Yesterday’s New York Times article has an article entitled “Blacks Less Likely to Take A.P. Exam.” The article has two points. Blacks are less likely than other high school graduates to take the Advanced Placement tests. Blacks who take the test are much less likely to pass than non-black students (8 percent of those taking the exams checked the “I am black” box; only 4 percent of those passing the exams had checked the “I am black” box).
Does the utility of this information justify its collection? We’re not willing to do anything drastic to change the way that our schools are run. We will still have unionized teachers, teachers who jobs are guaranteed (tenured) after a few years, and all but the richest kids forced to attend their local public school. If schools are failing black students, we’re apparently more comfortable with that than we are in confronting the teachers and administrators who benefit from the status quo.
Medical doctors say that “Never order a test unless you know what you’re going to do with the result.” What are we going to do with this result? Fire teachers if most of their students fail the A.P. exam? That would violate the union contract and we’re not going to do it. Increase the budget for schools with a lot of black students? Many of these schools already spend close to $25,000 per student per year (much of that is spent on administration rather than classroom instruction). Absent an economic miracle there is no way that taxes or debt can be increased to enable an increase beyond 25,000 current dollars per student annually.
Let’s consider the negative aspects of collecting these data. A student walks into the testing room. She thinks that she is going to be judged on the accuracy of her answers. The first question that she faces, however, is “What is your race?” The second will be “Are you male or female?”
Unless we’re going to guarantee today’s 17-year-olds that they will enjoy a lifetime of race-based university admissions, public and private employer hiring, and government contracting, why introduce them to the idea that the color of their skin is going to be the primary thing that matters to other people?
Another negative to collecting and publishing these data is the effect on employers and people involved in college admissions. The simplest one-line summary for the New York Times article would be “blacks are not as smart or well educated as people of other races” (it might have been written by William Shockley!). That’s probably what the average reader will remember in his or her subconscious for the next few weeks. The black guy who goes looking for a job today will definitely not be helped if the person interviewing him has read yesterday’s Times. If his interviewer has a Ph.D. in Statistics, perhaps the interview will go okay as the interviewer can recognize that an individual sample may fall anywhere within a probability distribution. But for most of us the last thing that we need are unconscious racial biases introduced by non-profit organizations (the College Board) and the media (the Times).
Got a source for that?
Greg: http://www.bostonmagazine.com/best_high_school_chart/index.html provides some information for our local schools. My old home town of Cambridge doesn’t spend quite $25,000 per student… only $24,467. I don’t think that includes capital expenses, though. For most school districts capital budgets are separate. The true cost may be closer to $30,000. Constructing a school in an inefficiently governed municipality costs close to $100,000 per student. If we assume a borrowing cost of 5 percent, that adds at least another $5000 per student to the true cost. In Cambridge, they’re not building a new school, but they are planning to spend $125 million renovating the existing school. There are 1700 students, so that’s $73,500 per student (assuming that the project is delivered within the budget).
Its now a bit dated but here’s a link to Cato’s analysis of the (should be) famous case of the Kansas City, Missouri school system http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-298.html. Under the order of a federal judge the school system tested the theory that throwing money at public education will make it better. The results were not encouraging.
There was study measuring the impact of asking the racial information (or gender) in an exam. Essentially invoking the social prejudice on the exam taker.
So, it means asking the race will actually lower the grade of an exam taker. One kind of Heisenberg principle in action (measurements impact the result).
“There was study measuring the impact of asking the racial information (or gender) in an exam. Essentially invoking the social prejudice on the exam taker.
So, it means asking the race will actually lower the grade of an exam taker. One kind of Heisenberg principle in action (measurements impact the result).”
My thought too… one way to avoid this on something like the AP exam would be to ask for the information only after the exam is done, or to ask for it in the original application which is presumably weeks or months before. Anyone know if this is done, or whether the kids are asked to check the “I’m black” box at the top of the test where it could do the most psychological damage?
Greg: According to the US Census Bureau, average public school spending per student was $9100 in 2006, including both current spending and capital spending.
There’s a lot of variation between states and between school districts, depending on how poor or wealthy they are. For example, here’s a 2005 story from Illinois: “… the small Rondout elementary district in Lake County spent the most money on its students with $23,799 per pupil. Meanwhile, Tazewell County’s Central School District 51 spent $4,438 per student….”
Clonbuuz, in most standardized tests, demographic information is taken before the timed test begins. Even if were included at the end of a test, after going through and answering all the easier questions, a student would be confronted by this question just before they begin their second pass for the harder questions.
In either Blink or The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell mentioned a study that observed a connection between identifying a test takers race and lower scores.
Unless we’re going to guarantee today’s 17-year-olds that they will enjoy a lifetime of race-based university admissions, public and private employer hiring, and government contracting, why introduce them to the idea that the color of their skin is going to be the primary thing that matters to other people?
Honestly, I think we’re closer to this situation than we’d like to admit. Outside of certain truly competitive arenas–political elections, running your own business, sports–the effects of Affirmative Action are everywhere. Think of the effects of racial preferences on the careers of Barack and Michele Obama: high school (for Barack), college, law school, elite law firms–all of these places use racial preferences when making decisions. Whether you think it’s meliorative or degrading, AA is everywhere.
I think I saw the same study as Fatih and Clonbuuz, and as I recall the study showed that blacks did better on tests where race was not asked beforehand, and the author’s conclusion was that being asked created anxiety or pressure to perform well, which instead hurt performance.