New Article on Mismatch Theory by WUSTL Prof

[Miss P]

Katherine Y. Barnes of WUSTL recently authored "Is Affirmative Action Responsible for the Achievement Gap Between
Black and White Law Students?" in response to Richard Sander's theory of racial mismatch in law school admissions.  I haven't had a chance to read it thoroughly, but I thought it might be of interest to some of you.

A draft of the article is available here, and its draft abstract is below:

Abstract: While the Supreme Court upheld some affirmative action programs as
constitutional in 2003, the wisdom of affirmative action as a policy decision remains hotly
contested. In the law school context, the challenge is to determine how affirmative action policies
affect law schools, law students, and the legal profession. This paper takes up one strand of this
challenge, estimating how minority students would fare in a world with different affirmative
action policies than those currently implemented.

I posit a model of law school performance that controls for entering credentials and
allows for a "mismatch" between student and school (where the student is outmatch by his fellow
students). The model also allows for differences in the law school experience for students of
different races, which may be the result of discrimination or other differences in the way that law
school cultures affect students. The results indicate that, if anything, reverse mismatch boosts the
performance of students with low credentials. Using monte carlo simulations of graduation and
bar passage with bootstrapped standard errors, I find that removing affirmative action policies
decreases the number of new black lawyers each year by 13.4% ± 5.2%. This is in direct conflict
with a recent study by Richard Sander that estimates an increase in the number of new black
lawyers. Sander, however, assumes that there is no discriminatory effect on law student
performance, and therefore confounds discriminatory effects with the mismatch effect in his
analysis.

Finally, recognizing that the data upon which I and others rely is imperfect and unable to
provide a definitive answer regarding whether the mismatch theory applies in the law school
context, I suggest some experimental additions to the data to correct for these problems.

 

[Denny Crane]

tag

[Ersatz]

Tag. Good reading.

[Scribner]

The author fails to give an even more likely explanation: URMs get lower grades (studies show that URM #s actually predict higher grades than they achieve) because they don't have to work. They know that by showing up they will get some of the better jobs at the school. White students do the same thing after 1L, especially during 3L. It's the effect of lacking motivation.

[Astro]

BAFF, and hoping for Miss P's sake that the racist trolls don't gobble up this thread.

[Miss P]

BAFF, and hoping for Miss P's sake that the racist trolls don't gobble up this thread.

Oh, let them.  I'm just putting this out there.

[Astro]

BAFF, and hoping for Miss P's sake that the racist trolls don't gobble up this thread.

Oh, let them.  I'm just putting this out there.

Awww maaaan.  Why you got to be so TOLERANT all the time?  You damn LIBERALS!

[GoDumb]

Um, no.  Schools admit non-URM students with "below-average" numbers every year, who have other factors that may contribute to law school success in the eyes of the admissions office (unmeasured credentials).  The meaning in the above sentence as seen later in the paper is of measured credentials.  That's a major difference.

URMs, on the contrary, are admitted with lower numbers solely due to a URM boost.  And I daresay that URM-status is not a contributing factor to law school success (or failure).

How does one know that a URM is admitted soley due to their URM boost?  Does that mean URMs, unlike non-URMs with lower numbers, are incapable of having life experiences that would have helped them gain admission without their URM boost? 

[GoDumb]

In the case of a specific URM, one doesn't, and that's not the point. 

From a macro perspective though, the admissions process gives a candidate a URM-boost, placing that candidate in a cohort where he does not belong, even amongst non-URM peers who have similar numbers.


[/quote]

I did not understand the part where you state, “he does not belong, even amongst non-URM peers who have similar numbers."  So is the URM the only one that does not belong or do the non-URMs with similar numbers not belong as well?

[Astro]

Dude, he's a closet racist.  You're not going to get much more out of him.