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0 pointserikpukinskis15y ago0 comments

In general if you look into correlations between education spending and test scores, there is very little correlation. If you look into the correlation of ethnicity and test scores, its very significant.

Good job, you just discovered that our standardized tests scores are biased in favor of white kids.

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5 comments · 2 top-level

gwern15y ago· 3 in thread

Which is why those ethnicities then go on to have perfect 4.0 GPAs and rack up countless patents & inventions and start tons of successful new companies, thus proving those standardized tests wrong in the most effective way possible.

kenjackson15y ago

Accept of course those standardized tests are the gatekeepers to the best schools, best programs, best networks, and likely even confidence and motivation.

A better way to show that standardized tests mean nothing is to have every student take them, but then store them away for the next 40 years. No one knows the results. And then in 40 years correlate the results of these tests with "life success". We've already seen with one similar measure "IQ test", which has little bearing on academic placement, that it turns out to have very little utility in predicting "life success". UPDATE: Link on IQ -- http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/06/high_iq_does_no.html

gwern15y ago

Any of which should only reduce the magnitude of the ethnicities' outperformance. Not eliminate it entirely. You don't need to go to Harvard to start Apple or Dell or Google. (To give an analogy, Asians are heavily discriminated against in higher ed; but when I look around, it seems to me that unlike blacks, they outperform.)

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Daniel_Newby15y ago

You are lying with statistics, albeit possibly unknowingly.

That article comes right out and says that IQ does not have an effect on life outcomes, if life outcomes are normed for educational attainment. It then goes on to say that IQ does not predict career success, if career success is measured by money and normed for career type. That's like saying air temperature has no effect on snow cover, if snow cover is corrected for season. And altitude.

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JabavuAdams15y ago

Don't get distracted. I suspect that you would find an even stronger correlation with "home culture", but that's too hard to define and to measure.

Any ethnicity can have a scholarly culture, but for people starting out at the bottom, in a new society, it's less common.

There's also a selection bias against those who have not moved up in society. E.g. take a depressed area -- if the people with the gumption to improve their situation do so and leave, what's left? Right, concentrated fail.

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