From: djohns@elm.circa.ufl.edu (David A. Johns)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: What A White Person Learned in College About AfAm Culture
Date: 11 Jan 93 09:58:04 GMT
Organization: University of Florida, Gainesville

In article <dlhanson.25.726165731@nap.amoco.com> dlhanson@nap.amoco.com (David L. Hanson) writes:

# Are the affirmative discrimination programs admitting people who
# are likely to fail or not?

One problem here is that the tools we use to predict success or
failure don't work very well across groups.  As a result, claims that
we are admitting "unqualified" people have no meaning.

Don't you find it interesting that people who think SAT tests are poor
predictors for themselves suddenly think they're important in judging
affirmative action programs?

# You gave your opinion that the universities need to admit by the
# "rainbow" but you don't tell us if that is the criteria for
# admission.  If the criteria in an affirmative discrimination
# program is skin color, are we to be suprised that there is a high
# failure rate among those admitted under that program?

Schools, at least those choosier than the basic state factory
schools, have always used "diversity" criteria.  They chose people
with interesting skills, people from different regions, and believe it
or not, even people of different races.  It's just that this diversity
didn't reach quite as far into minority communities as it could have.

# The Chicago Public school system, probably the worst of big city
# school systems in the country in terms of graduation rates and test
# scores, gets more money per pupil (about $1000 more per year) than
# the suburban school districts in the Chicago area.  Money is not
# the answer!

This is a non-sequitur.  You don't know if money is the answer and
neither do I.  It could well be that the city schools are getting 50%
more per student while they actually need twice as much.  Or it could
be that the money they are getting is poorly administered.

You can't compare city and suburban schools head to head because of
different populations, different crime problems, different property
values, etc.  In fact, you mention a couple of "apples and oranges"
differences yourself:

# (Admittedly, I think that very strong unions and a huge bureacracy
# eat up more than the difference.  But this doesn't mean that the
# state or feds should give them more money.  It is a matter for the
# Chicago taxpayers who need to stand up to the unions and the school
# administration.)

When I lived in Chicago, at least, one of the problems with inner city
schools was that teachers were allowed to pick the high school they
worked at by seniority.  That meant that the more experienced teachers
generally drifted to schools in the more affluent neighborhoods, while
the ghetto schools were staffed largely by substitutes and beginners.

# Mr. Turner, I have no easy answers to the problem.  Two of the
# answers provided by liberals, 1. More money and 2. affirmative
# discrimination don't work, in my opinion.

I really doubt that you have any scientific basis for this claim,
although if you do, I'd certainly like to hear about it.  Start by
defining what you consider to be "the problem" and what evidence you
would accept for either answering or not answering it.

Note also that you've jumped back and forth between two very different
problems here, public education (which is supposed to be free,
compulsory, and equal) and college admissions.

# The affirmative discrimination programs which admit unqualified
# students either set the students up to fail or turn the university
# into a provider of elementary and high school ("remedial") classes.

If you're talking about bottom-of-the-line state schools, they're
already doing this.  The question of who is qualified to enter college
is basically moot, since the answer these days seems to be "anyone
breathing".

David