Current Reading

This blog is primarily for me to blog my responses to books that I'm reading. Sometimes I blog about other stuff too, though.

Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond.

Word cloud

Word cloud

Sunday, April 8, 2018

Measuring success, chapters 10 and 11

These last two chapters compare test-optional institutions with similar institutions.  They focus on liberal arts colleges rather than the sort of place that I work in, but these comparisons get at the setting in which these debates are loudest.  The short version is that test-optional and test-requiring institutions followed almost identical trends from 1992 to 2010 when looking at measures of diversity, application numbers, and average test scores.  There are small differences, but they are small.  I think it comes down to the fact that test-optional initiatives are parts of much larger contexts.  Institutions that don't abandon the SAT still strive for diversity, and institutions that do abandon the SAT don't just say "OK, no need to do anything else about diversity.  We did what matters."  So the presence or absence of tests in admissions is just one factor among many.

Which is a metaphor for so many things, if you think about it.

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