Comment by orky56 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by orky56 | Hacker News Reader

We are looking at the problem all wrong.

College Board, a for-profit private corporation, is the company responsible for administering the SAT/ACT which is essentially a college entrance exam. Its cost is non-negligible for a low income student and it can be prepared for with classes that once again have a cost that is non-negligible.

As the article states, colleges also have a profit motive and want to maximize their revenue. They are not incentivized to admit high-performing, low income students when they have a low probability of having their families donate prior to admission and just as likely have a low probability to donate after graduation. Remember that upward mobility is not just a factor of alma mater but also your network of high worth individuals that allows you to have the disposable income to donate.

So it's money all the way down. We can keep kicking the can further down the road and blame the next party. However I think it's worth stopping this issue with the employer. Outside of credit risk, the income of a potential employee is irrelevant if that individual is capable of handling the responsibilities of the position.

Yes, alma mater is a strong indicator of success and capability. However so is self-directed learning, examples of big fish in the small pond, etc. We need to further democratize free/low-cost education by investing in that infrastructure and content at the community level. Most importantly, we need to remove the stigma of not having a shiny diploma.

Employers need to also invest beyond the current employee and into communities to get these potential stars out of the vicious cycle of inequality.

> Its cost is non-negligible for a low income student

They have fee waivers for low-income students, which cover the cost of 2 SAT sittings and up to 6 subject tests. https://blog.collegeboard.org/guide-to-sat-fee-waivers

edit: Meh, in retrospect this comment was lazy and I don't feel like having it around for the rest of eternity.

Surely there must be some sort of test to measure applicants, though?

Higher socioeconomic classes inherently have benefits, like better informed parents, and friends who have better informed parents. This will show through any test, and it's just a fact of life since everyone isn't equal.

I don't see changing a test to be a solution. If the problem is not having well equipped parents and network, then the solution has to attack that issue. Which of course is very difficult and spans over decades as it would take generations to change.

Thats true, but there's no good way to just 'fix' it all.

However, don't make the test expensive. Basically, make it economically equal to as great a degree as possible. Some will still be disadvantaged of course, but I think at some point that's reality, the fact is everyone is not equal. If everyone is treated equal though, then at least those with value can rise themselves to the top regardless of other circumstance.

I agree with that, I think a British style system would be far more equitable than the College Board nonsense America has.

"Standardized tests helped talented immigrants and minorities breach the elite’s ivy-covered bunkers."

It's a shame that you work for an education startup and you don't even bother reading the articles you are posting.

The article clearly states, that the standardized tests made things more egalitarian.

If you truly are interested in the truth and not merely trying to profit on persecuting people on ideological grounds, perhaps you might want to point to where the flaws in the tests lie, something the article fails to mention.

They claim that minority students increased representation in gifted programs after increased testing and linked to a paper.

They forgot to mention that the paper says IQ cutoffs were 130 for non-disadvantaged students vs 115 for poor/minority.

The paper then goes on to say, with lower ovjective standards, the groups pass the subjective bar at equal rates.

The subjective bar being applied by a system so motivated to achieve proportional representation they altered cutoffs.

I believe there’s a business opportunity here predicated on the idea that the SAT/ACT tests almost exclusively exist because teacher designed and administered assessments are not trustable. Create a system that supports teachers in creating, administrating and scoring trustable assessments. Have this system judge the reliability of assessment questions in a manner similar to the College Board’s internal auditing of test item quality. The outcome would be more reliable assessment results within our schools (which increases the baseline quality of that education) and allows for the benchmarking/sorting of students for higher education and employment.

The results would not be reliable immediately, but over time such a system would simultaneously refocus the billions spent on standardized testing into more productive educational endeavors while also supporting educational improvement. As a high school level teacher, standardized testing data is useless for improving my instruction and improving student outcomes. We should close the gap between these redundant assessment regimes, reduce the negative impacts associated with how we administer standardized assessments, and save school districts money.

Since it does in fact have racist origins, maybe a campaign could be organized to make more aware of this? seems like the kind of thing that pretty much everyone except racists would be for, and so its just a matter of getting the word spread, once it is, outrage organically will emerge, and from that hopefully change.

> seems like the kind of thing that pretty much everyone except racists would be for

Careful: labelling people, no true Scotsman style, is not a great way to push an argument. And it's clear that there is a real problem that needs to be solved (assessing students), so however poor the SAT is at doing this, you're going to have to provide something that can replace it.

Please enlighten us on what is racist about the test. Then rational people will listen to you. Either it's scientifically correct and thus egalitarian since it'll deal with everyone objectively or it's flawed.

The test is in fact meant to discriminate between people, in a purely mathematical sense between those clever enough and those who are not.

So unless you can pinpoint where the methodology is flawed, I would recommend you to go and look up the story of "the boy who cried wolf", before running around and accusing everybody you don't agree with for hate-crime.

Since it does in fact have racist origins

The article doesn't say that. The Army test before it seems to fit that description, but my reading says what would become the SAT was simply to keep stupid people out. The fact that the test's author thought "stupid people" would consist primarily of non-Nordic not-white-folk not withstanding, the test is what brought college admissions equality, or at least more of it, to minorities and immigrants.

seems like the kind of thing that pretty much everyone except racists would be for

Even if it were admittedly design to keep out minorities, the fact that it backfired and did the exact opposite is enough for me to support such a test. So you're calling me a racist? Can't we just have an honest discussion?

College board is non profit.

> Employers need to also invest beyond the current employee and into communities to get these potential stars out of the vicious cycle of inequality.

Why bother when you have H1Bs?

Companies have no moral obligation to help the citizens over any other human being, just to deliver profit to shareholders.

So while I would like to see this happen, I don't see how it can.

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