Tuesday, October 02, 2018

Disparate Impact, Meet Disparate Performance

The LA Times has a piece out on the recent state standardized tests. It has this nifty chart:

20% of black students met state standards in math. So 80% of black students are deficient in math. Meanwhile, 69% of Asian students met state standards in math. So when you look at tech companies that rely on high math ability and see nothing but Asian and White faces are you really sure it's some discrimination?

Worse still, 32% of black students met state standards in English. Never mind that English is the native language of black-Americans.

“It looks like the standards that are being set are reasonable if three-quarters of the Asian kids … and two-thirds of the white kids are meeting or exceeding them. We want the same for all children,” she said.
You can want whatever you like. The data says that "the same for all children" is simply not possible. Yes, not possible. Why? Because even with the highest performing group there is this thing called "variation". You will never, ever get "the same for all children" or "the same for all people". These educators have been doing all kinds of trickery and the results have been the same for decades and decades now. The solution is not magic dirt or magic tests.