Rainbow Project CP

CP TEXT: Universities and Colleges should implement the Rainbow Project in

consideration for college admission decisions
Sternberg 8, Robert Jeffrey [Robert J. Sternberg (born December 8, 1949) is an American psychologist and psychometrician. He is
Professor of Human Development at Cornell University.[1] Prior to joining Cornell, Sternberg was president of the University of Wyoming.[2] He
has been Provost and Professor at Oklahoma State University, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, IBM Professor of Psychology and
Education at Yale University. Smart Guy who has a Wikipedia]. “Increasing Academic Excellence and Enhancing Diversity Are Compatible Goals.”
Educational Policy 22, no. 4 (July 2008): 487–514. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904807310037.

In sum, the theory of successful intelligence appears to provide a strong theoretical basis for augmented
assessment of the skills needed for college success. There is evidence to indicate that it has good
incremental predictive power and serves to increase equity. As teaching improves and college teachers
emphasize more the creative and practical skills needed for success in school and life, the predictive
power of the test may increase. Cosmetic changes in testing during the past century have made relatively little difference to the
construct validity of assessment procedures. The theory of successful intelligence could provide a new opportunity
to increase construct validity at the same time that it reduces differences in test performance between
groups. It may indeed be possible to accomplish the goals of affirmative action through tests such as the
Rainbow assessments, either as supplements to traditional affirmative action programs or as substitutes
for them. Other modern theories of intelligence, such as those mentioned earlier in the article (e.g., Ceci, 1996; Gardner, 1983), may also
serve to improve prediction and increase diversity. Moreover, other approaches to supplementing the SAT, and the
Rainbow tests, may be called for. For example, Oswald, Schmitt, Kim, Ramsay, and Gillespie (2004), found biodata and situational
judgment tests (the latter of which we also used) to provide incremental validity to the SAT. Sedlacek (2004) developed
noncognitive measures that appear to have had success in enhancing the college admissions process.
There is no question that the methods used in the Rainbow Project are at the early stages of development. They do not have more than 100
years of experience behind them, as do traditional methods. What the results suggest is that an argument is to be made
for broader assessments—that broader assessments are not synonymous with fuzzy-headed
assessments. Such assessments can improve prediction and increase diversity, rather than trading off
the one for the other. Broader assessments do not replace conventional ones; they supplement them.
Our results show an important role for traditional analytical abilities in college success. But these are not
the only abilities that matter and should not be the only abilities we measure. The Rainbow Project is
part of a long history of efforts to understand and improve college admissions (see Karabel, 2006) and to
understand how to increase equity in admissions (see Bowen, Kurzweil, & Tobin, 2006). Karabel (2006) and
Bourdieu (2002) pointed out, as did Sternberg (1997), that elites define merit in ways that protect their own interests. McDonough
(1997) also showed how social class affects choices of college, and Bernstein (2003) showed how
educational structures perpetuate class divisions in society. In college admissions, at various times,
criteria such as gender, socially defined race, religion, and social class have been used as college
admissions criteria, sometimes quite explicitly, simply because those in positions of power wished to
protect their own. I have referred to this as the similarity reason underlying conservatism in college
admissions. One might, facetiously, suggest that colleges use height as a basis for their admissions. After all, people who are in higher
positions tend to be taller than those who are in lower positions. Height has other advantages. First, we know what it is, which is more than can
be said for intelligence. Second,
it can be measured with great reliability across instruments, showing much
more consistency across tape measures than IQ does across conventional tests of intelligence. Third, it is
highly reliable across short periods, whereas intelligence test scores can fluctuate considerably. Fourth,
it is harder to cheat on tests of height than on tests of intelligence. Finally, there are no books or courses
on how to improve height in the way there are such materials on improving test scores. If we were to use
height, it would likely become a self-fulfilling prophecy, so that success would depend even more than it now does on height. A second factor
that has caused conservatism is the pseudo-quantitative precision reason. Basically, admissions officers and others tend to prefer assessments
that are quantified because they somehow feel more solid and scientific, whether they really are or not. A third factor is the publication reason.
Tests have gained in importance because test means are widely published, in places ranging from local newspapers to guidebooks and
magazines. The publication of test scores results in pressure to raise scores and to ignore other factors that might be relevant but that are not
seen as raising ratings.
A fourth factor is the culpability reason. Admissions officers are afraid that if they do
not weigh test scores heavily, and scores go down, they may individually be held culpable for the
perceived declining reputation of the institution. A fifth factor is superstition. People come to believe that certain test scores
are necessary for success, much as they may have once believed (or still believe, in many places) that a certain religion, gender, socially defined
race, or socioeconomic class is necessary for success. When people have such superstitions, they may easily become self-fulfilling prophecies.
People act in ways to make them come true. The Rainbow Project is not a final answer to the problem of how to cope with college admissions.
But it may provide one avenue for rethinking admissions. At
Tufts University, we have implemented the Kaleidoscope
Project, a variant of the Rainbow Project. We have included in the context of the college application
optional activities to measure analytical, creative, practical, and wisdom-based skills. For example,
students might be asked to speculate on what the world would be like today if some historical event had
come out differently (e.g., the Nazis had won World War II) or to write a creative short story or to draw
an advertisement for a new product. We have already found this project to enhance our college
admissions process. In the first year of the project, we had fewer weak applicants, more strong
applicants, many more underrepresented minority applicants, and an overall increase in applications. So
we believe that there is promise for improving college admissions, if only we allow ourselves to think in transformational ways.

Creativity eliminates the stereotype threat

Kaufman 10, James C [James C. Kaufman is a psychologist known for his research on creativity. He is a Professor of Educational
Psychology at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut.]. “Using Creativity to Reduce Ethnic Bias in College Admissions.” Review of
General Psychology 14, no. 3 (September 1, 2010): 189–203. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020133.//wwAR

Another possibility to be considered is the phenomenon of stereotype threat. Many studies have suggested that individuals
feel stress when placed in a situation where they run the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about
their group (e.g., ethnicity). This stress often causes poor performance (Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson,
1995). Nguyen and Ryan (2008) conducted a metaanalysis of stereotype threat studies found an overall
effect size of 0.26. Stereotypes about intelligence are widely known, even among people who are
targets of the stereotypes and who do not endorse them (Devine, 1989). As a result, for example, an
African American test-taker may worry about confirming negative stereotypes, which causes added
stress—and, by extension, a lower performance on the test. Schmader and Johns (2003) argue that
stereotype threat causes reduced working memory. What may then occur is that members of ethnicities
who have traditionally scored lower on IQ tests may experience “disidentification” in this domain—in
other words, they gradually remove this domain (in this case, analytic and other “IQ test” type abilities)
from their conception of self (Crocker & Major, 1989; Steele, 1997). Instead of identifying themselves with these types
of abilities, some people may instead identify themselves with other important cognitive abilities that are not associated with IQ tests. One
of these abilities, judging from studies like J. Kaufman (2006), might be creativity. Some studies have,
indeed, demonstrated how minorities can use creativity to reduce stress and improve self concept.
Metzl (2009) studied survivors of Hurricane Katrina. He found that for all survivors, originality (as
measured by the TTCT) indirectly was linked to positive well-being. In African Americans, however, both
flexibility and originality were directly linked to both lower stress levels and higher life satisfaction. In
addition, survivors of all ethnicities viewed creativity as important factors in their resilience. Similarly,
Shinnar (2008) studied how Mexican immigrants best coped with negative social identity. She found that
one of the most-used and best-used strategies was social creativity. In this concept of social creativity
(e.g., Turner & Brown, 1978), a person changes his or perceptions instead of taking individual action.
Shinnar found, for example, that some of her interviewees focused on positive elements of what their jobs meant to them (such as being a hard
worker) instead of the negative elements often imposed by others (such as working in a low-status job).

Example Rainbow Project Questions; what the cp implies

Robert J Sternberg 2008 , Robert Jeffrey [Robert J. Sternberg (born December 8, 1949) is an American psychologist and
psychometrician. He is Professor of Human Development at Cornell University.[1] Prior to joining Cornell, Sternberg was president of the
University of Wyoming.[2] He has been Provost and Professor at Oklahoma State University, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, IBM
Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale University. Smart Guy who has a Wikipedia]. “Increasing Academic Excellence and Enhancing
Diversity Are Compatible Goals.” Educational Policy 22, no. 4 (July 2008): 487–514. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904807310037.

My collaborators and I decided to find out. In one study, the Rainbow Project, we designed tests of
creative and practical thinking that could supplement tests like the SAT Reasoning Test, which measures
analytical skills in the verbal and mathematical domains. We tested 1,013 high school students and
college freshmen from 15 different schools. We posed analytical questions much like those traditionally
found on standardized tests. But we also asked the students to answer creative and practical
questions. The creative tests required the students to stretch their imaginations. For example, they
might be asked to write a creative story with a title like The Octopus's Sneakers or 3821. Or they
might be shown a collage of pictures, such as of musicians or athletes, and be asked to tell a story
about the collage. Or they might be asked to caption an untitled comic strip. The practical tests
required the students to solve everyday problems. Some tests were presented verbally; others,
through videos. For example, students might see a movie showing a student about to ask a professor
for a letter of recommendation, but also showing the blank look on the professor's face, indicating
that he did not know who the student was. The task would be to decide what the student should do.
Or students might see a video that shows a group of friends trying to figure out how to move a large bed
up a winding staircase.
 Grade Inflation DA
Grade inflation is more prevalent in affluent schools, and puts low-income and
minority students at a disadvantage-Camera’18
(Lauren Camera. Lauren Camera is an education reporter at U.S. News & World Report. She’s covered education policy and politics for nearly a
decade and has written for Education Week, The Hechinger Report, Congressional Quarterly, Roll Call, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
She was a 2013 Spencer Education Fellow at Columbia University’s School of Journalism, where she conducted a reporting project about the
impact of the Obama administration’s competitive education grant, Race to the Top. USnews. https://www.usnews.com/news/education-
news/articles/2018-09-19/the-gpa-gap-rich-students-have-grades-inflated-more-often-than-poor-students//SAK)

AFFLUENT STUDENTS HAVE major advantages when it comes to K-12 education: Among them, better teachers, more access to advanced
courses, resources for counselors and a variety of extracurricular activities, which when combined can lead to higher high school graduation
and college-going rates than their poorer peers. Now those wealthy students can add to that list another advantage their
less affluent peers don't receive: grade inflation. A new study on grade inflation published Wednesday shows that schools
attended by more affluent students saw less rigorous grading than schools attended by less affluent
ones. While median grade point averages increased in both school types between 2005 and 2016, it increased more in the more affluent
schools. "In other words, it's gotten easier to get a good grade in more affluent schools, but not in less
affluent ones," says Seth Gershensen, associate professor at American University who conducted the research and authored the report.
"The GPA Gap has widened." Gershensen used statewide data on all public school students in North Carolina who took Algebra 1 between 2005
and 2016 and compared their grades to scores on the state's end-of-course standardized exam. He also compared their cumulative GPAs to ACT
college entrance exams. Researchers have long documented the mismatch between school grades and their performance on tests, but prior
research has been limited to smaller pools of students – those who took the SAT, for example, or those at a specific school. Looking at all
public school students in the Tarheel State allowed Gershensen to draw conclusions about the
difference in grade inflation between poor and rich students, which until now hadn't been done. The study
showed that the likelihood of receiving an A remained about constant between 2005 and 2016 among students attending the same school and
who scored similarly on end-of-year exams. But more and less affluent schools experienced very different trends in that likelihood during the
same time period: Beginning in 2010, the probability of receiving an A in more affluent schools increased significantly, while beginning in 2013
the probability of receiving an A in less affluent schools decreased significantly. An analysis of the ACT scores also shows that grade inflation
accelerated from about 2011 onward, mostly in schools serving advantaged students. "I wasn't expecting to see that, and if anything, you might
assume to see the opposite," Gershensen says, explaining that instances like the recent graduation scandal in the District of Columbia, in which
administrators fudged attendance data in order to graduate more students, had him expecting to perhaps see the opposite effect, if any. So
who's to blame? Gershensen says he expects the culprits are pushy parents and insistent students. "Both
parents and students
from more well-off backgrounds have the social capital and confidence to confront the teachers in the
first place," he says. "The classic helicopter parent stereotype. If you think about why parents would be doing that, a lot of them are
well aware of the high-stakes and potential payoff of going to an elite university." Such GPA gaps, as Gershensen describes them, can have a
devastating impact in driving larger education and socioeconomic gaps. "When
students in more affluent schools
systematically receive more optimistic evaluations of their current and future performance than their
more disadvantaged peers, they will act on this misleading information," he writes in the report. "That
means, among other things, that they will apply to and attend more selective postsecondary
institutions. In this way, inflated grades trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy that perpetuates – even
exacerbates – existing socioeconomic gaps in educational access and success." The study looked at the issue of
grade inflation more broadly, also finding that many students who receive good grades do not demonstrate mastery on end-of-year exams, and
that some students with good grades fail to demonstrate simple proficiency. In fact, among students with top grades, just 3 percent of students
earning a B and 21 percent of students earning an A reach the highest level of achievement. And for those who earned a B, more than one-
third, or 36 percent, of them did not even score proficient. The report underscores that grade inflation can be a double-blow to poor students,
both because it can widen the socioeconomic gap when the grades of wealthy students are inflated, and also because when poor students'
grades are inflated it may cause them to miss out on tutoring services that could help them catch up, or worse, lead them to graduate high
school mistakenly thinking they have the necessary knowledge or skills for college or a career. One potential fix, Gershensen posited, is
designing a system akin to a GDP deflator, which economists use to predict dollar amounts over time. If we knew which schools were more
prone to grade inflation, he says, a GPA deflator of some sort would allow a better apples to apples comparison. "There's no debate that grade
inflation exists," he says. "It's unequally distributed across schools. It is especially perilous for disadvantaged students."
Standardized tests for admission are key to fighting forms of inequality-taking them
away greatly deepens inequalities through areas of larger inequities such as rising
grade inflation- alternatives don’t solve. DeBoer’18
(Freddie DeBoer is an doctoral student in rhetoric and composition at Purdue University.
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/20/the-sat-can-level-the-playing-field-in-education///SAK)

The SAT does not enjoy a good reputation among progressives. Arguments against the use of the test, as well as its analog, the ACT, abound.
Both are widely derided as tools of elitism, rejected as culturally biased, and denounced for dehumanizing test takers. I understand the intuitive
feeling that we should not reduce human potential to a test score. And the major testing companies (and nonprofit organizations like the
Educational Testing Service, which basically function like companies) are not particularly sympathetic entities. But if you believe in equality and
a more level playing field in college admissions, you should defend the SAT. Unequal SAT Results Mirror an Unequal Society Some caveats are in
order. First, it’s important to acknowledge that yes, SAT results reflect inequalities in race and social class. Black and Hispanic students and poor
students do not perform as well on these tests as their white and affluent counterparts, mirroring state-mandated standardized test results and
grading distributions. But this reflects a symptom of larger inequality, not a biased test. Poorer students and racial minorities suffer in these
testing outcomes because of socioeconomic inequalities that dog our entire educational system. Test development includes a process called
differential item functioning. In this diagnostic, students from different demographic backgrounds are matched by ability and take the same
test items. Once overall ability is controlled for, black students do just as well as white on the same items, as do poor students and wealthier
ones. Racial and class inequalities in the SAT certainly are troubling—but only insofar as they show our persistently unequal society. Critics of
standardized tests often complain that affluent students have greater access to test prep materials and coaching. This is indeed a concern, but
the research here is clear: coaching
services produce far smaller gains than those advertised by the big test
prep companies, which routinely claim triple-digit improvements. A 2006 meta-analysis found that students retaking
the SAT after coaching resulted in, on average, an increase of about 50 points on a 1600 scale. That’s not an insignificant number. However, as
the researchers point out,
we can expect some of that gain to occur simply through increased familiarity with
the test and, for lower-scoring students — the type most likely to retake the test — regression to the
mean. More recent research found that, after using statistical controls to compare similar students, the
combined effect of coaching on a 1600 point scale was about 20 points. It’s also worth noting that affluent parents
can hire a wide variety of coaches and tutors for their children to improve their grades, performance in sports, or ability in extracurricular
activities, all of which impact their chances of college admission. Coaching is thus far from a problem with testing alone. Yes, the game is rigged,
but it’s rigged from the top to bottom — not just with the SAT. The Problem with “Holistic Assessments” and Grades Let’s look at the
alternative metrics for student performance: “soft” criteria and high school grade point average (GPA). Detractors of entrance exams
often argue for more “holistic” methods of evaluating students than tests, pushing for greater emphasis
on student activities, college essays, and letters of recommendation. They argue that these things allow
them to select students that are more than just grades and test scores and build a diverse student body.
As Jennifer Finney Boylan put it in a piece decrying the SAT, the only way to fairly choose between applicants is “to look at the complex portrait
of their lives.” But
this reasoning goes directly against the stated goal of equality. It should be obvious:
affluent parents have far greater ability to provide opportunities for extracurricular (and frequently out-
of-school) activities than less affluent parents do. The student who is captain of the sailing team, president of the robotics
club, and who spent a summer building houses in the Global South will likely look more “holistically” valuable than a poorer student who has
not had the resources to do similar activities. Who is more likely to be a star violin player or to have completed a summer internship at a fancy
magazine: a poor student or an affluent one? College essays are more easily improved through coaching than test
scores, and teachers at expensive private schools likely feel more pressure to write effusive letters of
recommendation than their peers in public schools. Favoring the “soft” aspects of a college application is straightforwardly
beneficial to the more privileged at the expense of the less. There’s another reason for people who believe in equality to
champion standardized achievement tests: they serve as one of the only bulwarks against the pernicious
effects of high school grade inflation. Everyone has heard of grade inflation in college. Depending on your point of view, it’s either
a sign of the continued degradation of educational standards or a mostly-inconsequential statistical curio. But far fewer people seem aware
that grade inflation exists in high school. In fact, high school grades are inflating at a rapid pace — but unequally, in
a way that should disturb us. Research by Michael Hurwitz and Jason Lee found that, from 1998 to 2016, the average high school
GPA rose from 3.27 to 3.38. That may not sound like much, but distributed over millions of students, it’s a large increase. What’s more, the
phenomenon is concentrated at the top. Paul Sackett and Nathan Kuncel, working with a data set from over 300 colleges and a million
students, found that the modal GPA — that is, the GPA that occurred most often in the data set — was 4.0. The data set only includes college
students, screening out many of the lowest GPA. Still, it demonstrates the extent to which students entering college are now bunched at the
top of the grade distribution. Even relative measures like class rank fail to really distinguish grades, as high schools vary widely in how grades
are weighted and do not always make this information public to colleges. Some high schools now graduate over 100 students named
valedictorians. Why
should progressives care about high school grade inflation? Because it perpetuates
traditional inequalities. In research published in the recent book Measuring Success, Hurwitz and Lee find that whiter schools, more
affluent schools, and private schools are all seeing far more grade inflation than higher minority, poorer, and public schools. In fact, public
schools have seen little grade inflation; the problem is rampant in private schools, where grades are inflating at three times the rate of public.
You might assume this simply means that schools seeing higher grade inflation are doing a better job of educating students. But when Hurwitz
and Lee control for ability by including SAT scores in the model, they still find grades inflating at disparate rates along predictable demographic
lines. The potential unfair advantage this may confer in college admissions is clear. The likely causes of these developments seem obvious.
Private schools have a direct financial incentive to please parents in a way that public schools do not. White and affluent parents likely enjoy
greater social capital and thus greater ability to pressure teachers, a privilege poor and minority parents largely lack. We could argue that the
solution is simply to stop grade inflation. But it’s difficult to imagine a policy fix that could work across the country, and the incentives for
teachers of wealthy and white students will only become more obvious as the race to the top of the educational ladder gets more intense. The
SAT and ACT aren’t perfect. But much of the folk wisdom about them and their deficiencies is wrong, and though critics mean well,
they actually risk deepening inequality by attacking these tests. To be clear, I am not advocating an admissions system
that uses only the SAT. You only need to look at the various social problems associated with China’s Gaokao exam to see the dangers of placing
too much emphasis on any one metric. And I should point out that I have always been a strong supporter of race-based affirmative action
programs, which remain necessary to combat traditional inequalities. What I am saying is that the casual assumption that deemphasizing or
eliminating the SAT will result in a more equitable system doesn’t withstand scrutiny. Unlike
their rich peers, students who
labor under racial and economic disadvantage have very few ways to distinguish themselves from the
rest of the pack. A stellar SAT score is potentially one of the most powerful. We should take care not to rob them of
that tool in a misguided push for equality.

Selective schools are proven to make great impacts in the lives of low-income and
minority students, giving them access to resources that their more privileged peers
have-taking away standardized testing results in crucial disadvantages to getting into
these schools which increasingly deepens inequality. Thompson’18
(Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he writes about economics, technology, and the media. He is the author of Hit Makers
and the host of the podcast Crazy/Genius.12-11-18.https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/does-it-matter-where-you-go-
college/577816///SAK)

This year, more than 2 million Americans will apply to college. Most will aim for nearby schools without global brands or billion-dollar endowments. But for the tens
of thousands of families applying to America’s most elite institutions, the admissions process is a high-cost, high-stress gantlet. American parents now spend almost
half a billion dollars each year on “independent education consultants,” and that’s not counting the cost of test prep or flights and hotels for campus visits. These
collegiate sweepstakes leave a trail of frazzled parents and emotionally wrecked teens already burdened with rising anxiety, which raises a big question: Does it
really matter whether you attend an elite college? The seemingly obvious answer is, Of course it matters! How could it not? Ivy League and equivalent institutions
provide more than world-class instruction. They confer a lifetime of assistance from prodigiously connected alumni and a message to all future employers that
you’re a rarified talent. College isn’t just an education; it’s a network, a signal, and an identity. Elite schools seem disproportionately responsible for minting the
American elite. About 45 percent of America’s billionaires and more than half of Forbes’s list of the most powerful people attended schools where incoming
freshmen average in the top first percentile of SAT scores. But what appears obvious may not be true. In November 2002, the Quarterly Journal of Economics
published a landmark paper by the economists Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger that reached a startling conclusion. For most students, the salary boost from going to a
super-selective school is “generally indistinguishable from zero” after adjusting for student characteristics, such as test scores. In other words, if Mike and Drew
have the same SAT scores and apply to the same colleges, but Mike gets into Harvard and Drew doesn’t, they can still expect to earn the same income throughout
their careers. Despite Harvard’s international fame and energetic alumni outreach, somebody like Mike would not experience an observable “Harvard effect.” Dale
and Krueger even found that the average SAT scores of all the schools a student applies to is a more powerful predictor of success than the school that student
actually attends. This finding suggests that the talents and ambitions of individual students are worth more than the resources and renown of elite schools. Or, less
academically, the person you’re becoming at 18 is a better predictor of your future success than the school you graduate from at 22. The takeaway here: Stress out
about your habits and chill out about college. That’s kind of inspiring. It also implies that all the angst and time devoted to the infamous admissions process is a
wasteful pageant for the vast majority of its participants. Could that really be true? Or were Dale and Krueger off somehow? This month, economists from Virginia
Tech, Tulane, and the University of Virginia published a new study that reexamines the data in the Dale-Krueger study. Among men, the new study found no
relationship between college selectivity and long-term earnings. But for women, “attending a school with a 100-point higher average SAT score” increased earnings
by 14 percent and reduced marriage by 4 percent. That is a huge effect. Has one of the most famous papers in education economics been debunked? Not quite,
says Amalia Miller, a co-author and an economist at the University of Virginia .
“The difference we found is that college selectivity
does seem to matter, especially for married women, by raising earnings almost entirely through the
channel of increased labor force participation,” she says. If you’re not an economist, that might sound complicated. But it’s pretty
simple. For the vast majority of women, the benefit of going to an elite college isn’t higher per-hour wages. It’s more hours of work. Women who graduate from
elite schools delay marriage, delay having kids, and stay in the workforce longer than similar women who graduate from less-selective schools. This finding
complicates the trendy “opting out” theory, which says that women who graduate from top schools are particularly likely to drop out of the labor force after they
have children. In fact, the only gender-specific effect of attending elite colleges is that female graduates are more career-focused. Selective schools also
seem to make a difference in the lives of minorities and students whose parents have no college
education. A 2017 study led by the economist Raj Chetty found that lower-income students at an elite school such as Columbia University have a “much higher
chance of reaching the [top 1 percent] of the earnings distribution” than those at an excellent public university, such as suny Stony Brook in Long Island. Why

would elite institutions be so good at improving upward mobility for minorities, but not for their whiter,
richer peers? After all, they’re listening to the same professors, sitting in the same chairs, and taking the same tests. But remember, college isn’t just about
instruction. It’s also about alumni networks and signaling effects. Kids from rich families often rely on help from their parents to

obtain selective internships and high-paying entry-level jobs. For kids without plugged-in parents, elite
colleges are the plug that connect these students to the most dynamic industries and jobs: In loco rich
parentis. The simplest answer to the question “Do elite colleges matter?” is: It depends on who you are. In the big picture, elite colleges
don’t seem to do much extra for rich white guys. But if you’re not rich, not white, or not a guy, the elite-
college effect is huge. It increases earnings for minorities and low-income students, and it encourages women to
delay marriage and work more, even though it doesn’t raise their per-hour wages. These findings send three different messages to three different parties. First, to
high-strung affluent parents, well-compensated counselors, and other members of the elite-admissions industrial complex: Just relax, okay? You are inflicting on
American teenagers a ludicrous amount of pointless anxiety. Even if you subscribe to the dubious idea that young people ought to maximize for vocational prestige
and income, the research suggests that elite colleges are not critical to achieving those ends. In the aggregate, individual characteristics swamp institutional
characteristics. It’s more important to be hardworking and curious than to receive a certain thick envelope. Second, to academics researching the benefits of
college: Keep working. The robust debate over the benefits of attending an elite college lives concentrically within a larger conversation about whether college is
worth it in the first place. It’s critical—to not only the country’s economic future, but hundreds of millions of individual Americans’ futures—that we learn more
about how and why college matters, so that it can help the right people. Third, to admissions officers of elite colleges: Do better. America’s most selective colleges
can, it seems, change the lives of minorities and low-income students. But they’re still bastions of privilege. They enroll more students from the top 1 percent of the
income scale than the entire bottom 60 percent. In this way, elite institutions are like factories of social mobility being used as storage facilities for privilege; they
have the potential to use their space to manufacture opportunity at scale, but mostly they clear out real estate for the already rich, who are going to be fine,
anyway. In America today, high-income parents are desperate to find the right colleges for their kids. It should be the opposite: The highest-income colleges should
be desperate to find the right kids for their seats.

Standardized testing is key to neutral and objective admissions decisions, especially in

the era of grade inflation.
Buckley et al 18 [Jack Buckley (PhD Political Science, Institute Fellow @ American Institutes for Research, Former Commissioner of the
U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics), Lynn Letukas (PhD Sociology, Director of Global Academic Programs @
SAS), and Ben Wildavsky (Senior Vice President @ Strada Education Network), “Measuring Success: Testing, Grades, and the Future of College
Admissions,” eds. Jack Buckley, Lynn Letukas, Ben Wildavsky, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018 pp. 1-4]//wwVN

Proponents of standardized admissions testing have long argued that tests such as the SAT and ACT are
a vital tool for admissions officers at selective institutions because they most efficiently address the dual
challenges of uniformity and fairness in the allocation of the scarce resource of college admission. These
proponents assert that standardized admissions tests provide a neutral yardstick to assess the
performance and promise of students from secondary schools whose course offerings differ widely in
variety and rigor. This is a particularly salient point in an era of widespread grade inflation, where
students receive higher average high school grades without corresponding increases in average
standardized admissions test scores, eroding the meaning of the high school grade point average
(GPA). Moreover, decades of research has independently verified the predictive validity of
standardized admissions tests in future college performance, including GPA, retention, and college
completion, and has found these tests provide additional information in the prediction of college
outcomes beyond high school grades (Mattern and Patterson 2014; Radunzel and Mattern 2015;
Radunzel and Noble 2012; Shaw 2015; Westrick et al. 2015).
Flawed teaching methods leave disabled students behind the curve-multiple empirics
prove
Jackie Mader Mar 1 2017 The Atlantic Jackie Mader is multimedia editor. She has covered preK-12 education and teacher
preparation nationwide, with a focus on the rural south. Her work has appeared in the The Denver Post, the Sun Herald and The Clarion-Ledger
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/03/how-teacher-training-hinders-special-needs-students/518286/ “How Teacher
Training Hinders Special-Needs Students”//VN

When Mary Fair became a teacher in 2012, her classes often contained a mix of special-education
students and general-education students. Placing children with and without disabilities in the same
classroom, instead of segregating them, was a growing national trend, spurred by lawsuits by special-
education advocates. But in those early days, Fair had no idea how to handle her students with
disabilities, whose educational challenges ranged from learning deficits to behavioral disturbance
disorders. Calling out a child with a behavioral disability in front of the class usually backfired and made
the situation worse. They saw it as “an attack and a disrespect issue,” Fair said. Over time, Fair figured
out how to navigate these situations and talk students “down from the ledge.” She also learned how to
keep students with disabilities on task and break down lessons into smaller, easier bits of information
for those who were struggling. No one taught her these strategies. Although she earned a bachelor’s
degree and teaching certificate in math instruction for both elementary and middle school, she never
had to take a class about students with disabilities. She was left to figure it out on the job. The need for
teachers who have both the knowledge and the ability to teach special-education students is more
critical today than ever before. A national push to take students with disabilities out of isolation means
most now spend the majority of their days in general-education classrooms, rather than in separate
special-education classes. That means general-education teachers are teaching more students with
disabilities. But training programs are doing little to prepare teachers; Fair’s experience is typical. Many
teacher-education programs offer just one class about students with disabilities to their general-
education teachers, “Special Ed 101,” as it’s called at one New Jersey college. It’s not enough to equip
teachers for a roomful of children who can range from the gifted to students who read far below grade
level due to a learning disability. A study in 2007 found that general-education teachers in a teacher-
preparation program reported taking an average of 1.5 courses focusing on inclusion or special
education, compared to about 11 courses for special-education teachers. Educators say little has
changed since then. A 2009 study concluded that no one explicitly shows teachers how to teach to
“different needs.” Because of time constraints, the many academic standards that must be taught, and a
lack of support, “teachers are not only hesitant to implement individualized instruction, but they do not
even know how to do so,” the report stated. Fair says teacher-preparation programs should be doing
more. At the very least, “You should have a special-education class and an English language learner
class,” she said. "You're going to have those students.” Between 1989 and 2013, the percentage of
students with disabilities who were in a general education class for 80 percent or more of the school day
increased from about 32 percent to nearly 62 percent. Special-education advocates have been pushing
for the change—especially for students who have mild to moderate disabilities like a speech
impairment—in some cases by suing school districts. Some research shows as many as 85 percent of
students with disabilities can master general-education content if they receive educational supports.
Supports can include access to a special-education teacher, having test questions read aloud, or being
allowed to sit in a certain part of the classroom. Students with disabilities who are placed in general-
education classrooms get more instructional time, have fewer absences, and have better post-
secondary outcomes. Studies also show there is no negative impact on the academic achievement of
non-disabled students in an inclusion classroom; those students benefit socially by forming positive
relationships and learning how to be more at ease with a variety of people. Alla Vayda-Manzo, the
principal of Bloomfield Middle School about 30 miles outside of New York City, said she’s seen the
benefit of inclusion for students. The school serves about 930 students, nearly 20 percent of whom have
a disability, according to state data. When students with disabilities are included in classrooms with their
peers, Vayda-Manzo said the high expectations and instructional strategies “lend themselves to those
students being more successful than they would be had they been in a separate, self-contained
environment.” But as more districts move to make classrooms inclusive, they’ve been caught flat footed
when it comes to finding teachers prepared to make the shift. Academic outcomes for students with
disabilities have remained stagnant for years, even as more students with special needs are integrated
into general-education classrooms. Students with disabilities are less likely to graduate and more likely
to earn an alternate diploma that is not equivalent to a general diploma in the eyes of many colleges
and employers. And year after year, they score far lower than their peers on standardized exams.
Experts say the problem is that it takes much more than just placing students with disabilities next to
their general-education peers: Teachers must have the time, support, and training to provide a high-
quality education based on a student’s needs.