Black Privilege: Students Get SAT Bonus Points For Being Black Or Hispanic – Asians Are Penalized

[CenSin]

This is exactly how not to run education: throw merits out the window; and give a leg up to those who perform poorly.
 
Source: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race-tutoring-20150222-story.html

For Asian Americans, a changing landscape on college admissions
by Frank Shyong
 
In a windowless classroom at an Arcadia tutoring center, parents crammed into child-sized desks and dug through their pockets and purses for pens as Ann Lee launches a PowerPoint presentation.

Her primer on college admissions begins with the basics: application deadlines, the relative virtues of the SAT versus the ACT and how many Advanced Placement tests to take.
Then she eases into a potentially incendiary topic — one that many counselors like her have learned they cannot avoid.

“Let’s talk about Asians,” she says.

Lee’s next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It uses the term “bonus” to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant’s race is worth. She points to the first column.

African Americans received a “bonus” of 230 points, Lee says.

She points to the second column.

“Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points.”

The last column draws gasps.

Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.

“Do Asians need higher test scores? Is it harder for Asians to get into college? The answer is yes,” Lee says.

“Zenme keyi,” one mother hisses in Chinese. How can this be possible?

College admission season ignites deep anxieties for Asian American families, who spend more than any other demographic on education. At elite universities across the U.S., Asian Americans form a larger share of the student body than they do of the population as a whole. And increasingly they have turned against affirmative action policies that could alter those ratios, and accuse admissions committees of discriminating against Asian American applicants.

That perspective has pitted them against advocates for diversity: More college berths for Asian American students mean fewer for black and Latino students, who are statistically underrepresented at top universities.

But in the San Gabriel Valley’s hyper-competitive ethnic Asian communities, arguments for diversity can sometimes fall on deaf ears. For immigrant parents raised in Asia’s all-or-nothing test cultures, a good education is not just a measure of success — it’s a matter of survival. They see academic achievement as a moral virtue, and families organize their lives around their child’s education, moving to the best school districts and paying for tutoring and tennis lessons. An acceptance letter from a prestigious college is often the only acceptable return on an investment that stretches over decades.
Lee is the co-founder of HS2 Academy, a college prep business that assumes that racial bias is a fact of college admissions and counsels students accordingly. At 10 centers across the state, the academy’s counselors teach countermeasures to Asian American applicants. The goal, Lee says, is to help prospective college students avoid coming off like another “cookie-cutter Asian.”

“Everyone is in orchestra and plays piano,” Lee says. “Everyone plays tennis. Everyone wants to be a doctor, and write about immigrating to America. You can’t get in with these cliche applications.”

Like a lot of students at Arcadia High School, Yue Liang plans to apply to University of California campuses and major in engineering — or if her mother wins that argument, pre-med. She excels at math, takes multiple AP courses and volunteers, as does nearly everyone she knows.

Being of Asian descent, the junior says, is “a disadvantage.” The problem, she says, is in the numbers.

Asian families flock to the San Gabriel Valley’s school districts because they have some of the highest Academic Performance Index scores in the state. But with hundreds of top-performing students at each high school, focusing on a small set of elite institutions, it’s easy to get lost in the crowd.

Of the school’s 4,000 students, nearly 3,000 are of Asian descent, and like Yue are willing to do whatever it takes to gain entrance to a prestigious university. They will study until they can’t remember how to have fun and stuff their schedules with extracurriculars. But there’s an important part of their college applications that they can’t improve as easily as an SAT score: their ethnicity.

In the San Gabriel Valley, where aspirationally named tutoring centers such as Little Harvard and Ivy League cluster within walking distance of high schools, many of them priced more cheaply than a baby-sitter, it didn’t take long for some centers to respond to students’ and parents’ fears of being edged out of a top school because of some intangible missing quality.

Helping Asian American students, many of whom lead similar lives, requires the embrace of some stereotypes, says Crystal Zell, HS2′s assistant director of counseling. They are good at math and bad at writing and aspire to be doctors, engineers or bankers, according to the cliches. She works with her students to identify what’s unique about them — and most of the time, that’s not their career ambitions or their ethnicity.

“Everyone comes in wanting the same thing,” Zell said. “But that’s because they don’t know about anything else.”

If a student wants to be an engineer, she makes sure to show other options. She sends affluent students to volunteer in poor neighborhoods. Branch out from tennis, or chess club, or taekwondo, she tells them. Learn a language other than Chinese. Avoid writing your essay about your parents’ journey to America.

Instead of just handing students a violin or a piano and saying pick one, Zell says, HS2 offers them a buffet of interests and hobbies, encouraging students to pick something that excites them.

Lawrence Leonn, 16, is grateful for the help. He doesn’t think race or ethnicity should matter, but he believes it will.

“I don’t want to be racist or anything,” Lawrence said. “Everyone works hard and struggles. But there’s this feeling that it’s going to be harder for us.”

Complaints about bias in college admissions have persisted since at least the 1920s, when a Harvard University president tried to cap the number of Jewish students. In November, a group called Students for Fair Admissions filed a suit against Harvard University for admissions policies that allegedly discriminate against Asian Americans. The group cited the 2004 Princeton study and other sources that offer statistics about Asian Americans’ test performance.

At the University of Texas at Austin, an affirmative action policy that allows admissions committees to consider the race of prospective applicants has been argued all the way to the Supreme Court. (The policies were upheld by a lower court, but that court’s decision was voided by the Supreme Court. Another court upheld the policies and another appeal is pending.)

Those who defend “holistic” admissions policies insist that considering a broader range of variables ensures that all applicants are judged fairly. And the Princeton study Lee refers to has been widely criticized by academics who argue that it relies too heavily on grades and test scores to draw conclusions about racial bias and that the data the study uses are too old to be relevant.

Still, anxiety over racial admissions rates is peaking as cash-crunched public universities increasingly favor high-paying out-of-state and foreign students at the expense of local applicants of every ethnicity. A 2014 bill that would have asked voters to consider restoring race as a factor in admissions to public California colleges and universities sparked multiple public protests and scathing editorials in Chinese newspapers. The bill, Senate Constitutional Amendment 5, was shelved last year.
Lee says that she usually tries to at least mention arguments in favor of diversity at her free college seminars. She mentions how the black student population at UCLA has declined precipitously and how student bodies at elite universities probably shouldn’t be 100% of Asian descent. When she looks to see the response, she sees mostly slowly shaking heads.

“It’s really hard for me to explain diversity to parents whose only goal is getting their son into Harvard,” Lee says.

That same ethic causes parents and students to agonize over which box, if any, to check on the race and nationality section of the application. One parent asked Zell whether it would help to legally change the family name to something more Western-sounding.

Last year, a rumor that Harvard University would stop accepting any more Asian American students from San Marino High School spread like a trending hashtag.

Mollie Beckler, a counselor at San Marino High School, says that Harvard never imposed such a rule. School counselors are continually trying to dispel myths like these, she says, if only in hopes of slightly lowering the huge stress students shoulder because of their intense focus on elite schools.

“The feeling of failure they get from trying to reach such high standards,” she said, “is very concerning to us in the counseling world.”

Only a few of the San Gabriel Valley’s tutoring centers confront the ethnic admissions issue head-on.

Jamie Aviles, a counselor at the ACI Institute, doesn’t teach ways to overcome perceived racial bias, she says. But she and many other counselors do agree on at least one thing.

As Aviles puts it: “It sucks to be a kid in the San Gabriel Valley.”

[Via Garibaldi 8]

I'm not surprised by any of this... I see what is happening first hand with black, Latino, Asian and white children, since I tutor privately.  I get the impression that black kids continue to under perform the most.  A lot of this is cultural.  As the article points out, for many Asian families, they understand that education is a way out of poverty and instill the importance of education into their children.  I tutor a few black children.  The families in some cases are solid middle class, but their children continue to fail because they don't value education.  Black males tend to drop-out more and score lower, and culturally it isn't seen as being "cool" going to school and getting good grades.   Two kids that I tutor are in private schools.  One is from a Dominican family and has a learning disability, and the other is black is just likes hanging out with the wrong crowd. The mentality of the families appear to be the same, but the mentality of the children are quite different.  The Dominican kid wants to get high grades despite his disability, while the black kid looks at me like I have four heads when I talk about why he should be getting high grades. 

 

My students on Central Park West and Park Ave are the types of white kids whose families will hire a Spanish tutor because they are attending a very expensive private high school and want to ensure that their kids won't receive any barely passing grades in any subject.

[MHV9218]

Quoting the graduation speech from a recent senior at one of the city's top public high schools, Hunter College High School:

 

"If you truly believe that the demographics of Hunter represent the distribution of intelligence in this city, then you must believe that the Upper West Side, Bayside and Flushing are intrinsically more intelligent than the South Bronx, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Washington Heights, and I refuse to accept that."

 

Intelligence exists in more ways than just the standardized test, and diversity benefits everybody.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Quoting the graduation speech from a recent senior at one of the city's top public high schools, Hunter College High School:

 

"If you truly believe that the demographics of Hunter represent the distribution of intelligence in this city, then you must believe that the Upper West Side, Bayside and Flushing are intrinsically more intelligent than the South Bronx, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Washington Heights, and I refuse to accept that."

 

Intelligence exists in more ways than just the standardized test, and diversity benefits everybody.

The issue here isn't intelligence per se, but a lack of work ethic. I see no need to set quotas to allow laziness to persist.  I was tutoring a student of mine this afternoon who happens to be black.  He receives free tutoring as part of a special program that he's in which the program pays for.  He's in 9th grade, with a reading level that is far below that, and he makes every effort to do as little work as possible.  Too busy trying to be a sports jock instead of hitting the books, which in his case won't take him far.  Meanwhile the parents of my other students would raise hell if their kid engaged in such behavior.  Then again they pay a lot of money to have me tutor their children.

[CenSin]

Quoting the graduation speech from a recent senior at one of the city's top public high schools, Hunter College High School:

 

"If you truly believe that the demographics of Hunter represent the distribution of intelligence in this city, then you must believe that the Upper West Side, Bayside and Flushing are intrinsically more intelligent than the South Bronx, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Washington Heights, and I refuse to accept that."

 

Intelligence exists in more ways than just the standardized test, and diversity benefits everybody.

Intelligence cannot be measured by standardized testing; I do not disagree with that. I, myself, got fairly mediocre scores on tests. Yet, I'm fairly confident that I'm not intellectually stunted. I take my time to think and produce quality results, a trait that is punished by time-constrained tests.

 

However, the problem I have with this bonus system is that it's a blatant example of racism; a test is scored and bonus points are awarded after determining the race of the test taker. Not even the police dispatch cops based on the racial make-up of neighborhoods. It's simply ridiculous that Asians have to pay good money and apply effort just to be on the same level as blacks and Hispanics. This bonus point system tacitly, and ironically, implies that Asians are indeed more intelligent than blacks and Hispanics! But you know what the truth is? Not all Asians go to cram school or test prep courses. I didn't, but this system wouldn't have gotten me any bonus points for studying at the level of other minorities.

 

The one other problem is that by applying these bonus points to all blacks and Hispanics, it's an assumption that each and every one of those blacks and Hispanic kids have this intellectual ability not measurable by standardized tests. Therefore, the bonus point system provides a blanket benefit to all blacks and Hispanics under the assumption that they all possess this immeasurable intellectual ability. It also becomes a tool to proactively remove Asians from higher education as they are subjected to the scrutiny that blacks and Hispanics are not.

 

But there are two solutions, and they can work together:

1. Create test prep schools, cram schools, and after school programs for other kids. Programs of these types are numerous for Asian communities and parents make their kids use them. Established more widely, these programs can be free or come with financial aid for the economically disadvantaged, but cannot discriminate based on race.
2. Alter testing methods to measure other intellectual abilities. If these extra intellectual abilities confer any advantages to the results of a someone's work, then they can be measured and college admission processes can discriminate based on these other merits.

There would be no discrimination based on race as everyone gets their due reward based on effort applied. If Hispanics and blacks continue a culture of avoiding intellectual development, they get what's coming. Fair enough?

[GojiMet86]

Intelligence cannot be measured by standardized testing; I do not disagree with that. I, myself, got a fairly mediocre score on tests. Yet, I'm fairly confident that I'm not intellectually stunted. I take my time to think and produce quality results, a trait that is punished by time-constrained tests.

 

However, the problem I have with this bonus system is that it's a blatant example of racism; a test is scored and bonus points are awarded after determining the race of the test taker. Not even the police dispatch cops based on the racial make-up of neighborhoods. It's simply ridiculous that Asians have to pay good money and apply effort just to be on the same level as blacks and Hispanics. This bonus point system tacitly, and ironically, implies that Asians are indeed more intelligent than blacks and Hispanics! But you know what the truth is? Not all Asians go to cram school or test prep courses. I didn't, but I wouldn't have gotten me any bonus points for studying at the level of other minorities.

 

The one other problem is that by applying these bonus points to all blacks and Hispanics, it's an assumption that each and every one of those blacks and Hispanic kids have this intellectual ability not measurable by standardized tests. Therefore, the bonus point system provides a blanket benefit to all blacks and Hispanics under the assumption that they all possess this immeasurable intellectual ability.

 

But there are two solutions, and they can work together:

1. Create test prep schools, cram schools, and after school programs for other kids. These programs can be free or come with financial aid for the economically disadvantaged, but cannot discriminate based on race.
2. Alter testing methods to measure other intellectual abilities.

There would be no discrimination based on race as everyone gets their due reward based on effort applied. If Hispanics and blacks continue a culture of avoiding intellectual development, they what's coming. Fair enough?

 

Excuse me, but this Latino here has been studying has ass off for his Chemistry major.

[CenSin]

Excuse me, but this Latino here has been studying has ass off for his Chemistry major.

Then there should be no problem getting into a school appropriate for your level of knowledge. You're doing exactly what you're supposed to do to get good results. But an Asian putting in the same amount of work you did would score lower. Is that a fair deal?

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Excuse me, but this Latino here has been studying has ass off for his Chemistry major.

Listen, I tutor minority kids, and yes there are blacks and Hispanics that work hard, etc., but there are plenty of blacks and Hispanics that don't and I believe it's a cultural issue.  Some of these kids grow up in the ghetto or the hood (whichever you prefer) and the parents aren't educated enough to help them. In some cases, it's not "cool" to hit the books.  I have a black kid that I tutor now going through the motions, and I had another black kid that I tutored last year with the same nonsense.  He was ashamed to be tutored for fear of what his friends would say.  Both want to show what great basketball players they are and do their best to avoid getting high grades to maintain an image.  It's not culturally acceptable in the black community to excel in school for fear of being considered a sell out, and that is extremely troubling to me.  Then there's the issue of broken homes that comes into play as well.  No father figure in the household leaves the mothers to be both parents and try to ensure that their children excel and do well at school, but a woman cannot replace a man in the household, so you have an endless cycle of this in the black and Latino communities.  School is laughed at, etc., etc. etc. The fact of the matter is many Asians are excelling because there is a value on education.  Some may come for poor families, but there's an understanding that education is the key to a better future.  Asians also have connections that blacks and Hispanics may not have, which may allow them to go even further.

 

I certainly have taken notice to the amount of well-to-do Asians I see walking around in the city with Saks and Bergdorf Goodman bags... They are moving up the economic ladder and quickly. In fact in some cases Asians earn more than whites.

[CenSin]

Listen, I tutor minority kids, and yes there are blacks and Hispanics that work hard, etc., but there are plenty of blacks and Hispanics that don't and I believe it's a cultural issue.  Some of these kids grow up in the ghetto or the hood (whichever you prefer) and the parents aren't educated enough to help them. In some cases, it's not "cool" to hit the books.  I have a black kid that I tutor now going through the motions, and I had another black kid with the same nonsense.  Both want to show what great basketball players they are and do their best to avoid getting high grades for fear of what their peers may think.  It's not culturally acceptable in the black community to excel in school for fear of being considered a sell out, and that is extremely troubling to me.  Then there's the issue of broken homes that comes into play as well.  No father figure in the household leaves the mothers to be both parents and try to ensure that their children excel and do well at school, but a woman cannot replace a man in the household, so you have an endless cycle of this in the black and Latino communities.  School is laughed at, etc., etc. etc. The fact of the matter is many Asians are excelling because there is a value on education.  Some may come for poor families, but there's an understanding that education is the key to a better future.  Asians also have connections that blacks and Hispanics may not have, which may allow them to go even further.

If only you knew the truth. We hate school too. I grew up like that. But our parents make us attend after school programs, summer schools, and such. Eventually, we see the light and push ourselves to do better.

 

A Hispanic neighbor living next to me, by the way, is a school teacher. She used to tutor me in Spanish and my sister in just about everything else when she was just a high schooler. No gangs. No drugs. No bullshit. She graduated college and now teaches at the very high school she used to attend. She is the success that many of her brethren never achieve.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

If only you knew the truth. We hate school too. I grew up like that. But our parents make us attend after school programs, summer schools, and such. Eventually, we see the light and push ourselves to do better.

 

A Hispanic neighbor living next to me, by the way, is a school teacher. She graduated college and now teaches at the very high school she used to attend. She didn't end up jobless or working at a bodega, but many others do.

I never said Asians loved school. What I said was they value education, and they value it more so than many Latinos and blacks do, and that's the difference.  An Asian kid may hate school, but their parents will do whatever it takes to make sure that they get their education.  I have been working with three black families.... Two are relatively middle class, two with both parents involved, but separated.  One kid goes to a private school and another goes to a charter school.  The other is from a working class family, but no one knows where the father is, and the mother while very nice isn't exactly the most educated.  Seems to suffer from a speech impediment and the son does as well which affects how much he excels.  In addition to his impediment, he strives to be part of the in crowd, and does just enough to pass. The other two continue to have up and down grades, not because they aren't capable, but rather they are EXTREMELY lazy.  The parents work very hard to keep them on track but they do everything possible to not do work... Lie about not having homework, etc.  It's really amazing... They have no idea how difficult it will be for them if they don't obtain an education.  Blacks tend to have less connections than whites and Asians, and thus not having an education makes it even more difficult for them.

[CenSin]

I never said Asians loved school. What I said was they value education, and they value it more so than many Latinos and blacks do, and that's the difference.  An Asian kid may hate school, but their parents will do whatever it takes to make sure that they get their education.  I have been working with three black families.... Two are relatively middle class, two with both parents involved, but separated.  One kid goes to a private school and another goes to a charter school.  The other is from a working class family, but no one knows where the father is, and the mother while very nice isn't exactly the most educated.  Seems to suffer from a speech impediment and the son does as well which affects how much he excels.  In addition to his impediment, he strives to be part of the in crowd, and does just enough to pass. The other two continue to have up and down grades, not because they aren't capable, but rather they are EXTREMELY lazy.  The parents work very hard to keep them on track but they do everything possible to not do work... Lie about not having homework, etc.  It's really amazing... They have no idea how difficult it will be for them if they don't obtain an education.  Blacks tend to have less connections than whites and Asians, and thus not having an education makes it even more difficult for them.

But the thing is, not even most Asian kids start out valuing education. The difference is usually the parents.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

But the thing is, not even most Asian kids start out valuing education. The difference is usually the parents.

Yes, and that's my point.  The parents make the difference, along with money and connections.  I don't see too many Asian kids being brought up in single parent homes. Of course they exist, but usually the mother and father are there, even if they aren't necessarily 100% together.  Black and Latino kids deal with more cases of broken homes and poverty.  It's easier to come from poverty when there are two parents in the household working as opposed to one.

[Quill Depot]

I think if they value it, they should not be punished. If they don't value it we should stop trying to hold on to them

[46Dover]

Excuse me, but this Latino here has been studying has ass off for his Chemistry major.

Respect

[46Dover]

I went to grade school, and high school in a small town in Virginia. In the school system, we had a National Honor Society (don't know if they have that in schools here in the NY Metro area), but the statistic of Whites in said program to Blacks was staggering (I dare say like 95%). Always wondered why that was