By (Bye?) The Numbers

Kate Malcolm of Kitchen Cabinet is alarmed by numbers she cites revealing that of 4461 law school applicants last year who had both a GPA average of 3.5 or higher and a LSAT score of 165 or above (the median for Michigan’s entering class), only 29 were black and 114 were Hispanic. She has three posts discussing this that are worth reading (here, here, and here), all of which call for … more numbers.

I certainly agree that more data is better than less data, but on the other hand I believe that the decibel level of the debate over the desirability of racial preferences would not be reduced one whit even if perfect data were somehow produced, a point made (I think) in a post by Dean Jens.

UPDATE – See Kimberly Swygert’s masterful discussion of test bias as it relates to this issue here Number 2 Pencil. (Her archives aren’t working. Scroll down to the first post that appears under 4/28/2003.)

Say What? (1)

  1. Kimberly April 30, 2003 at 12:58 pm | | Reply

Say What?