Discriminations

Norma Tienda, well she was the one opened her mouth about the 10% plan at the the U of Texas right? Heh,he, heh.......... This so - called researcher from Princeton has some strange things to say indeed. I am not really surprised by her so CALLED "study". Presumably , she means " selective " colleges are of the likes of Stanford, harvard , yale and bryn mawr (which accepted 57 % of its applicants last year). Yes, they are indeed " selective " but not competetive. The reality is this, what can be said about blacks in regards to
their performance in " selective " private schools compared to the performance of blacks attending public universities are also true for whites and Asians. In other words, whites who attend public universities have a lower graduation rate than whites who attend
" selective " private schools. The reasons for that are many. Study after study has shown among them that of Daniel Levine of CCNY that majority of students who drop out of public schools do not drop out because of academic reasons but because of other reasons. In other words getting a grade of F at CCNY has less to do with it than myriad other reasons. These studies say that among the many reasons are getting a job, financial problems, family considerations or problems, change of major, change of schools etc. Levine eventually concludes that many of those who drop out of CCNY eventually get a degree even if it took them 20 years to get that degree. Considering the demographics of people attending public universities versus private schools that makes a lot of sense. People attending public universities are generally less affluent than those attending private schools. Just take a look at the Irvine Foundation study and you will know what I mean, or just compare the economic data of students attending Berkeley versus Stanford and you will understand what I am talking about.

At a private school be it Stanford or Bryn Mawr, there is a greater pressure to pass the students on the faculty. This results in the predictable grade inflation. If 15 % of the freshman class of Stanford drops out, do you think the wealthy alumni parents would like to send their mediocre children and monetary donations to Stanford ? Furthermore, the mediocre children of alumni at Stanford or Bryn Mawr are not gonna major in demanding majors like premed or physics or engineering etc. They are more likely to major in English, history or the humanities. As the white actor Ed Norton ( American History X ) said " I could not hack my physics classes at Yale that is why I switched to an English major " . Or as a Columbia student told the author Ruth Sidel in her book " The smartest students here in Columbia are the engineering majors, but there is great pressure by the administration on the faculty to push forward and pass these humanities majors here at Columbia ". This study by Tienda is so much flotsam and jetsam that can be sent downriver just like the book " The Shape of the River ". Or she might sell the study in a flea market, after all in Spanish the word " tienda " means market in English.

First of all, Professor Tienda's first name is Marta, I don't know where you got "Norma." Second, Tienda has an impeccable reputation for methodological rigor. You don't have to agree with her policy reccomendations but it's pretty hard to quibble with her math. There are a lot of academics who will write a bunch of opinions and call it a study but she's not one of them. Your tone is pretty presumptive for not having actually read her study, which following the ettiquette of sociology she would probably email you if you asked politely. Finally, I would be surprised if she were not cognizant of the research you mention (Bok and Bowen were). But that actually makes her point. From the excerpt, it seems that she is disputing the "mismatch" hypothesis. This hypothesis goes that affirmative action harms its alleged beneficiaries by asking them to punch above their weight and they therefore drop out. However since, as you point out, elite schools generally have more resources and students drop out because of lack of resources rather than poor grades, this more than compensates for any mismatch effect. Therefore, say, a student with a 1400 SAT and 3.7 GPA is more likely to graduate amidst better qualified classmates at Yale than among his academic equals at the University of Michigan. Since this is exactly the sort of mismatch affirmative action accomplishes, it is actually effective in promoting the academic achievement of its beneficiaries.
There does seem to be a mismatch effect evident in class rank, but not in graduation, since as you pointed out, graduation has relatively little to do with academics. However, there doesn't seem to be a soft majors effect. Bok and Bowen found that black students were just as likely to choose the hard sciences as white students. Blacks were less likely to choose the humanities and more likely to choose the social sciences than whites, but I've never heard anyone argue that English is more demanding than anthropology, or vice versa.
In general I think you ought to calm down. The comments section of this blog has taken an unfortunate turn towards hyperbole that makes it much less appealling than John's posts. You can make a criticism, even an ill-informed one, of Marta's work without a pointless quip about flea markets.

I am happy that Norma Tienda has finally contradicted all the anti-black propaganda. Some of you would like to keep the blacks down on the farm where they belong.

If an african american student can pull the load, they need to be given the opportunity. Affirmative Action has been good to me, and I think it's worth giving it more time to prove itself.

To Akefa: Marta, not Norma.

To Grossman: I don't have the study at hand, but I'd need to know how the authors controlled for the fact that non-selective schools have a higher drop rate for all students.

But the idea of the study confuses me. So selective schools have a higher graduation rate. Does this mean we push in more students? That's probably self-defeating.

Here is a simple analogy. People who talk to plants have healthier plants. We know why -- if you are crazy enough to talk to a plant you probably take good care of it. Teaching people to talk to plants completely misses the point.

But I know these are points that might be covered in the study.

Akefa,

Amen! I couldn't have said it better myself, brother.

--Cobra

"Some of you would like to keep the blacks down on the farm where they belong."

I would be ashamed to think such evil of other people. If I did think it, I would stay the hell away from them. Why would you torture yourself by reading the comments of people who think you belong down on the farm?

I've read John's blog, and posted comments on it, for a few years now. But if the level of venom among some of the newer commenters doesn't subside, I won't continue to visit. It's just getting too ugly.

Some of you would like to keep the blacks down on the farm where they belong.

Don't you mean plantation? Come on, get with the program. You have got to use the correct victimization language or you will be drummed out of the NAACP!

Laura,

You have been a valuable contributor to this site. Don't allow a few trolls to drive you away from here. This is John's blog, not theirs. Would you move out of your house if it was infested with vermin? You would call an exterminator . The equivalence here is to either make fun of them (as I do) or ignore them. Never, ever engage them in a discussion. They are immune to fact and reason and it will just frustrate you as it apparently has.

Akefa and Cobra, it's Ok to Leave the Plantation!

Gabriel Rossman,

This is the same Miss Tienda who wrote about the effects of the 10% rule in U of Texas, I read her study of that situation in Austin and she supports the idea of the 10% rule just like Lani Guinier. Among the rather amusing conclusions that she makes is that she is surprised that students in rural areas , presumably Mexican American students in the Rio Grande Valley who rank in the top 2nd decile or between the 80th and 90th percentile of their graduating classes had a harder time getting inside the U of Texas _ Austin than students in the 2nd top decile of their classes in the suburban areas of Houston and Dallas who presumanbly are white. That is not really surprising, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out as to why that happens.
Students who rank in the top 2nd decile
in the suburban schools of Dallas and Houston have HIGHER AVERAGE STANDARDIZED TEST SCORES than the Mexican American students who are in the top 2nd decile of high schools in the Rio Grande Valley. Since neither group is protected by or could avail themselves of the protection of the 10% rule, it is only predictable that the students from the Rio Grande Valley will have a harder time getting inside the U of Texas- Austin than the kids who come from the suburban schools of Dallas and Austin. This kind of claims by Miss Tienda smacks of the preposterous and outrageous claim of Lani Guinier that students admitted under the 10 % rule in U of Texas- Austin had higher average GPA's than during their stay
at the U of Texas - Austin than those who were not admitted under the 10 % rule. The claim by Bok and Bowen that blacks chose the hard sciences at the same percentage as whites for universities as a whole is simply not true. I read the book " The Shape of the River " and my conclusion about that book is that it is nothing but the drawing of false conclusions by both authors. The claim that " selective
schools " do a better job in graduating blacks is nonsense. The vast majority of blacks , like Asians and whites do not graduate from the Ivies.
We can have a long discussion about this book , but that is for another time.I already pointed out the reasons as to why private universities have higher graduation rates than public schools.
It has nothing to with goodness or kindness or the desire to right the wrongs of slavery etc. Have we really lost our senses in believing that private schools do things out of a sheer moral imperative? NO, private schools do things because of pure self -interest , it has to do with their survival. The ability to have a higher graduation rate than public schools on the average is part of that survival mode. Akefa, this has nothing to do with putting anybody down on the farm or the plantation or whatever. This has to do with reality. Asians and whites who enroll in public schools have lower graduation rates than Asians or whites who enroll in so - called "selective " private schools. You can see for yourselves the similarity between blacks and whites and Asians in regard to this matter. Miss Tienda as far as I know is a race preferentialist. She supports the 10 % rule , was against Prop. 209. This is not the first time, I encountered her writings.

If she is the one who wrote the study of UT top 10 admission, she gave every anti-AA person the ammunition needed. Her data clearly shows that AA admissions duck hard classes, congregate in AA-like majors such as African-American Studies. That such AA admissions totally avoid hard classes like science and engineering and avoid classes with too many asian students.

It also showed the lack of academic rigor at majority black and majority hispanic high schools.

To reiterate, it's not appropriate to control for a school's general retention rate since the whole argument is that "mismatch" arguments overlook this. There might very well be a negative interaction between race and selectivity, but it's obviously swamped by the main selectivity effect. Again, without having read it, I imagine that the Alon & Tienda paper is more or less aimed at rebutting the "mismatch" argument. This isn't a unique paper in this regard but replication is an important part of the scientific method.
In any case, I don't really see why people so vigorously need to dispute this finding. The world is seldom so convenient that principle and every single fact neatly correlate. You can concede the failure of the mismatch argument and still oppose AA on other empirical grounds and more importantly, on grounds of principle.
As for Tienda's personal beliefs, yes she does favor affirmative action. If you disagree with her on this, that's fine, but it doesn't mean her studies are "worthless" or that she's a "so-called" researcher. As before, maybe you should take her policy conclusions with a grain of salt but her math should be solid.

Leo Cruz,
That's great that you've read her stuff so carefully and noticed non sequiturs having to do with the 9th decile. I'm not saying Tienda's reputation makes her infallible, but it should put her above silly ad hominem dismissal as in the anonymous first comment.

I don't think Cobra or Afeka are trolls, certainly not vermin. They may be resistant to our arguments, but they do attempt to put forth their side of the issues with reasonable restraint. I think they're wrong, but not hostile. If anything just skip past their comments if you cannot bear to hear their point of view.

"Some of you would like to keep the blacks down on the farm where they belong."

Nobody important, this isn't hostile? This is a point of view?

Haven't been around for a while. The additions of Cobra and Akefa are very disquieting, as John has noted.

I'll say this with some authority, and I hope that Cobra and Akefa are listening. This obsession with racial spoils is killing both of you. You are misidentifying the problem in your lives. AA and racism are not your problems. Your obsession with AA and racism is your problem.

Both of you really need to turn your lives around, and the way to do that is to stop blaming others for your problems. This blaming, and your racial animus, is poisoning your lives.

I strongly suggest that you both find something better to do, like learning a profitable and useful profession. Once you've done that, you'll find that the racial animus begins to diminish and you will be thinking of more pleasant things.

Just as an example. My wife is very sick. She is being attending by a Filipino home nurse. Jose is an immigrant to the U.S. He went back to school, even though he was impoverished, and he learned a new trade in 2 and a half years.

Instead of this infernal blaming of others, why don't you take this course? The demand for RNs and LPNs is enormous. You can learn a new profession in a short time and earn $40K to $60 right off the bat. If an immigrant Filipino who didn't even know the language could do this, what is your excuse?

The truth is you don't have any. Get busy and make something out of yourselves and stop the bitching. It makes you look very bad. What you are really doing is offering up excuses. I don't buy them. You are either to lazy or too proud to take advantage of what's available.

NI, I will grant you this, as far as trolls go, the ones on this site are far from the worst I have seen. However, what makes them trolls is the fact that they post on a website that they strongly disagree with, make ad hominem attacks on the people posting on the site, hijack the comment section by making attacks that are not related to the original post, and then proceeding to monopolize the subsequent posts by repeating their points ad infinitum.

By the way NI you took my comments too literally. I was not calling them vermin. I was just using an analogy to show why Laura should not stop posting. If I had said, “if your house is infested with trolls,” you would have though that I was not all there.

You claim that Tienda's math is possesed of such rigor but that is really the problem. People can compile the same kind of mathematical data but
can have different interpretations about the data in the realm of the humanities and social studies.

The problem that Tienda got is this , she made conclusions that have nothing to do or can be supported by her study. I read her study about the 10% plan in Texas . Nothing in there supports her conclusion that the 10 % plan supports a correct approach with regards to admissions at the U of Texas. It is like asking me to believe that the conclusions made by Bok and Bowen in "The Shape of the River " are supported by the data that they presented in the book. Now that is one book that deserves to be sent downriver as far as the veracity of its claims are concerned. You came from UCLA right ? you know where they got the data from , right? They got it from the HIgher Education Institute at UCLA. The thing is, Bok and Bowen refused to released the data. The names of respondents in the survey could be blotted out in the magnetic tapes and hence anonymity would be preserved . the release of that
data will enable us to see how they came to their conclusions. Even Alexander Astin ( he probably was one of your professors ) could not explain as to how Bok and Bowen came to those conclusions in the book. It will involve a long discussion as to why the claims in that book are wrong, so I will touch on it another time. Going back to Marta Tienda and the 10 % rule in Texas. The study has really nothing new to say, it describes the effects of the 10 % rule at Texas, but in itself it does not justfiy race preferences or the 10% rule. People don't seem to understand something about these percentage plans. Percentage plans are something akin to geographical preferences. Like all preferences that have nothing to do with income, it favors the rich and the middle class or those who have access to better educational resources. Look at it this way, at every high school in DAllas or Houston, the Rio Grande Valley, Waco,Brownsville, Corpus Christi , el Paso,Midland, Odessa or Lubbock, Texas, who do you think are more likely to be members of the top 10% of each graduating high school class? It is the more economically priveledged students,
it is the rich and the middle class who are likely to members of the top 10 %, not the poor students. You can now see very clearly that there is no difference between race preferences, alumni preferences and percentage plans. They all are an affirmative action program for the middle class and the wealthy.That is exactly what happened with the 4 % plan in California. I can discuss here as to how these percentage plans came to be in this counry and use examples as to how wrong it really is.
To be sure, race preferentialists will cite this new Tienda study justlike they used her previous one to support their cause. Again, since black students
in private schools have higher graduation rates than black students in public schools just like their white and Asian counterparts does not by any logical stretch of the imagination justify the use of race preferences as Marta Tienda is trying to imply.

Gabriel,

There are a few things that I want more to say about the Tienda study.With regards to the " hypothesis mismatch ", there are studies that show
that blacks still on the average perform on a lower level with regards to professional school standardized tests admissions and even graduation rates from professional schools or retention rates in medical residency programs. Again, let me say however that these are averages not individual cases of people. i am of the opinion that race preferences is a factor that affects these rates. Let us go back however to the relationship between race peferences and graduation rates of blacks in college. I had already said b4 that the majority of blacks who drop out of colleges do not drop out because of academic reasons , at least in the public schools but because of more pressing worries of the financial, family and job kind. That is also true for whites and Asians. Now let me pose this question to you, if we increase the number of blacks thru race preferences in the public universities would it increase the graduation rate of blacks ? I am of the opinion that it is highly unlikely since job, family and financial considerations are far more important factors that affect graduation rates than race preferences. If people really want to increase the graduation rates of blacks,whites or Asians it would be more important to address those concerns first. I can perhaps use another analogy to this. Whites make up a minority of the freshman classes at the so called "exam schools " of NYC, namely Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech. If we make whites the majority in those high schools , say 70% of the entering freshman classes by admitting more whites who scored below the cutoff score of the entrance exam, would that increase the average SAT score of whites graduating from these schools ? In the same way , I would suggest that it would be easier to raise the gradation rates of blacks in the private schools by engaging in grade inflation or addressing the financial concerns of the black students than engaging in race preferences. That is the reason why any attempt on the part
of Marta Tienda to link race preferences
with black graduation rates does not make sense. Increasing the number of blacks in the colleges thru race preferences might even lower the graduation rates of blacks. Since you
go to Princeton along with Marta Tienda,
you can tell her that she can write me at matanglawin610@yahoo.com.

Marta, Norma, down on the farm, up the plantation.

All of this will be remedied in the near future.

Why?

Taliban comin'!!!!