> Standardized exams are the most fair and transparent.
perhaps the _most_ fair right now, but certainly not what I would consider fair.
consider a middle class family that has secure food, housing, and transportation vs lower class family where the child might potentially have less consistent sleep, food, or has to work to help pay bills.
It would be interesting to regress out family income from scores and then correct the scores to the national median family income. I wonder if anyone does that.
I'm pretty sure The College Board (makers of the SAT) have done that analysis. Not sure if they share it publicly, but I'll bet they share it with admissions officers.
Of course you can argue that. There is nothing that is perfectly fair. More fair would be to individually interview every college candidate with questions custom tailored their life experience via video chat where their face and voice is obscured as well as any accent and speech affectation they might have.
But that certainly isn't scalable. I'd argue the SAT is one of the most fair things we have at scale.
It's true that the SAT used to be biased (for example the word problems would use the word regatta which a wealthy east coast teen would know but a poor west coast teen would not) but from what I've seen they've done a good job removing that bias (as shown by this paper).
It would actually be really interesting if schools started using an AI-based live interview, where the interviewer (AI) was provided with their application file.
Admissions officers could then watch the recording, or rely on the automated scoring that the AI platform spits out.
Not everyone performs well on interviews, and I imagine performance would vary even more on interviews where you know your "interviewer" is an AI. But it could be really interesting, and a way to achieve the type of personalization and scale that you allude to.
Move all children to government controlled facilities and do not let them see their parents until they are some age like 21?
Or maybe we should get rid of all criteria for education and just do huge once a year lottery. You get one chance to enter. As poor people can not afford more.
You can still have elite schools for the absolute best (though I would question that certain self-styled 'elite schools' are really principally selecting for that and not e.g. wealth or family connections), but that doesn't mean that you cannot raise the bar on public and affordable education (including traditional schools and universities but also via other means, e.g. self-teaching via online resources). These are two competing goals and often people only focus on the one to the exclusion of the other, but they are both important.
Research shows students admitted based on affirmative action have higher drop out rates due to the academic mismatch effect. Giving preferential treatment based on class may be better than based on race, but such students may still be under prepared for the rigors of an elite university's program. After all, middle class families generally choose the best schools they can afford under the assumption that it has a material effect on the human capital of their children.
I also don't see the problem with students from poor families simply going to community college for a couple years then transferring to a state school. It's far cheaper and the curriculum is largely the same for most undergraduate courses.
The major problem that progressive don't want to recognize is the role of culture and family structure, e.g. lower class Blacks and Whites who view education negatively, and who tend to be raised by single mothers. Asians generally don't have this problem and have the highest SAT scores even when you control for family income.
To create wealth, you must identify and educate the most capable students.
The only way to pay for a large and generous welfare state is to educate the most capable to the highest level of ability. The tech industry was built by highly ambitious, competitive, risk-taking individuals.
"California collected almost $1 billion in personal income tax revenue from Palo Alto’s 94301 zip code in 2016. That was the most of any zip code in the state, according to a new LA Times analysis, which found that California’s top 1 percent of filers paid nearly 46 percent of income tax for that same year. "
Shelter, food and health are social issues that should be addressed much earlier in the pipeline. Well before a student applies to college.
For example in 2022, 63% of black children are born in single parent homes vs 16% of asian children. Having two parents around is an advantage in the doubling of resources.
What policy actions would you recommend to change what outcome?
Standardized exams are the most fair and transparent.
Materials and tutors are available easily for free or cheaply on the internet nowadays.