Comments at Steve Sailer:
* I completely share your concern except at the high end, I believe it’s already fallen apart. At this point, a competitive test system would have to be completely reworked not only to prevent cheating, but to prevent the sort of systematic gaming that allows Asians to get scores that completely misrepresent their abilities.
I have long wondered if, at a certain point, the link between test scores and IQs break down for both blacks and Asians (particularly East Asians). I can’t be sure about the new SAT yet, but the last one I no longer accepted the high abilities of any Asian kid I met with triple 800s. I knew too many who had unimpressive abilities–not low, just not top tier. I know more than one African American with a 16 ACT reading score, a 12 on the essay, and a 4 or a 5 on an AP test in English or history. The black kid with that combination is going to get identified, even if it’s not a perfect system, but Asian test obsession is breaking the system.
Leave aside the cheating for a minute. Assume, as I do, that some of the high scores is done by the ability to get a good score on the test without the underlying knowledge. This ability exists in whites (and probably to a degree in blacks and Hispanics, too). I have it. Give me a test on nuclear physics with any context clues at all, and I’ll get a much better score than I should, given my underlying non-existent knowledge of nuclear physics. But in whites, this ability goes along with very high intelligence. A person of averagely high IQ (say, 110-125) doesn’t usually have this ability.
But at least in my experience, I see the ability to get a high test score (often with a lot of practice taking tests), to understand the cues and responses to a lot of new material without any retention, without any understanding of the underlying content, is incredibly common in East Asians.
Our test system just isn’t set up for that. So when Charles Murray calls for a pure test system, I don’t think he knows what that means. Tom Loveless once argued that states should put out a huge database of all the test questions asked by the state tests, because even if the teachers taught the tests directly, only the strong students would remember how to do it and how to answer it. I’m like, are you completely high? And both Tom Loveless and Murray are awesome.
Anyway. I first wrote about the gaming directly here: https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/sats-competitive-advantage/
But I also wrote about the unnaturally high scores and the constant increases in Asian score percentiles here:
https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/college-admissions-race-and-unintended-consequences/
And I think you linked in my take on the Reuters piece, but here it is again for those who missed it:
https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2016/03/29/the-sat-is-corrupt-reuters-version/
Razib always asks a reasonable question at this point–namely, shouldn’t Asian Americans (as opposed to international students) underperform in college? They do, but it’s not huge. Here’s a study: http://jcc.sagepub.com/content/22/3/403.abstract Razib argues that this is due to the fact that Asians enter tech fields at parents bidding. That may be true.
But in any event, I’ve been thinking on this for a while, and developing my own additional knowledge of Asian American students here and am starting to wondef if they *would* dramatically underperform in college (outright cheating, buying SAT scores is different). They will still be able to do well, acquiring information and then promptly forgetting it.
What it means, again, is that our entire school and testing system isn’t geared towards this. We’ve always acknowledged the possibility, because this sort of behavior does exist in whites, but it’s incredibly less common. (again, blacks, Hispanics also possible.)
I just did some work with the upper level math teachers at my school. We’re developing common quick assessments for district wide initiatives. I suggested that we not only do the assessments instantly after our lesson, to determine initial comprehension, but we randomly issue new generated version of the same quizzes at later dates, without preparation, to see how retention goes. I expected pushback, but all the teachers agreed that we were having increasing problems with kids learning and forgetting. (that is, our Asian population at the school is increasing.)
* I’ve lived in and around Harvard Square most of my adult life since the late 1970s. When I first arrived on the scene the Square was a vibrant place, full of quirky, independent and locally owned bookstores, specialty item stores, coffeehouses, restaurants, movie houses, and other such businesses, all catering to the needs of students. Street musicians were to be found on every corner, particularly on the weekends. The students that frequented the Square were mostly native-born Americans with a significant admix of foreign students, although these were more concentrated in the older, grad student ages.
Now wealthy foreigners of college age are the predominant inhabitants of the square. They are spoiled rotten. The local businesses with their affordable wares have been replaced by upscale and very expensive chains. The street musicians are still there but matched in numbers by “homeless” derelicts who foul the streets with their effluvia and occasionally accost passersby in a variety of unpleasant ways. The place has become an uninviting dump, a somewhat sanitized version of an Asian urban center. Native-born students have migrated to new versions of the old Harvard Square, e.g., Davis Square.
Meanwhile, Harvard, MIT, BU, BC, Northeastern, etc., are making out like bandits off the loot they extract from their new international students and their uber-wealthy, filthy rich parents.
* Ed realist is a conservative nationalist. Ed realist is also a teacher and teaches many Asian students. Being a conservative nationalist means favoring your own kind, regardless of test scores or some other measure. Needless to say this is considered non-PC and prejudiced, even though it doesn’t necessarily entail any hostility or animus. People generally don’t want to be perceived as being biased, especially if they’re dealing with kids. Conservative nationalism is deemed illegitimate, so you’re forced to devise alternative arguments.
