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No - this isn't equal opportunity, it's equal outcome. The outcome mandated is college admission. True equal opportunity would grant aid on a merit system. Unl

No - this isn't equal opportunity, it's equal outcome. The outcome mandated is college admission. True equal opportunity would grant aid on a merit system. Unless your argument is that familial wealth impacts merit, which I'd like to see evidence of, it's the fairer way to administer aid.

tylerhou 8y ago
Poorer people are “dumber” because they presumably have to devote more background compute to e.g. figuring how how to pay rent: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13830 http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13830
pkaye 8y ago
Family income vs SAT scores. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/03/05/these-four-charts-show-how-the-sat-favors-the-rich-educated-families/?utm_term=.9625aefc8a67 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/03/05/these...
wgerard 8y ago
> Unless your argument is that familial wealth impacts merit, which I'd like to see evidence of, it's the fairer way to administer aid. There's just assloads of studies showing high correlations between familial wealth and pretty much every measure of academic success we have ("merit", in your parlance). I mean just searching "wealth impact test scores" on Google returns like 20 results that'll give you the evidence you're looking for.
- mankash666 8y ago
  Ah, so you routinely do not hire the best candidate for a job at your company? Mind you, "Best" doesn't necessarily mean code-ninja, just the overall best-fit (behavioral, experience, academic, ...) - you know what we all call "merit". Or are you saying your definition of "best" includes familial fiances of the applicant? Why doesn't https://www.headlightlabs.com/ https://www.headlightlabs.com/ include applicant's finances as a parameter?
  - wgerard 8y ago
    It seems like you're more interested in arguing semantics and defending your viewpoint than having an actual discussion, so I'll leave you to it. Definitely feel free to point me to the studies showing familial wealth has no effect on whatever "merit" might mean to you, though. I've shown you how to find plenty to the contrary.
- tylerhou 8y ago
  Correlations don’t mean anything; maybe merit => wealth, in which case the parent poster would still be correct. You have to show a change in wealth causes a change in merit, with all else constant (which happens to be true; see my other comment).
lgessler 8y ago
"merit" as measured by something like an SAT score has pretty obvious ties to factors that are controlled by or at least correlated with family wealth, such as informal and formal extracurricular instruction, how much your parents read to you, which registers of English you are exposed to as a child (affecting, at least, vocabulary), whether you have a safe and quiet space in which to study, whether you need to work as a teen to support your family, whether you ever went hungry (yes, this happens, and in astonishing rates even in America), etc., etc. Even the kind of English you speak can cause educational issues if it differs enough from the variety that is used in schools[1]: "[L]anguage variation may increase the cognitive load on students who speak AAE and thereby affect their understanding of and the speed with which they work through STEM texts. They examined the relationship between the linguistic complexity of math word problems and success in carrying out the computation for 75 African American second graders. They found a statistically significant effect for possessive –s (e.g., ‘my mama house’ vs. ‘my mama’s house’) and 3rd singular –s (‘He eat a lot’ vs. ‘He eats a lot’) on the students’ math performance: for students who were highly affected by linguistic differences, about 15% of them would have answered 94 more questions correctly (about 9% of the total) if these linguistic features had been removed. Terry et al. suggest that some AAE-speaking students face an added cognitive load on their working memory when they read and process math word problems, due to language variation – and time spent ‘translating’ while taking standardized tests is time lost." [1]: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/lnc3.12060 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/lnc3.12060
- souprock 8y ago
  That is interesting. It goes against the usual belief that a second language makes you smarter.
  - macintux 8y ago
    The way I read that, it implies that taking a test in that second language places you at a disadvantage relative to those who speak it natively. It says nothing about the merits of knowing a second language.
gizmo686 8y ago
Its a crude measure, but children from wealthy families tend to have the oppurtunity to afford collage more than those from poor ones.

tylerhou 8y ago

Poorer people are “dumber” because they presumably have to devote more background compute to e.g. figuring how how to pay rent: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13830 http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13830

pkaye 8y ago

Family income vs SAT scores. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/03/05/these-four-charts-show-how-the-sat-favors-the-rich-educated-families/?utm_term=.9625aefc8a67 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/03/05/these...

wgerard 8y ago

> Unless your argument is that familial wealth impacts merit, which I'd like to see evidence of, it's the fairer way to administer aid. There's just assloads of studies showing high correlations between familial wealth and pretty much every measure of academic success we have ("merit", in your parlance). I mean just searching "wealth impact test scores" on Google returns like 20 results that'll give you the evidence you're looking for.

mankash666 8y ago
Ah, so you routinely do not hire the best candidate for a job at your company? Mind you, "Best" doesn't necessarily mean code-ninja, just the overall best-fit (behavioral, experience, academic, ...) - you know what we all call "merit". Or are you saying your definition of "best" includes familial fiances of the applicant? Why doesn't https://www.headlightlabs.com/ https://www.headlightlabs.com/ include applicant's finances as a parameter?
- wgerard 8y ago
  It seems like you're more interested in arguing semantics and defending your viewpoint than having an actual discussion, so I'll leave you to it. Definitely feel free to point me to the studies showing familial wealth has no effect on whatever "merit" might mean to you, though. I've shown you how to find plenty to the contrary.
tylerhou 8y ago
Correlations don’t mean anything; maybe merit => wealth, in which case the parent poster would still be correct. You have to show a change in wealth causes a change in merit, with all else constant (which happens to be true; see my other comment).

lgessler 8y ago

"merit" as measured by something like an SAT score has pretty obvious ties to factors that are controlled by or at least correlated with family wealth, such as informal and formal extracurricular instruction, how much your parents read to you, which registers of English you are exposed to as a child (affecting, at least, vocabulary), whether you have a safe and quiet space in which to study, whether you need to work as a teen to support your family, whether you ever went hungry (yes, this happens, and in astonishing rates even in America), etc., etc. Even the kind of English you speak can cause educational issues if it differs enough from the variety that is used in schools[1]: "[L]anguage variation may increase the cognitive load on students who speak AAE and thereby affect their understanding of and the speed with which they work through STEM texts. They examined the relationship between the linguistic complexity of math word problems and success in carrying out the computation for 75 African American second graders. They found a statistically significant effect for possessive –s (e.g., ‘my mama house’ vs. ‘my mama’s house’) and 3rd singular –s (‘He eat a lot’ vs. ‘He eats a lot’) on the students’ math performance: for students who were highly affected by linguistic differences, about 15% of them would have answered 94 more questions correctly (about 9% of the total) if these linguistic features had been removed. Terry et al. suggest that some AAE-speaking students face an added cognitive load on their working memory when they read and process math word problems, due to language variation – and time spent ‘translating’ while taking standardized tests is time lost." [1]: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/lnc3.12060 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/lnc3.12060

souprock 8y ago
That is interesting. It goes against the usual belief that a second language makes you smarter.
- macintux 8y ago
  The way I read that, it implies that taking a test in that second language places you at a disadvantage relative to those who speak it natively. It says nothing about the merits of knowing a second language.

gizmo686 8y ago

Its a crude measure, but children from wealthy families tend to have the oppurtunity to afford collage more than those from poor ones.