Too Much Affirmation, Too Little Action

The U.S. Supreme Court held oral arguments on two cases involving the legality of affirmative action in college admissions in October.

A decision is expected in June.

The two cases challenge the affirmative action admissions policies of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in providing preferences to Black and Hispanic applicants such that the equal protection rights of Asian American and White applicants were violated in the process.

You can gain some perspective about the plaintiff's argument when you look at the significant disparities in acceptance between Asian and Black applicants at Harvard.

The chart below prepared by the plaintiff's shows the wide disparities in admission rates between similarly qualified applicants by race/ethnicity.

For example, 56% of African Americans in the top decile in its "academic index" were accepted to Harvard compared to just 13% for Asians and 15% for Whites.

Credit: https://twitter.com/TheRabbitHole84/status/1603422765872054273

Another study of the admission policies of seven elite universities quantified the extent to which race impacted SAT scores by calculating what chances of admission would look like with all things being equal..

The study found that Blacks were effectively given a 310 point SAT bonus and Hispanics a 130 point bonus compared to Whites but that Asians were given a 140 point penalty in the admission process.

Credit: https://therabbithole84.substack.com/p/systemic-racism-in-college-campuses

The fundamental question in the affirmative action cases is whether the 14th Amendment which guarantees "any person" ... "equal protection under the laws" applies to everyone or was it just intended primarily to benefit Blacks since it was passed in the aftermath of the Civil War when the focus was clearly to remedy the wrongs of slavery in the southern states.

This is the third time the Supreme Court has considered the question of affirmative action in college admissions.

The first challenge was in the Bakke case that was decided almost 50 years ago ( in 1978) in which the Supreme Court ruled that racial quotas were in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. However, it ruled that universities could use race as a factor in furtherance of a more diverse university community.

25 years later (2003) the Supreme Court revisited the affirmative action question involving the affirmative action policies of the University of Michigan in Grutter v. Bollinger and ruled that an individualized policy that granted preference to candidates based on race that contributed to a racially diverse student body was lawful.

Interestingly, the majority opinion in that case written by Sandra Day O'Conner 20 years ago suggested that the Court did not expect racial preferences to be necessary in another 25 years.

"The Court takes the Law School at its word that it would like nothing better than to find a race-neutral admissions formula and will terminate its use of racial preferences as soon as practicable. The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today." 

The Grutter opinion was not satisfactory to many in Michigan and in 2006 an election referendum was passed by the people of the state 58%-42% amending the Michigan Constitution to ban any consideration of race or gender in college and university admissions. 

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld that state ban in a ruling in 2014.

Based on the oral arguments in the recent affirmative action cases held in October, most observers expect that affirmative action admissions policies based on race will be ruled unconstitutional.

What will be most interesting will be seeing what policies (other than race) will the Court potentially suggest are allowable if a university seeks a more diverse student body?

Will socioeconomic factors become most important?

Will universities have to limit legacy admissions to meet diversity objectives?

What effect will all of this have on the overall selectivity and quality of the student body?

You begin to understand the challenge that elite universities have in achieving a diverse student body that reflects our overall society when you look at SAT scores.

The state of Michigan requires all public high school seniors to take the SAT exam. Therefore, it provides an unusually representative score sample across a large population base.

The results for the 2022 graduation class are quite interesting.

Here is the breakdown of the scores by race and gender for 2022.

Credit: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2022/10/sat-score-distributions-in-michigan.html
Source: https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2022-michigan-sat-suite-of-assessments-annual-report.pdf

Some observations.

1. An astounding 25% of Asian students who took the test scored at least 1400 on the SAT. This would generally be those students who would have a legitimate chance at being admitted to an elite university based on academic merit.

2. On the other hand, 0% of African American in the entire state of Michigan scored at least 1400 on the SAT.

3. Only 1% of Hispanics scored 1400 or better on the SAT.

4. 39% of Blacks scored 790 or below on the SAT compared to 24% of Hispanics, 11% of Whites and just 7% of Asians.

5. 5% of males scored 1400 or better compared to only 3% of females. (See my last blog post "Can We Fool Mother Nature?" for more on the IQ differences between males and females).

This difference in SAT performance is not just isolated to Michigan.

You can see the same overall disparities in data in looking at national 2022 SAT scores.

Despite having a smaller share of the population (there are twice as many Blacks as Asians in the U,S. population), 23x the number of Asian students scored 1400 or higher on the SAT exam than did Black students.

Credit: https://twitter.com/monitoringbias/status/1615772792737202176

These facts are undeniable.

The question is what is the reason for these large difference in SAT scores?

Some argue that standardized tests are inherently biased. They are somehow racially or culturally biased.

However, if that is the case, how is it that Asians and Hispanics (many of who come from immigrant families in which English is not even the primary language) perform better than Blacks?

Is it related to the lack of two-parent households?

Is it the result of socio-economic factors?

Is it due to inferior primary and secondary schools?

What is also undeniable is that the disparity in SAT scores has not really changed in decades despite a lot of talk and billions of dollars being spent to narrow the gap.

For example, the Democrat party platform in 2000 (23 years ago) pledged that by 2004 the achievement gap between students of color and the rest of America's students should be eliminated.

Credit: https://twitter.com/monitoringbias/status/1621714167030857728

The reality is that there has been no real change over the last several decades. The only real difference is the disparity between Asian students and everybody else has just gotten larger.

Credit: https://twitter.com/monitoringbias/status/1621714169723756546

Are there any good answers to fix the achievement gap as the Democrats stated they were going to do 20 years ago?

No.

Today the only answer seems to be to ignore SAT/ACT scores altogether.

I guess the truths in the scores are too inconvenient for college administrators to have to deal with.

A recent survey indicates that 80% of U.S. bachelor-degree granting institutions will not require applicants to submit ACT or SAT exams scores in the admissions process this year.

Source: Forbes.com

Isn't that convenient?

If you have no objective measure to compare applicants it is harder for anyone to question your admission decisions.

It is also ironic in that the SAT was originally developed by Harvard to identify academically gifted boys who did not attend the Eastern boarding schools which were the traditional pipeline to the Ivy League. Harvard wanted to reach out for overlooked talent who did not have the advantages of the well-heeled prepsters but who had the raw academic potential to compete at Harvard even though they might not have had access to first-class high school education.

Of course, the only reason the SAT (or any other standardized test) should be given consideration is if it  can assist in separating the wheat from the chaff.  How do I determine which student is better prepared for college and beyond-the "A" student from the Choate School, Chillicothe, Ohio or South Central LA?  Can it reliably predict college success?

Most studies still indicate the SAT (or ACT) is the best predictive tool we have (even adjusting for socioeconomic status) for academic success in college.

It makes you wonder how disregarding these tests is going to allow colleges to better allocate admission slots for deserving students in under represented groups?

Of course, underlying all of this is the question that no one really wants to discuss.

How much of the disparity in SAT scores (and IQ tests) is not the result of environmental factors such as family situation, socioeconomic status, primary and secondary school resources but is due to raw innate ability?

No one is supposed to go there but there is data suggesting that there are IQ differences related to race/ethnicity.

Others argue that this is completely false and that even IQ scores are affected so much by environmental factors that there is no difference in innate intelligence between different races and ethnicities.

For example, some studies have suggested that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic or racial group for which reliable data is available. This corresponds to an IQ of 112-115 versus an overall average of 100 for the population at large. A disproportionate number of Nobel prize and chess grandmasters have this ethnicity.

Other studies suggest that East Asians in the United States have an average IQ advantage over Caucasians which have an advantage over Hispanics which have higher average IQ's than African Americans. Of course, the variation in IQ within each group is much greater than between any group.

Here is graphic illustration of the distribution of IQ scores by race ethnicity.

Source: https://twitter.com/PaoloShirasi/status/1547627211728949250

At the 50th percentile, it shows that Asians have a 5-6 point average advantage over Whites. Whites have 10-15 points on Blacks and 8-10 on Hispanics.

The differences in the numbers are real. However, what is the reason?

Is there some genetic component or is it all explained by the environment of the subject individuals within the group?

I don't know the answer.

There may be some general genetic effect but I believe the disparities in IQ scores and SAT scores in particular are affected much more by environmental factors.

Let's assume that Asians have a few points average IQ advantage. That small difference certainly does not explain the massive disparity in SAT performance compared to Whites, Hispanics and Blacks.

What do we typically see in Asian American students?

A strong family support system with two parents in the home.

Parents who prioritize and value the education of their children.

Parents who have high expectations that their children should do well.

As a result, children who put in a lot of time, effort and work to meet those expectations.

I am reminded of an experience with my oldest daughter when she took AP Chemistry in high school.

The lab partner she was assigned to be with the first day of class was reputed to be the smartest student in the school. He was Asian.

He leaned over to my daughter during their first lab assignment and told her that she should not be concerned about any of the lab assignments for the year because he and his father had already done all of the experiments during the previous summer!

Yes, Isaac had some real intelligence.

However, it was complemented with a significant amount of parental support and a willingness to work hard.

Did I prevent my daughter from reaching her full academic potential because I did not call up the Chemistry teacher the previous Spring to get the lab assignments and then work with her during the Summer on her AP Chemistry experiments in advance? I guess I did.

As I stated, I don't know what explains the achievement gaps we see today in education.

However, I do know that the gap has not gotten any better after almost 50 years of affirmative action programs.

It has not gotten better despite billions and billions of dollars being spent to close the gap.

It has not gotten better despite thousands and thousands of positions being added in educational administration focused on diversity and inclusion.

I also know that every individual has unique talents, skills and abilities. These talents and skills are not distributed equally. They never were and never will be.

However, I also know that any differences in innate ability and talent are small in relation to what hard work, effort, commitment and dedication can mean to any endeavor. ( See a blog post I wrote on this subject, "Toil,Training and Talent".

The best answer we are being given today about the education achievement gap seems to be that we are going to solve it by ignoring it.  It is not real, or it is racist, or it is irrelevant to one's college and future success.

There seems to be more interest in lowering the bar so that everyone can clear it than doing the hard work of raising people up to meet higher expectations.

I cannot see how this benefits anyone in the end. 

The last time the Supreme Court considered affirmative action 20 years ago it could not conceive that it would still be necessary in another 25 years.  

And that was 25 years after the Supreme Court had to first consider that affirmative action was leading us down a path of reverse discrimination. 

And yet here we are again almost 50 years later.

Too much affirmation. Too little action.

We can only hope that the Supreme Court can craft a decision that gives everybody their best opportunity for equal protection under the law as well as an opportunity to better their lives.

Postscript:

Further to the point that a whole lot of money is being spent and progressive policies implemented to narrow the academic achievement gap of Black students without much to show for it, consider this data from the State of Illinois that lists 53 schools where NOT ONE student can do math at grade level.

Almost all of these are Black majority schools.

In particular, look at the school underlined in red---Williams Medical Prep High School.

Source: https://wirepoints.org/not-a-single-student-can-do-math-at-grade-level-in-53-illinois-schools-for-reading-its-30-schools-wirepoints/

This is the stated mission of Williams Preparatory School of Medicine that is part of the Chicago Public School System.

Source: https://www.dhwprepmed.org/

The annual per pupil spending at Williams Prep is $47,793.

Almost $50,000 is being spent per student and NOT ONE is performing at grade level in Math?

Do you think the mission is being achieved that these student are on their way to top post-secondary schools to pursue careers in the medical professions?

It can only happen with the affirmative action we have today.