Affirmative action on a high school level

[skreidle]

So, the current admissions procedures for my magnet high school, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, is under attack again. The initial admissions procedure of an SAT-style entrance exam weighted with GPA culls the application pool from about 2500 annually to 800; those 800 applications are then compared--courses, extracurriculars, essay, etc.--to select the final 400 students for the freshman body. The "problem" arises when this race-blind process results in an almost entirely white and Asian student body, with low numbers of minorities represented.

The kneejerk reaction to this is modify the admissions process to artificially boost the numbers of minorities, "increasing diversity." The problem with this is, as iriantuu succinctly put it:

Iriantuu (12:21:34): There's nothing illegal or immoral about jefferson. ITS VERY CLEAR THAT GOOD SCORES GET YOU IN.
Iriantuu (12:22:50): I'd be all for dismantling jefferson if someone could demonstrate that it's part of an institutional problem.
Iriantuu (12:23:09): But as best I can tell, the terrible conditions of schools in low-income and predominantly black areas has nothing to do wtih jefferson

A fellow TJ graduate, Ryan Comes, has written a letter to the school board regarding the commission's report, raising several concerns before the board votes on the issue.

The comission's report, as well as a partial history of the issue, can be found here. (Does anyone else see anything questionable about the contradiction between "Increase Diversity; Read all applications including biographical information!" and "Don't change admissions standards and criteria"?)

Ryan's letter can be found here.

The post to tjpeople, including information on contacting Ryan and supporting his efforts, can be found here.

A survey on the issue, noticeable biased in favor of the change, with a comment box, can be found here.

My comment to the survey was as follows:
The educational problems resulting in TJ's non-diverse population lie in a faulty primary education system in the U.S., not in race-blind high school admissions. Artificially "increasing diversity" will result in a decrease in the quality of a TJ education, and an increase in students not properly equipped by their educational history to handle TJ's rigor.

More from iriantuu:

Iriantuu (12:43:35): Granted it's not fair and such, but people with low test scores are statistically less likely to do well at JEfferson.
Iriantuu (12:44:09): Personally I'd leave jefferson the same and use it's application and acceptance demographics as indicators as to how the state is doing with its schools.
Iriantuu (12:44:18): Not changing it to try and make the state look artificially better.

As an aside, I feel that No Child Left Behind is likewise off-target, though with similarly misguided good intentions, neglecting the positive outliers in favor of standardization.

Comments

[weyakin.livejournal.com]

instead of targeting the already good schools, they should work on fixing the schools with problems...
in the end, it's always the fuck-ups in the grand system that are the root of the problem, not the individual places and people

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

But that's expensive! And hard!

[weyakin.livejournal.com]

wouldn't be so expensive if the government didn't spend so much money on military and prison spending... perhaps if they put more money into education in the first place, the prison spending at least, could be cut quite a bit

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem, though, is that it's not just funding but technique at issue. Clearly, standardized tests--and particularly test preparation for them--are insufficient, but they're far and away the easiest solution on a widespread scale. There have been many reports of small-scale success from more independent techniques by creative teachers, but those are hard to teach to the teachers, and harder still to implement--but more funding would certainly help.

[weyakin.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know..I suck at standardized testing.. I got a 1090 on my SAT's, which isn't horrible, but certainly isn't fantastic either...but I graduated college with about a 3.7 gpa.. those tests don't cover all types of people from all backgrounds... but if they did have more funding, they would be able to get the supplies and training they need to teach the teachers more creative learning.. though, not all teachers will be good at it, but i've seen a lot of pretty good teachers who I'm sure would have no problem with it. The money is just the first step in a long building process. But every little bit counts.

[inkyblue2.livejournal.com]

Affirmative action is weird. I would entirely support keeping the existing, race-blind procedure in place at TJ, but there are other situations (e.g. medical school) where the rationale is less clear. On the one hand, it is important to keep the merit in merit-based admission, but on the other hand, there are an overwhelming number of qualified applicants, and it is in patients' interests to have doctors available from similar ethnic backgrounds to their own. My opinion on the TJ matter swings the other way because "nerds" are selected for their brains and brains alone - to the exclusion of many other qualities more relevant than race - so race seems to be somewhat of a non-issue in the resulting population.

As an aside, one of the issues which bothers me most about affirmative action seldom seems to get much attention. When someone with lower academic suitability is admitted based on some other, normalizing rationale, their lower academic performance is going to stick out in the resulting student environment like a sore thumb. In other words, if Martian-Americans get a bonus weighting factor of 10% to their composite admission test scores in order to balance out the numbers, then the incoming class is going to include a bunch of smart non-Martians and a bunch of Martian-American students who are on average 10% less capable than the other students! So let's see... I'm a white kid going to a school with a "balanced" population, and I notice that the Martian-Americans sure seem 10% dumber than everyone else. Tell me again how this is supposed to be a normalizing force?

[absolutliz.livejournal.com]

I agree with Jon regarding TJ...tho he has an interesting point about medical school (although I would rather have a top of the line doctor, regardless whether or not they shared my race).

[iriantuu.livejournal.com]

Although I'm a strong supporter of affirmative action, I agree with many of the thoughts you posted. The way most of these institutions implement it, it doesn't turn out to reflect the original intention of affirmation action anyway. The concept of affirmative action was never intended to require that test, performance, or admissions be altered for certain classes of people. And, obviously in many of our opinions, that would be especially inappropriate for TJ.

My experience working on issues of affirmative action at Virginia Tech and within other areas strongly suggests to me that much can be accomplished through outreach programs. The problem is never that there are no qualified Black or Hispanic kids out there, but that they do not apply for a variety of reasons. It's not easy, but it's possible to make TJ more appealing to them without compromising it's fundamental mission.

In another time and place, I might consider the notion that the very idea of TJ is an inappropriate elitist one. But given how much the school system sucks in general, I really can't - I really hope we see the day when all of our schools are better than TJ is (or was, for us alumni).

Okey enough drunken rambling.