Another thing about fluid and crystallized intelligence is that most tests (of any kind, including in school) measure crystallized intelligence, as it relates to the subject being tested. Some tests attempt to measure fluid intelligence with more unusual problems (the kind of things where students failing the test complain that “the test is not like the book or homework problems”), but the more the test taker has studied or prepared for the test, the more the test becomes a measure of crystallized (versus fluid) intelligence for that test taker, since it is more likely that any given problem will be one to be recalled from known information from studying or preparation, rather than something entirely new to solve.
Of course it was true. Who said otherwise?
My point is that it is irrelevant in this context. To put it simply, if the goal of the test was to be racist against anyone who is not white, obviously the SHSAT has not succeeded, given that another non-white group now dominates the scoring. That they have made no attempt to change the test despite this is a pretty good indication that the test is not racially biased.
Jose Vilson knew this when he wrote the eugenics section, but did so anyway. It is kind of like saying that the Democratic party supported slavery and the KKK (both were true, historically). He attempted to create an emotional link between two disparate things, hoping nobody would notice that it was ridiculous. Sorry Jose, people notice.
Elsewhere the article says that “initiatives may provide free resources for students to improve their scores. But the history of schooling suggests this will only push the already privileged to seek more advantages.” Note that this is very vaguely described on purpose, hoping that the reader will assume that the students that his Hispanic students will compete against will be wealthy white students, rather than the reality of mostly poor Chinese children whose parents may own a laundromat, or a small shop. He was hoping people wouldn’t notice. Sorry Jose, people notice.
It is clear from reviewing Jose’s profile that he has much more energy and talent than a typical middle school teacher. A great teacher can push their kids to do incredible things. Within 20 miles of us, there is a middle school teacher whose school had dominated the state MathCounts competition so much that he went to nationals every year, and at least one of his students became National MathCounts champion. Then one year, our school beat his to go to nationals! We were thrilled, and he was shocked. The next year, his team crushed ours, and everyone else’s. His team dramatically improved, ours didn’t. His one loss was a wakeup call, and he made sure that nobody was going to beat his team again, or even get close.
Jose Vilson clearly has the same energy. If he desired, he could no doubt be the person who got many of his kids into Stuy, becoming the shining beacon that his kids can succeed competing against anybody, if given the proper resources and guidance. Instead he simply says that his students understand concepts better than he did at their age, completely ignoring whether or not they are among the best in New York City. And of course, he plays the victim in all this, pointing to the SHSAT as the source of all evil, rather than looking at himself in the mirror and not evaluating if he could have been the difference in their lives.
If you sense anger in this post, it is because it is there. Jose is failing two sets of communities in his post. He is failing the Asian communities by attacking them through the SHSAT while deliberately failing to identify them in the article. I find that extremely racist.
And he is failing his own community, be encouraging the mantle of victimhood, rather than one of drive and self-accomplishment. There is nothing more self-defeating long term than that.
We could go onto a major debate about the effectiveness of IQ testing, but I think that will take this thread further off track. The only point I was trying to make there was that just because something was once misused to justify evil, does not mean that all applications of it are inherently evil and to be automatically condemned in the future.
@hebegebe wrote:
I remember listening to NPR last year on this same topic (we can now expect this story to crop up like crocuses every spring) and the interviewer implied the same thing - something about the privileged “gaming the system”. We are supposed to believe these are wealthy upper east and west siders shelling out thousands of dollars for test prep to go to Stuy. Yeah,right. To acknowledge that many of these students are not children of privilege and that many come from families who qualify for free lunches would undermine the narrative about how income inequality and inherent biases in tests (math, of all things) are the primary causes of poor academic outcomes.
So the low SES immigrant Asian parents are fully aware of Stuy and the like and started prepping their kids at an early age, and the same low SES black parents need to be made aware of the schools and have to be urged to encourage their kids to prep. It could be due to cultural differences, but this explanation seems to be too simplistic to me.
The SHSAT has made numerous test changes in recent years, although I don’t think those changes are primarily racially motivated. As you noted, the changes also don’t appear to have had much impact on racial diversity. For example, some of the SHSAT changes in the past 2 years are below.
–Replace logic type questions with 7th grade common core language arts questions (revising/editing sentences)
–Change revising/editing from 20 questions to ~10.
–Add a poem
–Add literary prose texts
–Increase test time to 3 hours, with more questions
–Switch from 5 to 4 multiple choice questions’
–Add some grid in math instead of multiple choice
It’s possible that some aspects of the tests do intentionally give preference to certain groups. For example, I expect some immigrant families struggle with traditional selective HS admissions due to speaking English as a 2nd language. We see this effect on other standardized tests. On the GRE, students from China average ~2 SDs higher scores than students from the US on the quantitative section (much higher than Asian students from US); but average lower scores than students from the US on the other sections. If one wanted to create a test that provided good options for immigrant families that speak English as a second language; then one option would be to make a test where that >2 SD higher than average quant section could make up for mediocre scores on the other sections… exactly what the unique SHSAT weighting system does. I don’t know if this is one of the reasons for the SHSAT structure, largely because the lack of transparency about what the goals of the SHSAT test structure are and the goals making the admission system depend almost entirely on SHSAT score.
As I touched on earlier in the thread, I think there should be more transparency about what are the goals of the test and in general the goals of the almost entirely test-based HS admission system. For example, do they want to select for who students who are best academically prepared to be successful at Stuy/Bronx Science/Brooklyn Tech/…? Students who are most likely to be successful as measured by GPA? Students who are most likely to be successful beyond HS? Students who are most deserving? Creating an option for great kids who are unlikely to be admitted to other selective HS/private HS options? Creating a system that the public believes is fair and objective? Keeping costs low? Following tradition?
Once objective are established, they should review how well those objectives are met through analysis – probably some combination of regression analysis or longitudinal studies, depending on what the objectives are. Other major standardized tests do this, such as the SAT regularly publishing studies on how well SAT score predicts first year college GPA. These analysis should also compare to other practical alternatives, such looking at using controls of subscores instead of just combined score, as well as things like GPA, NYS Regents exam scores (or whatever standardized subject test 7th graders take), some metric corresponding to rigor, race, gender, and SES. This would confirm whether the unique weighting system is helping or hurting predict desired objectives. It would confirm whether the SHSAT is a better predictor than standardized subject tests; whether the scores add much beyond GPA alone; whether GPA adds much to scores alone, whether scores add much beyond predictions based on race, gender, and SES; etc. The little information that is available suggests some problems with the SHSAT, including underpredicting women and relatively poor prediction of HS grades.
I applaud your attention to detail. Yes, I was only discussing changes meant to affect racial outcome.
I have no problem with people making constructive changes to the SHSAT to fix areas of deficiency. Or even combining that with something that others have suggested, like a minimum GPA cutoff. And a possible way to minimize rewarding extreme outliers on one section would be to make the final score the product of the two sections, and determining cutoffs based upon the product (which rewards students that are equally good in each section). All those things are fine with me because the goal is still the same: Select the best students for the exam schools.
What Vilson is doing is different. He is attacking the SHSAT because he doesn’t like the outcomes. Adjustments to make the test better would give him less of an excuse to play the victim.
@Data10 I don’t know if you realize it, but the study you linked is not based on 4 years of high school GPA; it only includes 9th grade, which is called FGPA (freshman GPA) in the study. I’m not at all surprised that girls get better grades than boys in 9th grade.
I also don’t understand your point about Hunter Elementary. (Actually it’s closer to 20% of the high school ENTERING class.) Yes, the test does cost $350, but if you are low income, foster child, etc., you can get the fee reduced. https://www.hunterschools.org/elementary-school/admissions/reduced-fee Truth is that usually the elementary school has a higher percentage of Hispanic and Black students than the high school does.
The demographics of Manhattan are a bit different than the City as a whole, but this wouldn’t make Hunter more Asian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Manhattan VS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City
The biggest difference between Manhattan and the rest of the City is in the percentage of whites.
I get annoyed at articles like Tilson’s. I don’t think any middle school teacher in a regular NYC middle school–in any neighborhood–has that many “brilliant” students. And if Tilson feels so bad about his “brilliant” students not getting into the sci highs then maybe he should do a better job of teaching and motivating them himself. There’s nothing to prevent him from doing so. Encourage them to register for the test, give them some practice tests in 7th grade, when they’ve got more time to prepare, run study sessions for them.
And again, not every African-American or Hispanic kid–or their parents–WANTS to go to Stuy or Bronx Science or even Tech–though Tech is usually seen as more desirable. African-American kids who live in the Bronx may PREFER going to the Macy Program at DeWitt Clinton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeWitt_Clinton_High_School (Look under Organization --houses/ learning communities. That’s ESPECIALLY true for the kids who are also “into” sports.
As a NYC resident–though I didn’t grow up here–I get a bit annoyed when people who live in suburbia complain about how segregated the City schools are. Yes, they are, but a lot less segregated than many suburban districts are. And you know kids who are in the top tier of high schools like DeWitt Clinton still get into Ivies. And for the others, CUNY offers at least one reasonably priced 4 year college in every borough PLUS community colleges. (Borough of Manhattan Community College has more than 30,000 students.)
My grandchildren live in a different major city and how I wish the public schools there had as many wonderful programs as NYC does
Again, the weakest link in NYC public schools is the middle schools. Fix those instead of changing admissions standards for the test schools.
The point is that a single, high-stakes test as a point of entry is in itself discriminatory in the context of a cram school culture. It is imposing a set of values that a narrow subset of the community subscribes to as a barrier to entry to others who might not worship at the altar of the divine test score.
As a high school, Stuyvesant has a very big, very serious, cheating problem. There has been a lot of press about this – 71 students were implicated in a cheating ring for the state regents exam in 2012, and a more recent student survey has shown that 83% of Stuyvesant students admitted to cheating, with 97% of high school juniors acknowledging cheating, and 56% of freshman having already cheated during their first semester. (Don’t take my word for it – just Google - I get 186,000 hits on the phrase, “cheating at stuyvesant high school”).
Placing a high value on grades and test scores creates incentives to cheat. Children get the message that their value and self-worth is tied to the score that they can achieve on a particular exam.
I’m not saying that sending one’s children to cram school is itself cheating – just that it conveys the message, over and over again, that the all-important goal is a numerical test score – rather than valuing learning for the sake of learning. , or providing avenues for other ways for students to demonstrate their intellect and creativity.
But I do think that the test-only path to admission for Stuy is part of what creates the cheating culture once the students are admitted. Students who are motivated by their own intellectual curiosity or a sense of pride in their own accomplishments don’t benefit from cheating – it takes the fun and enjoyment out of learning. But many of those students are shut out, because they also are also less likely to be highly motivated to study intensively for the test. So they are highly capable students who can score very well on the exam without prep-- but not at the same level as they would score if they did spend extensive time practicing or being coached for the test.
The problem is that the tests weren’t designed with the cram school model in mind – and the practice of intense prep by a small segment of the community has the effect of raising the bar in a way that penalizes families who do not buy into that mentality. It turns a test that may have been designed as a fair way to measure relative levels of achievement and ability among 8th and 9th graders into a test that measures commitment to studying for the test. So that means a whole segment of very gifted and capable students are excluded not because they lack ability, but because they are focusing their energies on something other than prepping for a particular test. Not because the students aren’t capable, but because the bar has been set to an artificially high level by intense-prep culture. A broader set of admission criteria could mitigate against this problem – but a one-test only system only magnifies the problem.
To elaborate a bit on what @jonri had to say regarding Hunter, the makeup at H has changed quite a bit over the last hundred years. From predominantly western european/christian to eastern european/jewish to east asian.
None of this was because anyone decided that they needed more or less of a particular group, it was because the individual students who scored highest on the test changed over time.
Having had two sons at Hunter High, I’d argue that the common denominator wasn’t race or ethnicity, but that all the kids had parents who were intensely invested in their children’s academic success. All the parents - regardless of background - sounded the same. They didn’t talk about their vacations, their careers, their wealth (or lack thereof). They spoke about their children’s school work, academic awards, how to find internships, what additional off campus academic programs were available/advisable in NYC, ED v EA v RD for college admissions, when and which SAT subject tests, etc.
Work hard, study hard, get in. Don’t, and you won’t.
The study lists information about GPA in each of the 4 years separately, as well as cumulative GPA. The test predictive ability dropped off quickly with each year, making the SHSAT most predictive for 9th grade GPA and least predictive for 12th grade GPA. The study emphasized first year GPA (FGPA) likely because that is the year that the test is supposed to predict best and the year when students take more similar courses, much like how studies published by the CollegeBoard on SAT validity emphasize first year college GPA, rather than senior year college GPA. Whether that FGPA or cumulative GPA is the most relevant metric depends on what the objectives of the test are, which have not been defined.
The study doesn’t specify gender differences for 12th grade GPA, but it does mention that SHSAT explained less than 2% of variance in 12th grade GPA among Stuy students, so the bigger issue is likely lack of predictive ability than underpredicting women. With ~90% of the lower <80% FGPA kids being male, that has implications on getting put on a lower rigor track since Stuy requires students to have at least a 92% GPA to take most of their AP level classes. The predominantly male kids who get a low GPA during freshman year are unlikely to be able to pull their GPA up high enough to take most of the AP classes as an upperclassmen, so 12th grade GPA would be comparing women who are typical taking more rigorous classes to males who are often taking less rigorous classes – not as meaningful a comparison. That said, I see no reason to assume the GPA disparity in 9th grade disappears in 12th grade.
I haven’t posted about Hunter Elementary, so I’m guessing this is directed at someone else.
My apologies @Data10 ; it was @SlowPop (post #114)
BTW, your study does show that females are underrepresented in the toughest STEM AP classes at Stuy, e.g., Comp Sci, Physics C and Comp Sci…Not being a stats person I’m not sure what that means, but I noticed it.
The reasons why few women take CS classes in the HS level are complex, multifaceted ,and have been well discussed recently on this forum in the thread at http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2126878-computer-programming-once-had-much-better-gender-balance-than-it-does-today-what-went-wrong-p1.html . It goes far beyond SHSAT score. The fields in which women are least represented among college majors include include CS, Physics, and more techy sub-fields of engineering (electrical, mechanical, aeronautical). AP Physics is currently one of the Stuy classes that requires a 92% cumulative GPA to take which would be a difficult threshold for lower FGPA males to achieve. However, I’m not sure during what year the min GPA requirement was implemented. In any case, if you compare the overall % female (most students are male) to the overall % female taking AP classes; you’ll see that females are significantly more likely to take AP classes than males.
Just a feel good story about a Hispanic kid who got in. His parents did pay $5,000 for Kweller Prep. https://nypost.com/2019/03/23/teen-gets-into-stuyvesant-after-being-told-its-practically-impossible/
Exactly, @calmom . I completely agree. I wonder how many thougtful, creative, intellectual students are missed by a test that rewards cramming.
I think people are vastly overestimating the benefits of extreme test preparation, aka cramming. Moderate test preparation helps significantly, in terms of learning the material, exam format, and timing. After that point, spending even 10x that amount of time yields only modest improvements. Your real limit on high ceiling tests is your talent in the area being tested, not how much time you spend on it.
Perhaps 90 percent of those cramming are wasting their time. Many would have cleared without cramming, and many others won’t despite the cramming. It helps a tiny fraction clear who otherwise would not have.
There is a chance that some of these schools offer not just cramming and test prep but math and language classes and enrichment to compensate for abysmal US curriculum. That can make a difference and high test scores will be a byproduct of this learning.
Yes, it takes hard work to be rewarded with a chance at an education that will help your creative and intellectual development. You can’t sit back and wait for someone to discover your hidden genius.
Public K-12 education is a right, not a privilege. A good public school system should be providing appropriate avenues and opportunities for all its enrolled gifted students-- not creating barriers for them. (Access to services for gifted students is unfortunately not a federally guaranteed right – but it ought to be. 38 states have laws on the book mandating services for gifted education – unfortunately, New York is not one of them).
I don’t see a story about a kid whose immigrant parents scraped up $5000 for test prep as being a “feel good” story — I find it depressing that parents are routinely paying that sum of money to gain entrance to a public high school. Though I note from the article cited in post #173 that the kid had attended a private K-8 school – so apparently his parents were generally able to pay for private education.
But what about the kids whose only options all along have been the NYC public schools? Who are these exam schools serving?
And these ARE kids – children and very young teenagers who are still growing & developing, emotionally & physically as well as intellectually.
You have to prove yourself, not just claim to be so much more creative than people who work hard, such that you don’t need to work hard.