Re: Rate 5 applicants to a school; see who really gets in

[Victor Steinbok <Victor.Steinbok@VERIZON.NET>]

At 9:56 PM -0700 9/25/01, Gabie Gedlaman - AZ Standards wrote:
> You guys have to look at this fascinating webpage:
>
> <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/who/>http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/who/

And from another interview--this one with Christopher Jencks:

> [Int] Do the SAT's do a good job of predicting academic performance?
>
> [Jen] I think they really don't do a good job of predicting. They do
> a pretty poor job of predicting, but they're the best we've got.
> Well that means the people who are good at those things, high school
> grades and test taking, are going to do well in getting into good
> colleges. And other people who would do equally well in college are
> just not going to make it because we have no way of picking out the
> kid who will do well, even though his high grades weren't so great
> and even though his SAT scores weren't so great.
>
> There are lots of kids out there like that and on the average they
> won't do as well as the other ones and the ones who will, are going
> to lose out because we can't identify. They come with little tags.
> If we knew what else it was--if we could say, 'well, it's
> stick-to-itiveness or, it's getting excited by a teacher or
> something,'--then we could measure it. That would help a lot. And it
> would probably help minority kids in particular because they don't
> do well on these tests and they are put at a disadvantage by that,
> and that's even more of an issue on the job where we know that tests
> are not terribly strong predictors of job performance and we know
> that lots of other stuff counts, But we don't know how to measure
> most of the stuff except by hiring somebody and seeing how they do.
>
> [Int] Would you say it's fair to say that standardized testing has
> been harmful to Blacks and Latinos?
>
> [Jen] Yes. The standardize tests that we give I do think have been a
> handicap for Blacks and Latinos in the job market. They've allowed
> us to measure something that a Black and Latino job applicant does
> unusually badly on, and it's not that they're used deliberately just
> to exclude Blacks and Latinos, but we just don't have any ability to
> measure the other things that they would do better on. And it's
> partly because it's most of the other things that count are easier
> to fake. You know, if you say, 'well I really want somebody to be
> responsible in this job.' Well, everybody can come in and tell you
> how responsible they are, and you know, they can get 3 letters that
> say how responsible they are too, so it's really hard to screen the
> people who are responsible and separate them from the people who
> aren't, although we all know that there are big differences in that
> respect.

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