"Lot's of unanswered questions."

I think there were key numbers showing discrimination on the basis of race on page 2 of the article:

"[Researchers] found what looks like different standards for different racial groups. They calculated that Asian-Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores of 1550 to have the same chance of being accepted at a top private university as whites who scored 1410 and African-Americans who got 1100. Whites were three times, Hispanics six times, and blacks more than 15 times as likely to be accepted at a US university as Asian-Americans."

"Unanswered questions" refered to the one case of the asian student. At any rate, I don't believe that SAT should be a strong factor for admission. It's too correlated to family income.


"Who gets to set the standard for "skill.""

Admissions departments base much of their acceptance decisions on SAT scores because their own records and the scientific community consider the scores to be highly predictive of students' grades and graduation rates once they enroll.



Not even the College Board, who administers the SAT, makes this claim. At best they say that it can be a moderate to strong predictor of first year GPA, depending on the section.

And not to be pedantic, but these studies are statistical, not scientific. There is no "scientific consensus" on SAT scores and performance. In fact, this is a controversial topic. So much so, that some Universities/colleges have even dropped the SAT as a factor in admission entirely.

@longde: "Lot's of unanswered questions."

I think there were key numbers showing discrimination on the basis of race on page 2 of the article:

"[Researchers] found what looks like different standards for different racial groups. They calculated that Asian-Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores of 1550 to have the same chance of being accepted at a top private university as whites who scored 1410 and African-Americans who got 1100. Whites were three times, Hispanics six times, and blacks more than 15 times as likely to be accepted at a US university as Asian-Americans."

@longde: "Who gets to set the standard for "skill.""

Admissions departments base much of their acceptance decisions on SAT scores because their own records and the scientific community consider the scores to be highly predictive of students' grades and graduation rates once they enroll.

Here's Schwarzenegger's proposed budget from 07-08:

Income:
44.8% Personal Income tax (progressive)
27.3% Sales tax (flat)
9.3% Other
8.5% Corporation tax (?)
4.3% Motor Vehicle fees (regressive)
2.8% Highway Users taxes (regressive)
0.9% Tobacco tax (regressive)
0.3% Liquor tax (regressive)
1.8% Insurance tax (regressive)

Spending:
31.5% Education
26.6% Health & Human Services
10.4% Higher Education
8.4% Business, Transportation, & Housing
7% Corrections and Rehabilitation (Mostly to imprison nonviolent drug-possession offenders)
5.9% General Government
4.2% Executive, Judicial, Legislative
3.9% Resources
1% Environmental Protection
1% State and Consumer Services
0.3% Labor & Workforce Development

http://2007-08.archives.ebudget.ca.gov/BudgetSummary/SUM/1249561.html

Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:
South Carolina -50th
North Carolina -49th
Georgia -48th
Texas -47th
............Virginia -44th
If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country

Are you sick of highly paid teachers?
by Meredith Menden on Friday, February 18, 2011 at 3:32pm

Are you sick of highly paid teachers?

Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or10 months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - babysit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage.



That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan-- that equals 6 1/2 hours).



Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day...maybe 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day.

However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET'S SEE....

That's $585 X 180= $105,300

per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).



What about those special

education teachers and the ones with Master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an

hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute -- there's

something wrong here! There sure is!

The average teacher's salary

(nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days

= $277.77/per day/30

students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student--a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL!!!!



Make a teacher smile; repost this to show appreciation for all educators.



Update: I'm glad that many people have shown their support for teachers by reposting this note, but I am not the original author. I received this as an anonymous chain letter email, and I wanted to share it to support the public workers of Wisconsin.

What happens if we bring a scientist's perspective to the claim that the governor makes decisions with ethnic bias?

Generally with these things, when you adjust for 1. the smaller size of a sub-culture and 2. the average SAT scores of a sub-culture relative to other sub-cultures, the proportion of people hired for jobs is in line with the statistical expectations.

For these kinds of things, SAT scores are more reliable than metrics like educational attainment because they're a more direct measure of cognitive ability.

In summary, there is a gap in average SAT scores at all cross-sections of parents' socioeconomic status. Environmental factors give us reasonable doubt that this is due to any heritable difference, but one cannot yet prove that environmental factors are responsible for the whole gap.

The moralistic fallacy is the inverse of the naturalistic fallacy. It is a leap from "what ought to be" to "what is". It is admirable to have moral convictions that it is right to treat all people equally and fairly. But if these moral convictions in any way influence your interpretation of the available evidence, you're making the moralistic fallacy.

In reply to this comment by dgandhi:
On your list of "racisms" I only come anywhere near the calling Christians Morons one, but I assure you that I reserve that for morons who happen to be Christians. While I do agree that we all have racism "issues" I find that they are more often systemic, rather then interpersonal.

Since I will be assumed to be more competent then somebody else because I am white, or male, or from an upper middle-class family I find the unaknowledged affirmative action of racism a much more prevalent form of racism then crass bigotry, which you seem to think everyone is prone to.

GH: I don't know if I'm the token vegan who needs to respond to your jab, but allow me to assure you that a cow who has not had her horns snipped would happily impale you, or a wolf any day of the week. I say this as somebody who was once charged by a horned overprotective momma cow, I would not mess with her.

P.S. since GH wants to eat others on the basis of intelligence how about everybody post your IQ/SAT scores so we know who to roast over the spit next
IQ: 135.

I have no research to back this up, but I do believe that living in a racist culture rubs off on EVERYONE, even smart, compassionate people like you, dgandhi (and Smibbo). I'm talking about subtle, internalized, culturally acceptable racism that you might not even recognize as racism if it were pointed out to you.

Take the NAACP for instance. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an organization dedicated to fighting racism, uses the racist term 'colored' in its name. The word was culturally acceptable at the time, but that doesn't make the implication that black people are 'colored' people any less offensive.

This is internalized racism, and I'd wager that even an intelligent, forward thinking person like you has internalized racism/sexism/classism locked away somewhere in your brain.

It doesn't make us bad people, we are a product of our time.

Remain vigilant.

Just wanted to clarify some things you seem to be ignorant about. If a cow had horns it would not "happily impale" anyone. Cows are herbivores and have a lot of natural predators. It's in their nature not to seek confrontation with other animals. Most cows need to be dehorned anyway because the horns grow into the skull and eventually kill the animal prematurely.

Chances are that your friend who was once charged was doing something to the calf that seemed threating to the mother. After calves are weened mothers become significantly less protective. In fact unless a cow has a young calf I've never seen one become aggressive or defend itself from an attack. I say this because I've worked on a dairy farm since I was 5 and been a ranch hand for close to 5 years.

Now having said that I hope you'll realize that most the comments I make on this site are satirical in nature and have an exaggerated and dry sense of humor. And if cannibalism wasn't frowned upon in most societies that might not be a bad idea.

In reply to this comment by dgandhi:
On your list of "racisms" I only come anywhere near the calling Christians Morons one, but I assure you that I reserve that for morons who happen to be Christians. While I do agree that we all have racism "issues" I find that they are more often systemic, rather then interpersonal.

Since I will be assumed to be more competent then somebody else because I am white, or male, or from an upper middle-class family I find the unaknowledged affirmative action of racism a much more prevalent form of racism then crass bigotry, which you seem to think everyone is prone to.

GH: I don't know if I'm the token vegan who needs to respond to your jab, but allow me to assure you that a cow who has not had her horns snipped would happily impale you, or a wolf any day of the week. I say this as somebody who was once charged by a horned overprotective momma cow, I would not mess with her.

P.S. since GH wants to eat others on the basis of intelligence how about everybody post your IQ/SAT scores so we know who to roast over the spit next

On your list of "racisms" I only come anywhere near the calling Christians Morons one, but I assure you that I reserve that for morons who happen to be Christians. While I do agree that we all have racism "issues" I find that they are more often systemic, rather then interpersonal.

Since I will be assumed to be more competent then somebody else because I am white, or male, or from an upper middle-class family I find the unaknowledged affirmative action of racism a much more prevalent form of racism then crass bigotry, which you seem to think everyone is prone to.

GH: I don't know if I'm the token vegan who needs to respond to your jab, but allow me to assure you that a cow who has not had her horns snipped would happily impale you, or a wolf any day of the week. I say this as somebody who was once charged by a horned overprotective momma cow, I would not mess with her.

P.S. since GH wants to eat others on the basis of intelligence how about everybody post your IQ/SAT scores so we know who to roast over the spit next

In response to your comment here (didn't want to clutter up the video's page)

And what's the maximum SAT score? 1000?
When the video was made, the maximum score was 1600 (800 verbal + 800 math). Now there's a writing section so the max is 2400. Under the old system 1000 was supposed to be the average score.

Is the SAT all that counts, or does the highschool average count as well?
Application procedures vary from university to university. High school averages (known as GPA) are an important factor for all universities (even those who typically will admit almost anyone). Most universities weigh heavily on the SAT as well (though not as much as the GPA), but some have chosen to forgo it (there's some debate over this).

More selective institutions also require essays, letters of recommendation, interviews, etc. Apparently Harvard has an acceptance rate of less than 10 percent these days. But we're talking about one of the most competitive in the country.

Are the most famous universities like Yale, MIT, Harvard, private or public universities?
All the above institutions are private. There are plenty of well reputed public universities as well. For example check out the UC system (California).

EMPIRE,

"And what's the maximum SAT score? 1000?"

1600

"Is the SAT all that counts, or does the highschool average count as well?"

Of course high school grades count. They also take into consideration extracurricular activities (sports, various organizations you were a member of, etc)

"Are the most famous universities like Yale, MIT, Harvard, private or public universities?"

Private.

For the record:

Apparently Bush had SAT scores higher than both Kerry and Bradley but lower than Gore.

That being said, Bradley, who in all likelihood would have never entered Princeton without his ability to shoot a basketball, did go on to be a Rhodes Scholar. Check out the story at Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/73787/

There is some good information on the SAT at Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT

I'm not american, so I always had some doubts about the american educational system.
How exactly is a student's application taken into account to get into a university?
And what's the maximum SAT score? 1000?
Is the SAT all that counts, or does the highschool average count as well?
Are the most famous universities like Yale, MIT, Harvard, private or public universities?