Hi all-Last year I came across the following factiod when researching minority performance on standardized tests:"…for high school seniors across the country in 2005, there were 864 African-Americans and 2,033 Latinos who earned a composite score of 29 or above on the ACT, while 66,708 white seniors did."Does anyone know where I could locate similar statistics for the LSAT? The project is over, it's more out of personal interest now.
While I do agree that rates are important, I feel that the fact that the numbers are so low bear more weight. Say the ACT has LSAT like status and is the only test administered for college. Each of the top ten schools has a 25% score of 29 and approximately 100 Black students in its 1st year class. Regardless of the rate (since black applicants and matrics are already underrepresented), you've got an issue of more spaces than "qualified" applicants. I personally think that the standardized test, while useful, does not tell the whole story. I also think that as a race, it is less likely for blacks to use test prep services, because they are either unaware of the services (didn't know what an SAT tutor was in high school), don't have financial resources, or have priorities (financial and otherwise) placed elsewhere. Notice I didn't say misplaced.And for purposes of admissions, black=African American. Origin/heritage doesn't matter.
Quote from: deltaAoverT on February 20, 2007, 02:25:25 PMWhile I do agree that rates are important, I feel that the fact that the numbers are so low bear more weight. Say the ACT has LSAT like status and is the only test administered for college. Each of the top ten schools has a 25% score of 29 and approximately 100 Black students in its 1st year class. Regardless of the rate (since black applicants and matrics are already underrepresented), you've got an issue of more spaces than "qualified" applicants. I personally think that the standardized test, while useful, does not tell the whole story. I also think that as a race, it is less likely for blacks to use test prep services, because they are either unaware of the services (didn't know what an SAT tutor was in high school), don't have financial resources, or have priorities (financial and otherwise) placed elsewhere. Notice I didn't say misplaced.And for purposes of admissions, black=African American. Origin/heritage doesn't matter.I'm not disagreeing that the numbers for blacks are lower, but without a percentage rate the gap can be skewed to look much larger than it is. If 100 people take a test, and the results show 50 whites make A's while only 3 blacks make A's it would seem to be a huger gap if people didn't realize that there were only 12 blacks to begin with.... To really be accurate, you would have to say that 25% of black students made A's or the results are going to be screwed since there are fewer black students taking the test than white students.. Yes African-American's are blacks, but not all blacks are African-American. When reporting statistics it is important to know whether the study was just about African American's or about all blacks. If the study were about all blacks the number of 170+ scorers would most likely be higher than if the study were just about African-American blacks which could lead people who don't read as carefully to making false assumptions about blacks as a whole rather than a subset of the black community.
Quote from: turbogirl3535 on February 20, 2007, 08:18:33 PMQuote from: deltaAoverT on February 20, 2007, 02:25:25 PMWhile I do agree that rates are important, I feel that the fact that the numbers are so low bear more weight. Say the ACT has LSAT like status and is the only test administered for college. Each of the top ten schools has a 25% score of 29 and approximately 100 Black students in its 1st year class. Regardless of the rate (since black applicants and matrics are already underrepresented), you've got an issue of more spaces than "qualified" applicants. I personally think that the standardized test, while useful, does not tell the whole story. I also think that as a race, it is less likely for blacks to use test prep services, because they are either unaware of the services (didn't know what an SAT tutor was in high school), don't have financial resources, or have priorities (financial and otherwise) placed elsewhere. Notice I didn't say misplaced.And for purposes of admissions, black=African American. Origin/heritage doesn't matter.I'm not disagreeing that the numbers for blacks are lower, but without a percentage rate the gap can be skewed to look much larger than it is. If 100 people take a test, and the results show 50 whites make A's while only 3 blacks make A's it would seem to be a huger gap if people didn't realize that there were only 12 blacks to begin with.... To really be accurate, you would have to say that 25% of black students made A's or the results are going to be screwed since there are fewer black students taking the test than white students.. Yes African-American's are blacks, but not all blacks are African-American. When reporting statistics it is important to know whether the study was just about African American's or about all blacks. If the study were about all blacks the number of 170+ scorers would most likely be higher than if the study were just about African-American blacks which could lead people who don't read as carefully to making false assumptions about blacks as a whole rather than a subset of the black community.Are you comfortable making that distinction? The last time I self-identified, I don't recall being asked to clarify whether I was black or African-American. The statistics of170+ scorers comes from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, which uses the terms interchangeably.
QuoteThe term black can be used for anyone, but African-American can't be used to describe all blacks.I feel as though the Black vs. African-American vs. African Heritage vs. Regular Black vs. Caribbean argument could spawn a thread of its own. Although you may disagree with semantics, for test reporting purposes, and in the eyes of most people looking at statistics, black and African-American are interchangeable.
The term black can be used for anyone, but African-American can't be used to describe all blacks.
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Quote from: deltaAoverT on February 21, 2007, 02:06:20 AMQuoteThe term black can be used for anyone, but African-American can't be used to describe all blacks.I feel as though the Black vs. African-American vs. African Heritage vs. Regular Black vs. Caribbean argument could spawn a thread of its own. Although you may disagree with semantics, for test reporting purposes, and in the eyes of most people looking at statistics, black and African-American are interchangeable. Titcr. I'm definitely not African-American (since I'm not American) but if that was the only option (ie just AA, not AA/Black), I would check that. I think most people I know who are Black but not American do the same.
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