From: grimlok@hubcap.clemson.edu (Mike Percy)
Subject: Re: Spot the flaw, a new point 
Organization: Clemson University
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 15:02:41 GMT



In a book I've been reading lately, "In Pursuit of Happiness and Good
Government" by Charles Murray [Simon & Schuster 1988] the author is
explaining Milton Freidman's invisible foot theory.  This theory holds
that social engineering efforts are doomed to failure becuase of some
invisible foot the mucks up the works.  An example given was trying to
improve the quality of teachers through pay raises and stricter teacher
evaluation (including a Bar-like exam).  This all seems like a good plan
as presented, but there are things that upset the apple cart -- teachers
unions (incompetent teachers stand to lose their jobs), principals
(increased teacher autonomy threatens their power), etc.

Anyway, the relevant example was the NYC police sergeant exam.  It had
been widely criticized as racially biased and few blacks passed it.  So
NYC went to work to correct the problems and came back with a new exam
that satified the socialogist as being non-biased.  Hurra, thought
everyone, now black won't be failing the exam.  However, they _still_
failed the exam at nearly the same rate!  Blacks were still being held
out of sergeants positions in large numbers.  The result?  The exam
results are largely ignored in an effort to bring about a more racially
ballanced force.  One can only imagine that some marginally capable or
less than capable people are sitting in sergeants positions now even
thought they could not passed an exam everyone agrees is fair!

A side point from the same section.  Any exam to test competence or
ability to perform a task is going to have a bell shaped curve.  People
at the high end are almost certainly competent and people at the low end
are almost certainly incompetent.  Drawing a line through the bell as a
cuttoff point will also almost certainly have some incompetent people on
the higher side (because they crammed or got lucky, or something, but
the test is not a true measure of their abilities) and some competent
people on the other side (but who didn't study enough , or whose dog
died that morning or some other reason why they failed at that time to
do as good as they might otherwise be able to).

Regarding Prop 48, I feel that schools should treat their atheletes
admissions like everyone else.  My plan would have atheletes applying to
schools like everyone else, and only after they are accepted could they
be offered scholarships for their atheletic participation.  Most people
apply to many colleges and pick their final destination after getting
their acceptance letters.  If they are good students, they can get a
number of acceptance letters.  Atheletes who apply with the masses
should make the same decisions.  Atheletic departments could only make
scholarship offers to accepted students.  This will not work unless the
Ath. Dept. can be kept out of the admission process altogether.  It
therefore will not work...

Mike Percy             | grimlok@hubcap.clemson.edu  | I don't know about
Sr. Systems Analyst    | mspercy@clemson.clemson.edu | your brain, but mine
Info. Sys. Development | mspercy@clemson.BITNET      | is really...bossy.
Clemson University     | (803) 656-3780              | (Laurie Anderson)