Leaving (Even) the Best Behind

(Source: I don't care. Who has 10 minutes to spend on this kind of thing??)

A Lunchtime RANT from the blogger:

This was on my morning's Facebook feed: "Find the mistake." How about playing a similar game with education data?

A new study by a group of economists (!) analyzes the effect of the “Top 10%” rule on college enrollment in Texas, using an unnamed large urban district as its subject pool.  You can find that study here, along with other misinterpreted, irrelevant, and misleading work that makes one reconsider Stanford's place in higher education.

The study does provide some interesting insight by comparing those who make the cutoff (a lot of white females) to those who miss the cutoff.  The researchers found that this rule does not lead to an increase in enrollment, as these students were going to college, anyway.  The rule does affect which college they attend, though.  Students tend to matriculate at UT-Austin or A&M at the expense of private colleges and other highly-selective institutions.

Lost in the overall focus of this study was one key figure.  "Fortunately" for me, it was shown on a bar graph. The figures were derived from the researchers' calculations. Think of this like Facebook; see if you can spot the MISTAKE we're making:

Yes, you can remark that these white females choose flagship schools. That's fine. That's comfortable. Here is what is NOT FINE:

A full 42% of students who finished in the top 10% of their class in this district did not matriculate ANYWHERE! 

In fact 45% of the top 10% never took an ACT or SAT. These are the "successful" students of the bunch, not the castoffs.  We're not even considering the top 25%, let alone reconsidering the full 70% of high school graduates that die on the vine after high school.  This is just how we treat the top 10%: cutting it to less than 6% at the start--or in the case of the others, the "finish."

Out of the best and brightest students, Texas' education system has managed to kill off almost half the dreams, half the potential, half the incredible upside from this "large unnamed urban school district." That's unconscionable, immoral, and absolutely RIDICULOUS.

Down here, we call that "A Texas Miracle."

Send those smart kids to STC. Send the others, too. We'll give them a future, since nobody at UHS (Unnamed High School) seems to care.

"There are important questions that our paper does not address."

No kidding.