Measuring Success, Chapter 9

This chapter, by Rebecca Zwick (researcher at ETS and professor emerita in the education school at UC Santa Barbara, aka U Can Study Buzzed, aka my beloved alma mater), looks at the tangible outcomes from test-optional and top-percentile admissions.  "Top percentile" admissions let in anyone who graduates in the top X% of a public high school class.  This has certain obvious virtues (anyone who makes it to the top must be more driven than most around them), it has the potential to increase diversity (the top students in a poor, minority neighborhood get in on the same footing as the top students in a rich, white school), and it does so in a race-blind manner.  Anyway, Zwick looks at the data, and a few take-aways:

1) These admissions policies don't seem to hurt graduation rates or college grades much, if at all.  This is consistent with the finding in earlier chapters that kids with high grades but low scores (and we can reasonably assume that such kids are common among those who don't report scores or get in because they graduated at the top of a school in a disadvantaged neighborhood) do pretty well.

2) On the other hand, there is still sorting:  Students who don't report test scores tend not to major in STEM.  That isn't a bad thing, IMHO.  If a kid has a great art portfolio then they should go to college and major in art, regardless of what their SAT math score is.  OTOH, that kid probably shouldn't do physics if their SAT math score is abysmal.  The previous sentence is only disparaging if you place physics on a pedestal that towers over the arts, and I don't place it on such a pedestal.

Anyway, these findings are reassuring, because there's something of a cottage industry in newspaper articles about minority kids who do well in a non-challenging high school but then flounder at a flagship.  Such kids surely exist, and definitely deserve some compassionate counseling on alternatives, but they are apparently not a major factor in the big picture, which means they are not a major impediment to diversifying large cohorts.

3) The gains for diversity are nowhere near what people were hoping.  When you go test-optional you have to look at resumes and essays and letters, all of which are at least as susceptible to manipulation and response to class and culture as anything on the SAT.

4) In a humorous aside, regarding the legality of affirmative action and alternatives to affirmative action, the author quotes Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as saying that "only an ostrich" would perceive top-percent admissions plans as race-neutral.  Whether or not the effects actually match the intent, they are designed and scrutinized in a discussion about race, with everyone hoping to achieve a diverse outcome without mandating a diverse outcome.  Say what you will for or against such agendas, but I admire Ginsburg's rhetorical flourish.