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".....In 2020, system leaders voted to phase standardized-test scores out of admissions decisions. They argued that the tests worsened racial divides and unfair

".....In 2020, system leaders voted to phase standardized-test scores out of admissions decisions. They argued that the tests worsened racial divides and unfairly privileged wealthy students. But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found...."

skeezyjefferson 10mo ago
"But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found...." how else do they gauge someone's math ability then?
- naIak 10mo ago
  Gauging someone’s abilities is meany mean.
- Aurornis 10mo ago
  They don’t. The movements pushing these ideas are against the idea of aptitude testing. Many of them are even against the idea of having advanced classes for those who are ahead. It’s not a niche ideology, sadly. It’s going mainstream. A core part of Zohran Mamdani’s platform was his goal to phase out gifted education programs, for example.
  - tehjoker 10mo ago
    There is a silver lining though, when everyone is in the same class, better off people don't think they can escape and push to make the program better for everyone.
    - naIak 10mo ago
      You can’t have a good teaching programme when there is a variance of 40 points of IQ among the pupils.
    - tr45872267 10mo ago
      They can and do. Private schools already exist.
      - bryanlarsen 10mo ago
        AFAICT many private schools are worse than public schools. Parents put kids into private schools so that they get good grades and extra-curriculars to let them get into the good universities. So that's what private schools sell -- good grades. It's less important that they have the education that the good grades imply.
        Aurornis 10mo ago
        I have no doubt schools like that exist, but in every location I’ve lived and interacted with parents the private school educations they sent their kids to were no question a cut above. I think this idea that private schools are no better are even worse is a wishful thinking narrative. Private schools, especially the more expensive ones, naturally select for parents who are more involved. More involved parents are highly correlated with better student outcomes. That alone means private schools are correlated with better outcomes. It honestly doesn’t really matter if it’s cause and effect or correlation, parents send their kids to private schools because they want them in the mix with other students selected into the higher performing environment.
        tr45872267 10mo ago
        They do perform better on average >The average private school mean reading score was 14.7 points higher than the average public school mean reading score, corresponding to an effect size of .41 (the ratio of the absolute value of the estimated difference to the standard deviation of the NAEP fourth-grade reading score distribution). After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was near zero and not significant. For math: >The average private school mean mathematics score was 7.8 points higher than the average public school mean mathematics score, corresponding to an effect size of .29. After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was -4.5 and significantly different from zero. (Note that a negative difference implies that the average school mean was higher for public schools.) In the context of the specific discussion here, it doesn't really matter that the effect goes away when controling for selected student characteristics. First off this was from 2006, we would have to see if any of that has changed. The 2024 numbers are here[1]. But in any case they are not worse than public schools, although they may be no better or slightly worse than a public school in a rich neighborhood or similar. [0] https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.aspx https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.a... [1] https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/dashboards/schools_dashboard.aspx https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/dashboards/schools_dashboa...
    - Aurornis 10mo ago
      > better off people don't think they can escape and push to make the program better for everyone. Your solution is to make the smart kids suffer so maybe they can force the educators to do better? That’s insane. It’s also not going to happen. Do you know what will happen? Any parent with the means will scrape together cash to pull their students out and go to private schools. Or they’ll hire tutors after school and force their kids to sit down and learn what they should have been learning during the day. This fantasy where the smart kids rally together to overhaul the system because we banned them from taking advanced classes is a delusion.
      - FatherOfCurses 10mo ago
        This gives off "I Am Very Smart" vibes. I was in a gifted program in grades 5-7, stopped going mainly because I had to travel to another school to attend and it was inconvenient. I didn't "suffer" being in classes with folks who weren't at my level. The teaching staff did a great job and I never felt like I was being shortchanged. My undiagnosed ADHD means I goofed around a lot, but several of my friends told me after high school that they appreciated me because I helped them see learning from a different angle than their parents or the teachers.
        Aurornis 10mo ago
        Great that it worked for you. I believe everyone should have the choice. However, please don’t force your experience to be the only allowable experience for others. If some students want to take advanced classes, we should let them. Refusing to allow students to learn at a faster rate is insanity.
        vacuity 10mo ago
        As someone else mentioned somewhere in this thread, what about public schooling prevents students from learning by themselves? In my experience, the best students I know generally didn't become so due to public or private schooling, but simply personal interest and drive (and perhaps talent, but that is also school-independent).
        10mo ago
    - gizajob 10mo ago
      Nah, they get dragged down and ignored. Teachers only really teach the middle third - the top third can be ignored because they can do it for themselves while being bored. The bottom third can’t be helped because they won’t be helped without a huge amount of energy by the teacher (for little rewards), and so won’t do it for themselves while being bored. The middle third is all that gets schooled because they can at least be bumped up a little higher towards where the under-achieving top third thus rests.
    - triceratops 10mo ago
      But you can't tailor one program for kids with different abilities. You shouldn't even try. You should give each individual what they need to succeed to the best of their ability. That's the core of inclusion and equity. You know, the classic comic of the three kids trying to look over the fence?
  - triceratops 10mo ago
    > his goal to phase out gifted education programs Gifted education programs for kindergarten. I don't necessarily agree with that either but it's important to be accurate when talking about proposed policies. The man isn't talking about taking away AP algebra. Most kindergarteners still need to be told not to eat their boogers.
    - Aurornis 10mo ago
      “Phase out” means gradually remove. Kindergarten is where the phase out starts. That’s how you phase something out. You don’t take it away from everyone all at once because that triggers outrage. You disallow it for new kindergarten students one season, then next year remove it from 1st grade so they can’t go into accelerated programs and so on. He explicitly uses the phrase “phase out” for this reason. Read more of his platform documents, including the ones before everything got watered down for his website. The “it’s just for kindergarten” is just positive spin on the first step of the goal of phasing it out in general.
      - triceratops 10mo ago
        > Read more of his platform documents, including the ones before everything got watered down for his website Do you have links?
        Aurornis 10mo ago
        It’s been his statement all over: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/nyregion/mamdani-schools-gifted-and-talented-program.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/nyregion/mamdani-schools-... The phase out starts with kindergarten and “early grades”. In some places he’s said up through second grade which some assume is an upper limit, but really it’s just the natural length of phasing out gifted programs one year at a time over the 4-year course of a mayoral term due to the necessary delays to eliminate the program after his election date (kindergarten next school year, then 1st grade the next, then 2nd grade)
        10mo ago
  - fortran77 10mo ago
    Even though he personally benefited from them. Pull up the ladder!
    - vacuity 10mo ago
      Do you have reason to believe he benefitted from gifted programs around the level of kindergarten or maybe first or second grade?
      - fortran77 10mo ago
        He never had to work a day in his life and now he's mayor elect of NYC!
        vacuity 10mo ago
        The "never had to work a day in his life" claim is wrong, though I agree his experience seems insufficient for the position of mayor.
- bena 10mo ago
  One could use course grades. The problem with that is the variance in instructor quality between institutions.
  - perrysmith 10mo ago
    That’s why it isn’t a reliable indicator of aptitude. A student who earns all A’s at a top level public school and a student who earns all A’s at a low level public school aren’t necessarily operating at the same academic level.
    - bena 10mo ago
      They asked what else could be used. I told them, then I explained why it wouldn't work as well as a standardized test. And the variance can happen even in "top level" public schools, for certain definitions of "top level". I went to one of the best high schools in the nation (as rated by college acceptance rates, SAT/ACT scores, etc). There were still teachers people wanted to avoid because they were seen as harsher graders. So you can have grade inflation even at "top level" schools as private schools aren't above selling grades.
      - perrysmith 10mo ago
        Of course you can have grade inflation at top level schools, but there is a reason that they are considered "top level" in the first place.
Aurornis 10mo ago
The war on admissions testing is one of the worst education trends. I couldn’t believe it when it was first proposed, but I was even more shocked when the trend started to spread. It does appear to be reversing a little bit in some places as schools realize they were fooled by people pushing ideology over data and results, but it’s going to take a while. For those who aren’t in the loop: There’s an ideological push to eliminate testing, aptitude tests, and even to eliminate different educational tracks (accelerated learning programs, AP classes, advanced math tracts) in the name of pursuing equality for everyone. The idea of testing people for aptitude or allowing some students to go into more advanced classes than others is not allowed by some ideologically-driven people who think all students must be given strictly equal education at every grade level.
- TechRemarker 10mo ago
  Imagine still will be all the advanced tracks but will be only reserved for those with the resources to afford it and seemingly further the divide.
  - mlboss 10mo ago
    I don’t think it is about resources. Growing up in 3rd world country I have zero resources. It is the drive of student and higher standards from parents and teachers that matters. Everybody is just getting soft.
    - Aurornis 10mo ago
      > I don’t think it is about resources. Growing up in 3rd world country I have zero resources. In America many parents do have resources, though, and they will spend those on private schools, tutoring, or home schooling. > It is the drive of student and higher standards from parents and teachers that matters. These proposals restrict the teachers and disallow teaching advanced subjects to students with drive to learn them. You can’t say it’s up to the students and teachers while also holding back the students and restricting the teachers.
- lotsofpulp 10mo ago
massysett 10mo ago
Thank you, this answers the question I was going to pose in a comment: why did this supposedly selective university admit students who can’t do basic math? Maybe their grade wouldn’t reflect it, but surely a standardized test like SAT or ACT would have flagged this? Maybe instead of remedial courses, they should stop admitting unqualified students?
Jweb_Guru 10mo ago
I have never met a single person who wanted to learn advanced mathematics who was prevented from doing this by not getting into the college of their choice, and I know a lot of mathematicians. Do you genuinely believe that people who get an 800 on the math portion of the SATs (which is actually a pretty large number of people) are struggling to get admission to university at all?
- sxzygz 10mo ago
  The mathematicians I know wish the were introduced to more material when they were younger so they could spend more time internalizing different concepts before being forced to specialize by the demands of a PhD. The more scientifically minded people I know wish they were introduced to more mathematical concepts when they were younger so they could feel more able applying more sophisticated models to their problem domain. Having a pipeline of somewhat mathematically able citizens is crucial to having an advanced economy. I don’t think the preceding statement is remotely controversial.
  - Jweb_Guru 10mo ago
    Nobody is saying "don't teach math to high schoolers." My point is that this whole admissions rant appears to be entirely about admission to "elite" schools no longer being fully determined by SAT scores (or whatever--I've never been completely clear on what people are actually arguing for), when anyone good enough at math to get a really high SAT score can easily gain admission to a ton of universities with great math departments. As for the real "gifted" kids, there will always be some middle schoolers taking calculus etc. with or without a structured gifted & talented program. The majority of people in these programs are not so far beyond their peers as you seem to think, and my experience in math departments has been that there's a pretty even mix of kids with precocious math backgrounds and people who developed their skills at a later point.
    - sxzygz 10mo ago
      The issue, as I see it, the erosion of the level of mathematical competence seen at university entrance. This inhibits the rate of progress one can make with a student over the period of an undergraduate education, and this reduces the exposure to mathematics of the next generation of educators. Mathematics education is really, really broken unless your measure is Terry Tao’s are still produced. That’s not the issue. The issue is the breadth of people who can recognize what mathematical proficiency can enable within society, not because some wonk says data shows this, but because they personally have experience as to it has empowered them to perform more capably in their chosen field of endeavour.
corpMaverick 10mo ago
IMHO. It is futile to level the field with the wealthy. They will always have the better opportunities, education, connections, etc. They will find a way. But we should keep trying to give more opportunities to the less fortunate. Better education, remedial classes, free school lunches, child credits, etc. We do that by asking the wealthy to contribute more. Not by taking away their advantages.(e.g. Admission tests)
- Aurornis 10mo ago
  > Not by taking away their advantages.(e.g. Admission tests) Admissions tests are actually not as big of a driver for the academic advantage of the wealthy. Especially at flagship institutions a lot of it is simply traced back to legacy admissions, athletics, and extra-curricular activities. Those latter two are more gamed by the wealthy than anything. Removing admission tests and focusing only on the application is actually a huge boon to wealthy families who want to get their children into the best universities because it removes the hard part (having to learn enough to do well in exams) and replaces it with things that are easy to game, like writing essays and getting a track record of doing extra-curriculars. Standardized tests actually make it easier for lower income families to compete for spots for academically advanced children because they’re measuring academic advancement. Even if it’s not a perfect measure, it’s way better than substituting non-academic things that are so easily gamed by the wealthy.
  - xphos 10mo ago
    I never thought about the ease at which you can game non-academic aspects. I agree that testing is probabamtic because a good tutor can boost peoples performance signficantly but there feels like a limit to actually just learning the material. Useful evalation metrics of people are notoriously difficult
  - insane_dreamer 10mo ago
    I sort of agree, but in my experience, wealthy parents have the money for extra classes, tutoring, SAT/ACT prep, etc., which enable their kid to get a high SAT score. These are resources which the disadvantaged don't have. So while an "average" wealthy kid might score 780 with all the help afforded to them, it would take a truly exceptional poor kid to score 780 since they're essentially bootstrapping from natural talent alone. So whether you include SAT scores in admissions or not, it's still heavily skewed. Also, the problem with SAT scores is that you end up studying to the test. (This is why Chinese applicants do so well on college entrance exams - they spent most of their high school studying for the specific range/type of questions they will be asked on the test.)
FatherOfCurses 10mo ago
Standardized tests are reliable predictors of students' abilities to solve standardized tests, which is not necessarily a 1-1 correlation with aptitude in that field. It is much like how your ability to sort a binary tree in a development interview isn't a 1-1 correlation with your ability to effectively upgrade your production website's Angular to the latest version. My wife works in private college admissions counseling, so I've been privy to a lot of conversations around these issues over the years. The article is paywalled, but I feel that in this sentence the author is using all reasons used against standardized testing to criticize the elimination of standardized math testing. The concerns around racial divides have been mainly in the non-math portion of the SAT's, where it's been found that students with a non-white background don't choose the "right" answer on ambiguous questions because they don't have the same shared experience that would make the "right" answer obvious to someone with a white background. Its inclusion here sounds like the author is trying to inject a little anti-woke hysteria into her argument. Wealth leading to increased standardized test scores is a very real thing. Many of us have taken multiple choice tests where we've known that the best answer isn't necessarily the "right" answer, and that in order to pass the test we have to select the answer the test is looking for. The SAT and ACT are littered with these questions and there are test prep companies who have decades of industry knowledge that they provide their clients with to get a boost on their scores. No amount of non-profit or public school provided test prep can compete with that. As someone else commented, someone with an 800 on their SAT math will get admitted 99 percent of the time. Colleges are always very open about their admissions criteria and students are always free to choose to apply or not based on those.
- vacuity 10mo ago
  Standardized testing isn't remotely perfect, but I think I have grounds to say that it is far better than many alternatives. In this case, standardized testing would've caught the problem before admissions.

skeezyjefferson 10mo ago

"But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found...." how else do they gauge someone's math ability then?

naIak 10mo ago
Gauging someone’s abilities is meany mean.
Aurornis 10mo ago
They don’t. The movements pushing these ideas are against the idea of aptitude testing. Many of them are even against the idea of having advanced classes for those who are ahead. It’s not a niche ideology, sadly. It’s going mainstream. A core part of Zohran Mamdani’s platform was his goal to phase out gifted education programs, for example.
- tehjoker 10mo ago
  There is a silver lining though, when everyone is in the same class, better off people don't think they can escape and push to make the program better for everyone.
  - naIak 10mo ago
    You can’t have a good teaching programme when there is a variance of 40 points of IQ among the pupils.
  - tr45872267 10mo ago
    They can and do. Private schools already exist.
    - bryanlarsen 10mo ago
      AFAICT many private schools are worse than public schools. Parents put kids into private schools so that they get good grades and extra-curriculars to let them get into the good universities. So that's what private schools sell -- good grades. It's less important that they have the education that the good grades imply.
      - Aurornis 10mo ago
        I have no doubt schools like that exist, but in every location I’ve lived and interacted with parents the private school educations they sent their kids to were no question a cut above. I think this idea that private schools are no better are even worse is a wishful thinking narrative. Private schools, especially the more expensive ones, naturally select for parents who are more involved. More involved parents are highly correlated with better student outcomes. That alone means private schools are correlated with better outcomes. It honestly doesn’t really matter if it’s cause and effect or correlation, parents send their kids to private schools because they want them in the mix with other students selected into the higher performing environment.
      - tr45872267 10mo ago
        They do perform better on average >The average private school mean reading score was 14.7 points higher than the average public school mean reading score, corresponding to an effect size of .41 (the ratio of the absolute value of the estimated difference to the standard deviation of the NAEP fourth-grade reading score distribution). After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was near zero and not significant. For math: >The average private school mean mathematics score was 7.8 points higher than the average public school mean mathematics score, corresponding to an effect size of .29. After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was -4.5 and significantly different from zero. (Note that a negative difference implies that the average school mean was higher for public schools.) In the context of the specific discussion here, it doesn't really matter that the effect goes away when controling for selected student characteristics. First off this was from 2006, we would have to see if any of that has changed. The 2024 numbers are here[1]. But in any case they are not worse than public schools, although they may be no better or slightly worse than a public school in a rich neighborhood or similar. [0] https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.aspx https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.a... [1] https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/dashboards/schools_dashboard.aspx https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/dashboards/schools_dashboa...
  - Aurornis 10mo ago
    > better off people don't think they can escape and push to make the program better for everyone. Your solution is to make the smart kids suffer so maybe they can force the educators to do better? That’s insane. It’s also not going to happen. Do you know what will happen? Any parent with the means will scrape together cash to pull their students out and go to private schools. Or they’ll hire tutors after school and force their kids to sit down and learn what they should have been learning during the day. This fantasy where the smart kids rally together to overhaul the system because we banned them from taking advanced classes is a delusion.
    - FatherOfCurses 10mo ago
      This gives off "I Am Very Smart" vibes. I was in a gifted program in grades 5-7, stopped going mainly because I had to travel to another school to attend and it was inconvenient. I didn't "suffer" being in classes with folks who weren't at my level. The teaching staff did a great job and I never felt like I was being shortchanged. My undiagnosed ADHD means I goofed around a lot, but several of my friends told me after high school that they appreciated me because I helped them see learning from a different angle than their parents or the teachers.
      - Aurornis 10mo ago
        Great that it worked for you. I believe everyone should have the choice. However, please don’t force your experience to be the only allowable experience for others. If some students want to take advanced classes, we should let them. Refusing to allow students to learn at a faster rate is insanity.
        vacuity 10mo ago
        As someone else mentioned somewhere in this thread, what about public schooling prevents students from learning by themselves? In my experience, the best students I know generally didn't become so due to public or private schooling, but simply personal interest and drive (and perhaps talent, but that is also school-independent).
      - 10mo ago
  - gizajob 10mo ago
    Nah, they get dragged down and ignored. Teachers only really teach the middle third - the top third can be ignored because they can do it for themselves while being bored. The bottom third can’t be helped because they won’t be helped without a huge amount of energy by the teacher (for little rewards), and so won’t do it for themselves while being bored. The middle third is all that gets schooled because they can at least be bumped up a little higher towards where the under-achieving top third thus rests.
  - triceratops 10mo ago
    But you can't tailor one program for kids with different abilities. You shouldn't even try. You should give each individual what they need to succeed to the best of their ability. That's the core of inclusion and equity. You know, the classic comic of the three kids trying to look over the fence?
- triceratops 10mo ago
  > his goal to phase out gifted education programs Gifted education programs for kindergarten. I don't necessarily agree with that either but it's important to be accurate when talking about proposed policies. The man isn't talking about taking away AP algebra. Most kindergarteners still need to be told not to eat their boogers.
  - Aurornis 10mo ago
    “Phase out” means gradually remove. Kindergarten is where the phase out starts. That’s how you phase something out. You don’t take it away from everyone all at once because that triggers outrage. You disallow it for new kindergarten students one season, then next year remove it from 1st grade so they can’t go into accelerated programs and so on. He explicitly uses the phrase “phase out” for this reason. Read more of his platform documents, including the ones before everything got watered down for his website. The “it’s just for kindergarten” is just positive spin on the first step of the goal of phasing it out in general.
    - triceratops 10mo ago
      > Read more of his platform documents, including the ones before everything got watered down for his website Do you have links?
      - Aurornis 10mo ago
        It’s been his statement all over: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/nyregion/mamdani-schools-gifted-and-talented-program.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/nyregion/mamdani-schools-... The phase out starts with kindergarten and “early grades”. In some places he’s said up through second grade which some assume is an upper limit, but really it’s just the natural length of phasing out gifted programs one year at a time over the 4-year course of a mayoral term due to the necessary delays to eliminate the program after his election date (kindergarten next school year, then 1st grade the next, then 2nd grade)
        10mo ago
- fortran77 10mo ago
  Even though he personally benefited from them. Pull up the ladder!
  - vacuity 10mo ago
    Do you have reason to believe he benefitted from gifted programs around the level of kindergarten or maybe first or second grade?
    - fortran77 10mo ago
      He never had to work a day in his life and now he's mayor elect of NYC!
      - vacuity 10mo ago
        The "never had to work a day in his life" claim is wrong, though I agree his experience seems insufficient for the position of mayor.
bena 10mo ago
One could use course grades. The problem with that is the variance in instructor quality between institutions.
- perrysmith 10mo ago
  That’s why it isn’t a reliable indicator of aptitude. A student who earns all A’s at a top level public school and a student who earns all A’s at a low level public school aren’t necessarily operating at the same academic level.
  - bena 10mo ago
    They asked what else could be used. I told them, then I explained why it wouldn't work as well as a standardized test. And the variance can happen even in "top level" public schools, for certain definitions of "top level". I went to one of the best high schools in the nation (as rated by college acceptance rates, SAT/ACT scores, etc). There were still teachers people wanted to avoid because they were seen as harsher graders. So you can have grade inflation even at "top level" schools as private schools aren't above selling grades.
    - perrysmith 10mo ago
      Of course you can have grade inflation at top level schools, but there is a reason that they are considered "top level" in the first place.

Aurornis 10mo ago

The war on admissions testing is one of the worst education trends. I couldn’t believe it when it was first proposed, but I was even more shocked when the trend started to spread. It does appear to be reversing a little bit in some places as schools realize they were fooled by people pushing ideology over data and results, but it’s going to take a while. For those who aren’t in the loop: There’s an ideological push to eliminate testing, aptitude tests, and even to eliminate different educational tracks (accelerated learning programs, AP classes, advanced math tracts) in the name of pursuing equality for everyone. The idea of testing people for aptitude or allowing some students to go into more advanced classes than others is not allowed by some ideologically-driven people who think all students must be given strictly equal education at every grade level.

TechRemarker 10mo ago
Imagine still will be all the advanced tracks but will be only reserved for those with the resources to afford it and seemingly further the divide.
- mlboss 10mo ago
  I don’t think it is about resources. Growing up in 3rd world country I have zero resources. It is the drive of student and higher standards from parents and teachers that matters. Everybody is just getting soft.
  - Aurornis 10mo ago
    > I don’t think it is about resources. Growing up in 3rd world country I have zero resources. In America many parents do have resources, though, and they will spend those on private schools, tutoring, or home schooling. > It is the drive of student and higher standards from parents and teachers that matters. These proposals restrict the teachers and disallow teaching advanced subjects to students with drive to learn them. You can’t say it’s up to the students and teachers while also holding back the students and restricting the teachers.
lotsofpulp 10mo ago

massysett 10mo ago

Thank you, this answers the question I was going to pose in a comment: why did this supposedly selective university admit students who can’t do basic math? Maybe their grade wouldn’t reflect it, but surely a standardized test like SAT or ACT would have flagged this? Maybe instead of remedial courses, they should stop admitting unqualified students?

Jweb_Guru 10mo ago

I have never met a single person who wanted to learn advanced mathematics who was prevented from doing this by not getting into the college of their choice, and I know a lot of mathematicians. Do you genuinely believe that people who get an 800 on the math portion of the SATs (which is actually a pretty large number of people) are struggling to get admission to university at all?

sxzygz 10mo ago
The mathematicians I know wish the were introduced to more material when they were younger so they could spend more time internalizing different concepts before being forced to specialize by the demands of a PhD. The more scientifically minded people I know wish they were introduced to more mathematical concepts when they were younger so they could feel more able applying more sophisticated models to their problem domain. Having a pipeline of somewhat mathematically able citizens is crucial to having an advanced economy. I don’t think the preceding statement is remotely controversial.
- Jweb_Guru 10mo ago
  Nobody is saying "don't teach math to high schoolers." My point is that this whole admissions rant appears to be entirely about admission to "elite" schools no longer being fully determined by SAT scores (or whatever--I've never been completely clear on what people are actually arguing for), when anyone good enough at math to get a really high SAT score can easily gain admission to a ton of universities with great math departments. As for the real "gifted" kids, there will always be some middle schoolers taking calculus etc. with or without a structured gifted & talented program. The majority of people in these programs are not so far beyond their peers as you seem to think, and my experience in math departments has been that there's a pretty even mix of kids with precocious math backgrounds and people who developed their skills at a later point.
  - sxzygz 10mo ago
    The issue, as I see it, the erosion of the level of mathematical competence seen at university entrance. This inhibits the rate of progress one can make with a student over the period of an undergraduate education, and this reduces the exposure to mathematics of the next generation of educators. Mathematics education is really, really broken unless your measure is Terry Tao’s are still produced. That’s not the issue. The issue is the breadth of people who can recognize what mathematical proficiency can enable within society, not because some wonk says data shows this, but because they personally have experience as to it has empowered them to perform more capably in their chosen field of endeavour.

corpMaverick 10mo ago

IMHO. It is futile to level the field with the wealthy. They will always have the better opportunities, education, connections, etc. They will find a way. But we should keep trying to give more opportunities to the less fortunate. Better education, remedial classes, free school lunches, child credits, etc. We do that by asking the wealthy to contribute more. Not by taking away their advantages.(e.g. Admission tests)

Aurornis 10mo ago
> Not by taking away their advantages.(e.g. Admission tests) Admissions tests are actually not as big of a driver for the academic advantage of the wealthy. Especially at flagship institutions a lot of it is simply traced back to legacy admissions, athletics, and extra-curricular activities. Those latter two are more gamed by the wealthy than anything. Removing admission tests and focusing only on the application is actually a huge boon to wealthy families who want to get their children into the best universities because it removes the hard part (having to learn enough to do well in exams) and replaces it with things that are easy to game, like writing essays and getting a track record of doing extra-curriculars. Standardized tests actually make it easier for lower income families to compete for spots for academically advanced children because they’re measuring academic advancement. Even if it’s not a perfect measure, it’s way better than substituting non-academic things that are so easily gamed by the wealthy.
- xphos 10mo ago
  I never thought about the ease at which you can game non-academic aspects. I agree that testing is probabamtic because a good tutor can boost peoples performance signficantly but there feels like a limit to actually just learning the material. Useful evalation metrics of people are notoriously difficult
- insane_dreamer 10mo ago
  I sort of agree, but in my experience, wealthy parents have the money for extra classes, tutoring, SAT/ACT prep, etc., which enable their kid to get a high SAT score. These are resources which the disadvantaged don't have. So while an "average" wealthy kid might score 780 with all the help afforded to them, it would take a truly exceptional poor kid to score 780 since they're essentially bootstrapping from natural talent alone. So whether you include SAT scores in admissions or not, it's still heavily skewed. Also, the problem with SAT scores is that you end up studying to the test. (This is why Chinese applicants do so well on college entrance exams - they spent most of their high school studying for the specific range/type of questions they will be asked on the test.)

FatherOfCurses 10mo ago

Standardized tests are reliable predictors of students' abilities to solve standardized tests, which is not necessarily a 1-1 correlation with aptitude in that field. It is much like how your ability to sort a binary tree in a development interview isn't a 1-1 correlation with your ability to effectively upgrade your production website's Angular to the latest version. My wife works in private college admissions counseling, so I've been privy to a lot of conversations around these issues over the years. The article is paywalled, but I feel that in this sentence the author is using all reasons used against standardized testing to criticize the elimination of standardized math testing. The concerns around racial divides have been mainly in the non-math portion of the SAT's, where it's been found that students with a non-white background don't choose the "right" answer on ambiguous questions because they don't have the same shared experience that would make the "right" answer obvious to someone with a white background. Its inclusion here sounds like the author is trying to inject a little anti-woke hysteria into her argument. Wealth leading to increased standardized test scores is a very real thing. Many of us have taken multiple choice tests where we've known that the best answer isn't necessarily the "right" answer, and that in order to pass the test we have to select the answer the test is looking for. The SAT and ACT are littered with these questions and there are test prep companies who have decades of industry knowledge that they provide their clients with to get a boost on their scores. No amount of non-profit or public school provided test prep can compete with that. As someone else commented, someone with an 800 on their SAT math will get admitted 99 percent of the time. Colleges are always very open about their admissions criteria and students are always free to choose to apply or not based on those.

vacuity 10mo ago
Standardized testing isn't remotely perfect, but I think I have grounds to say that it is far better than many alternatives. In this case, standardized testing would've caught the problem before admissions.