It,” and in amicus briefs by us and others.

Scalia's bad choice of words gave critics such as Reid a pretext to dismiss mismatch theory without confronting the growing body of evidence that it points to very serious problems caused by large admissions preferences.

But the gist of Scalia's point is consistent with common sense. Why is anyone surprised at the idea (confirmed by data) that black students have a hard time thriving academically when brought by very large racial preferences into competition with classmates most of whom are far, far better prepared? (Small preferences, we think, create no such problem.)

Scalia's point is also supported by a large and growing body of social science studies by more than 20 respected scholars about the effects of large racial preferences.

Mismatch theory does not deny that many black students are academic stars. President Obama, for one. It points to the problems of all students who are admitted via large preferences, as are some very rich donors' children, some athletes, many Hispanic students, and the vast majority of black students.

(The "legacy preferences" at many schools for alumni children, which I also oppose, appear to be much smaller, with a much smaller mismatch effect, the scant available data suggest.)

The research also suggests that black students do fine when competing against Asians and whites who arrive at college with similar academic credentials.

While the details are complicated, mismatch theory and the research underlying it are easy to understand in a general way.

Below are five critical facts (detailed in “Mismatch”) that no open-minded expert doubts, although the universities, other supporters of racial preferences, and most of the news media conceal them insofar as possible.

(1) Because of very large racial preferences in admissions, the racial gaps among entering students in test scores, high school grades, and other indicia of academic preparation are enormous at virtually all selective colleges -- on the order of 200-450 SAT points between the mean black and Asian, and 150-400 points between the mean black and white, students at the same college. There are also commensurate racial gaps at almost all selective colleges in entering students' high school grades if adjusted for high school quality.

(The gaps are much smaller among "holistically" admitted students at state colleges in California, Michigan, and other states where racial preferences have been outlawed.)

(2) As a result, there are also large racial gaps in academic performance in college and graduate school. More than half of black students end up in the bottom tenth of their classes in law schools and in the bottom quarter at most selective colleges, no matter how hard they work.

(3) Five undisputed, peer-reviewed studies show that these racial gaps also force highly disproportionate numbers of the many black students who are interested in becoming scientists to give up that ambition. The reason is that they cannot do well in science and other STEM courses and thus move into soft, easily graded courses.

(4) All this creates or aggravates racial isolation and self-segregation, in part because studies show that unsuccessful students take different courses than successful students and that most students socialize mainly with their academic peers.

(5) Most of same black students who suffer academically at schools to which they were admitted via large preferences would do far better at somewhat less competitive schools where their academic preparation would make them competitive with classmates. But because of what is called the cascade effect, as long as there are large preferences there will be large racial gaps in academic preparation and performance at virtually all selective schools.

My co-author and I, and others, draw from the limited available evidence two hugely important but debatable inferences. The first, of which I am very convinced, is that mismatch leads to a loss of intellectual self-confidence among many black students that may be long lasting.

The second inference is that many recipients of large racial preferences would be better off in the long run -- with more learning, better careers, and perhaps happier lives -- if they went to less prestigious but still excellent schools where they could do well academically.

Prestige has obvious advantages. The question is whether they outweigh the costs of being near the bottom of the class.

Serious mismatch scholars say that more data, which universities assiduously conceal, are needed to shed light on these two issues, and on related ones such as whether the current campus unrest is related to the academic problems that most black students suffer because of mismatch.

On the other hand, virtually all of the highly credentialed scholars who attack mismatch theory gloss over the five numbered facts above -- which they know to be true -- and launch ill-founded and often intemperate attacks on the debatable inferences as though they discredit all of mismatch theory.

At the same time, these anti-mismatch zealots furiously oppose making available to scholars or the public the data that could shed light on the long-run effects of large racial preferences on the students about whom they purport to care. I think I know why.


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Quasimodo

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The ignored elephant in the room is the bedrock of all education, the family. The late genius Senator Patrick Moynihan wrote that the US government has created, by policy, a sub population which can not survive, the broken black family. It lacks a functioning full time father. No amount of rebuttals about racism, or sexual variations can define a path to personal and career success, as the norm, for the product of a dysfunctional family. The deep remedy must come from churches, synagogues, mosques, as well as neighbors and extended families by providing, at a young age, Mentors, big brothers, coaches, policemen, military, role models, doctors, mental health professionals, etc. This is where the focus must be, for a generation or more. Our President could have been its chief spokesman and example. He did not succeed.



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Making room for any under-qualified applicant means shutting out better qualified applicants. Like Asians and Jews that work hard, score high and do well when they are admitted to these schools. Part of Affirmative Action is holding back those who did not fit into the protected classes.



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Duke parent 2004
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In this matter, as in so many others, Thomas Sowell went to the head of the class long before others even entered the classroom.. Here are some paragraphs from his memoir/autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, published in 2000, about his encounter with affirmative action at Cornell in the late 60s when he was a member of the economics-department faculty:

As I learned more and more about the special program for black students at Cornell, it became increasingly apparent that black students were virtually a special preserve for a small clique of white activists and black militants. This clique emphasized the recruitment and selection of black students by sociological or ideological criteria, disdaining “conventional” or “academic” standards.

I was not the only black on campus who was never consulted about any of this. A black assistant dean named Pearl Lucas was also not consulted. Her efforts to become involved in these decisions were repeatedly rebuffed and resisted, though she did eventually get a foot in the door. Her views and mine were well known to some members of the in-group, and obviously were not welcome. However, at my request, I was given access to some files that indicated that the average black student at Cornell had test scores significantly above the national average for all students—and considerably below the average for Cornell students.

About half of the black students were on academic probation. They were not “unqualified” by any means. But they were mismatched with the other students at Cornell. At most other American colleges and universities, they would have been prospects for the dean’s list. As it was, they were under great academic pressure and had serious social adjustments to make in an environment essentially geared to a very different kind of student.

It was not that Cornell necessarily covered so much more difficult material than other institutions, though it no doubt did so to some extent. It was the speed with which we covered whatever we did cover that played a large role in leaving those students falling behind. The amount of reading assigned, the amount of verbal facility and mathematical preparation presupposed, the quickness with which explanations were expected to be understood without much elaboration—all these were geared to a student body which, in the liberal arts college, was within the top 5 percent in the nation.

I caught a revealing glimpse of the agonizing experience that Cornell was to many black students when I attended a meeting of the Afro-American Society. Listening to an impassioned speech by one of the leading militant figures in the organization, I could sense that he was going through a personal hell at Cornell. A proud young man, he faced a crushing load of work in a difficult subject, with humiliatingly poor results. [ . . . ]

His personal plagues were fused in his mind into a general, worldwide political and economic vision of white oppression, black “traitors,” and an evangelical mission to set all this right. He was a complex individual—intelligent but under-educated, naturally charming but calculatingly vicious, shy but arrogant, blunt but devious. With an adequate education behind him, he undoubtedly could have mastered the work at Cornell, and even without an adequate education he could probably have done well at a less demanding institution. As it was, he found Cornell a sour experience, he was the focal point of much turmoil on campus, and ultimately he left the university in disgust without getting a degree.


Sowell, unlike so many of his critics and their progressive collaborators, actually gave a damn about the unintended ills that befell the so-called beneficiaries of affirmative action.
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kbp

So now the entire nation has lowered the bar ...and we're led from behind.
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Bill Anderson
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When I talked to someone at the University of Virginia in early 1995 about pursuing a Ph.D. in economics, she asked me how I scored in the quantitative section of the GRE. After I told her, there was silence on the phone, and then she said: "Some of our students score 800." She then told me that my scores and my background were good enough for admission, but I knew that it would be a real struggle for me, and it would be quite doubtful that I'd even be funded, and not being funded in a Ph.D. program is a kiss of death.

I went to Auburn, which had a rigorous program, but was one in which people like me who could do calculus but struggled with turning all papers into complex mathematical models still could do well. Had I gone to UVA, I would have been a classic mismatch and I doubt I would have succeeded. Instead, I got my degree at Auburn and have had a good career since then.

One of the reasons we don't have as many black engineers and black doctors and black scientists as we might want to see is that many of these bright kids are recruited to places like Duke and Harvard, and then find that they are over their heads, so they migrate to easier majors. Had they gone to lower-rated places, they likely would have done well and could have pursued their first choice of professions.

Unfortunately, the "prestigious" colleges and universities are more interested in their own PR than the welfare of their students.

:bill:
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LTC8K6
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Assistant to The Devil Himself
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/12/trump-piles-on-scalia-supports-racial-preferences.php

Trump piles on Scalia; supports racial preferences
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Quasimodo

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Unfortunately, the "prestigious" colleges and universities are more interested in their own PR than the welfare of their students.


You can say that again (so I just did...)

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