Suit Accusing Harvard of Capping Asian-American Admissions Could Be Tried This Summer

[moderndarwin]

BUY

Lol

 

[Brownstone]

i find it facsinating because it potentially blows open da sharade of diversity when its basically built of a facade that punishes overachieving asians. its actually an indictment on our work ethic vs international competitive cultural get up.

nyc goin thru da same thing with Stuyvesant High School being floooooooded with asians and yet its "not diverse".

Eh, as usual this issue is nuanced with a lot of grey area. Discriminatory against Asians in which way? That as a minority applicant there are so many spots, and minority is a fluid term. For instance, on Ivy league campuses Asians are NOT minorities.

https://blog.collegevine.com/the-demographics-of-the-ivy-league/

At some ivy leagues they constitute more than all other minority groups combined.

So some say, stick to the script, accept students with only the best grades, if that was the case schools would not care about other admission factors. And highschools would start a race for grade inflation, and so forth and so forth. The current system isn't perfect, but it works.

 

[aquatic barefoot]

The issue here is contentment; folks want what they want no matter what.

Applies to cars, sneakers, homes/neighborhoods, spouses, whatever you name it.

Everyone wants that "thing".

People forget that any admission process requires "winners" & "losers".

Nobody actually deserves anything they get; we're all blessed with "wins" and "losses"

Spoiler

This why you're told not put all your eggs into one basket; there's a reason why your advised to apply to more than one school...

 

[W)taps]

"he's quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor."

"smart and hardworking yet uninteresting and indistinguishable FROM OTHER ASIAN-AMERICAN APPLICANTS"

 

[hand2handking]

Asian-American Group Expands Support For Lawsuit Against Harvard

More than 30 different Harvard student, alumni and staff groups rallied in Harvard Square on Oct. 14, 2018 to show their support for diversity on campus. The rally was held on the eve of a trial that seeks to eliminate race in the Harvard admissions process.
Meredith Nierman/WGBH News

https://www.wgbh.org/news/education...p-expands-support-for-lawsuit-against-harvard

Asian-American organizations across the country supporting a federal lawsuit against Harvard University's admissions practices have grown in number and expanded into other Asian subgroups beyond Chinese, according to a court brief filed in Boston Tuesday.

Last year, 158 groups — dominated by Chinese-American ones — supported a similar brief filed in the pending case accusing Harvard of discriminating against Asian-American applicants. The latest brief has the backing of 270 organizations, including 30 Korean-American groups joining in for the first time.

Large Indian-American organizations, such as National Federation of Indian American Associations, Global Organization of People of India Origin and American Hindu Coalition, also cosigned the brief. Of the 270 total, 230 are nonprofit associations and educational institutions.

In this latest brief, the Asian-American Coalition for Education once again accuses Harvard of using racial quotas and stereotyping.

Wenyuan Wu, the coalition's director of administration, said Harvard's race-conscious admissions model has been ineffective when it comes to enrolling more low-income students.

"We strongly believe Harvard's admissions policy, which is hyper-focused on race, is only a Band-Aid that conceals the root cause behind a lack of diversity on college campuses," she said.

Wu said statistical evidence presented at a three-week trial in October before U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs shows that Harvard discriminates against Asian-Americans in rural areas.

"Harvard sends invitation letters to white students with PSAT scores of around 1310, but not to Asian males with scores of 1370 and higher,” she said.

In a statement, coalition president Yukong Zhao said Harvard’s admissions model has placed unfair burdens on Asian-Americans, resulting in high rates of depression and even suicides.

“It is a modern-day social injustice done to Asian-Americans by powerful institutions and the political establishment,” Zhao said. “It clearly undermines the spirit of the American Dream, which promises that each American citizen should have equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination and initiative.”

The lawsuit was brought by the group Students for Fair Admissions led by conservative legal strategist Edward Blum, who is white.

Dozens of other Asian-American groups have filed briefs siding with Harvard. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed their brief on Wednesday.

“The lived experiences of many students of color simply cannot be separated from their race,” said Jin Hee Lee, the fund’s senior deputy director of litigation. “The court’s decision in this case may affect the ability of college and universities across the country to provide an education enriched by the vibrant diversity that our nation has to offer.”

Burroughs has scheduled another court hearing for February and is expected to issue her decision later this year.

 

[hand2handking]

Public Filings Reveal SFFA Mostly Funded by Conservative Trusts Searle Freedom Trust and DonorsTrust


SFFA President Edward Blum, pictured here in an October 2018 rally, has received funding from conservative trusts Searle Freedom Trust and DonorsTrust.
Photo: Amanda Y. Su

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/2/7/sffa-finance/

Anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions — which alleges in an ongoing lawsuit that the College’s admissions process discriminates against Asian-American applicants — has historically garnered much of its funding from two major conservative trusts, according to publicly available filings.

Combined, the two groups, the Searle Freedom Trust and DonorsTrust, contributed nearly three-quarters of the donations SFFA raised in 2016 — the last year for which the groups’ tax records are publicly available.

The Searle Freedom Trust, which donated $500,000 to SFFA in 2016, marked the advocacy group’s largest donor in that year. The organization’s second-largest supporter, DonorsTrust, contributed $250,000 in 2016, according to public records. SFFA raised a total of $1.1 million dollars that year.

SFT and DonorsTrust have helped finance Blum’s advocacy for years. In 2015, they combined to account for nearly half of the donations raised by the Project on Fair Representation, an advocacy group run by Blum “that challenges racial and ethnic classifications and preferences in state and federal courts.”

The Searle Freedom Trust gave $450,000 that year for “litigation programs,” while DonorsTrust contributed $250,000 for “general operations,” out of the roughly $1.5 million dollars the group raised in 2015, according to public tax filings.

DonorsTrust in particular has provided significant financial support to PFR and Blum. PFR was “fully financed” by DonorsTrust from 2006 to 2011, and DonorsTrust coordinated the group’s “administrative side,” Reuters reported in a 2012 article.

DonorsTrust did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Blum wrote in an emailed statement that he is “grateful” for the support of DonorsTrust and the Searle Freedom Trust.

“Both of those foundations have donated hundreds of millions of dollars to a wide variety of organizations and institutions,” he wrote.

Though Searle Freedom Trust has contributed substantial sums to SFFA, it has chosen not to fund SFFA's lawsuit against Harvard, according to Searle Freedom Trust President and CEO Kimberly O. Dennis.

“All of our support has been directed to the lawsuits challenging UT and UNC,” she wrote in an email, referring to a case that SFFA had previously brought against theUniversity of Texas, Austin and a lawsuit SFFA is currently litigating against theUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “None has supported the Harvard litigation.”

When asked about the Searle Freedom Trust’s lack of financial support for the Harvard case, SFFA President Edward Blum wrote in an email that he is “confident that each donor and member supports the mission of SFFA.”

The Searle Freedom Trust, founded in 1998, supports “work that will lead to a just, prosperous, and free society,” per the group’s website. The organization currently donates approximately $15 million to conservative causes each year, though the fund is required to spend all of its remaining money by 2025, according to rules detailed by founder Daniel C. Searle when he began the organization.

Launched in 1999, DonorsTrust is a “donor advised fund” that is “committed to supporting and promoting the principles of liberty,” per the organization’s website. Individuals must make an initial $10,000 contribution to set up an account, after which they can “recommend” charities that they think the group should donate to.

In a November 2018 post on the organization’s website, DonorsTrust President Lawson Bader wrote the group was “engaged in a lawsuit with Harvard University over admission policies that discriminate against Asian-Americans.”

While he wrote in the post that DonorsTrust is not formally listed as a plaintiff in the suit, he wrote that, because of the fund’s donations, the group’s “DNA floats in the bloodstream of the organizations” that are directly involved, including SFFA.

“If non-profits had parents, then DonorsTrust would act as Mom and Dad to these groups,” he wrote.

While Searle Freedom Trust has not donated to SFFA to support the Harvard suit, the group numbers among DonorsTrust’s top five donors. Dennis, Searle Freedom Trust's president, serves as the chairman of the board of directors for DonorsTrust.

SFFA has not only turned to major donors like Searle Freedom Trust and DonorsTrust to raise money; the group also asks for contributions from smaller organizations and individual donors.

“Since our inception, we have received thousands of donations from individuals throughout the nation,” Blum wrote in an email.

Some of those groups have supported Blum’s efforts to end race-conscious admissions for years. For example, 80-20 National Asian American PAC — “dedicated to winning equal opportunity and justice for all Asian Americans,” per its website — donated $10,000 to SFFA in 2014. The group also submitted an amicus brief in support of Abigail N. Fisher, the plaintiff in the UT case.

SFFA also gains a small portion of its funding from dues paid by members. Though the $10 membership fees were technically mandatory starting on July 30, 2015, only 0.6 percent — 133 out of more than 20,000 — of the group’s members had actually paid their dues as of April 30, 2017, according to filings in the Harvard case submitted by the University’s lawyers. These fees accounted for $1,330.

A tax form detailing funds raised by SFFA during 2017 — which Blum provided to The Crimson — lists $5,530 in revenue from membership dues. The organization raised roughly $1.4 million in total that year, per the form.

 

[hand2handking]

Most Americans Say Colleges Should Not Consider Race or Ethnicity in Admissions

(Glen Cooper/Getty Images)

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...not-consider-race-or-ethnicity-in-admissions/

As the debate over college admissions policies reignites, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that most Americans (73%) say colleges and universities should not consider race or ethnicity when making decisions about student admissions. Just 7% say race should be a major factor in college admissions, while 19% say it should be a minor factor.

The issue emerged again earlier this month when a federal judge heard closing arguments in the high-profile lawsuitagainst Harvard University that could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court and influence the future of affirmative action in higher education.

While majorities across racial and ethnic groups agree that race should not be a factor in college admissions, white adults are particularly likely to hold this view: 78% say this, compared with 65% of Hispanics, 62% of blacks and 59% of Asians (the Asian sample includes only those who speak English).

There are also large partisan gaps on this issue. Republicans and those who lean toward the Republican Party are far more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say that race or ethnicity should not be a factor in college admissions (85% vs. 63%). These party differences remain when looking only at whites: 88% of white Republicans say that colleges should not consider race in college admissions, compared with 66% of white Democrats.

When asked about eight admissions criteria that colleges may consider, high school grades top the list. About two-thirds of Americans (67%) say this should be a major factor; 26% say it should be a minor factor. And while many colleges have stopped requiring standardized test scores as part of the application process, 47% of Americans say these scores should play a major role, while an additional 41% say they should play a minor role. Most Americans also think colleges should take into account community service involvement.

The public is more divided, however, over whether being the first person in the family to go to college should factor into admissions decisions. Some 47% say this should be considered, while 53% say it should not be a factor.

In addition to race or ethnicity, majorities also say that colleges should not consider an applicant’s gender (81%), whether a relative attended the school (68%) – a practice known as legacy admissions – or athletic ability (57%) when making decisions.

Across several of these items, views vary by education, with those holding at least a bachelor’s degree generally more likely than those with less education to say they should be at least a minor factor in college admissions. For example, college graduates are more likely than those with less education to say colleges should consider race (38% say it should be a major or minor factor vs. 22% among those without a bachelor’s degree) or being a first-generation college student (57% vs. 43%) in admissions decisions.

Note: See full topline results and methodology here.

 

[hand2handking]

I Am An Asian-American Who Benefits From Affirmative Action

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/2/15/ham-asian-american-affirmative-action/

Diversity may be a buzzword to many; for me, it has always been an alien concept.

Growing up in South Korea, a nation that is essentially ethnically homogenous meant that I was always surrounded by people who looked like me, spoke the same language, and shared the same culture. In Korea, I was never uncomfortable, my identity was never challenged, and I always felt safe. I always counted this as a blessing. At the same time, however, I could never get rid of the nagging feeling that I wasn’t truly Korean, even after living all 18 years of my life in the heart of Seoul.

Speaking English at home and attending an international, American-styled school meant that my Korean was noticeably clumsy, my vocabulary was at a sixth-grade level, and English mixed incoherently with Korean when I spoke more often than I wished. In my home country, I was asked why I wasn’t “Korean” by my neighborhood friends whenever I forgot a basic word or when they learned I was an American citizen. During my summers in the United States, however, I learned that I also wasn’t “American” by the way people would look at my brother and me on the streets of suburban Maryland and ask us, with a strange combination of suspicion and politeness, where we were from.

I have always wished that I could label myself conveniently, that I didn’t have to explain my nationality and identity. In my first few months at Harvard, however, I have met countless people who struggle to label and identify themselves, just like I do. It was the diversity that exists in Harvard’s student body that, ironically enough, allowed me to feel at home for the first time in my life. This is why I cannot disavow affirmative action, both as a policy and as an ideal, even though the recent lawsuit against Harvard alleges that my university has been discriminating against people like me for years.

My response to the admissions lawsuit is simple. Although there may have beeninstances of discrimination in the admissions process, affirmative action remains a goal and policy worth pursuing. Discrimination against Asian-Americans is in no way a product of affirmative action; it is the result of centuries-old, deeply-rooted racism that has persisted ever since the first Asian immigrants came to America. Of course, biases in Harvard’s admissions process must be investigated, tackled, and resolved; but to even pretend that demolishing a policy designed to promotehistorically excluded groups will somehow achieve racial equality is absurd and counterproductive. Ultimately, arguments against affirmative action amount to an excuse used by those in power to maintain traditional structures of privilege. The fact that racial biases plagued Harvard’s admissions process only further demonstrates the need for race-conscious education and training — in other words, discriminatory admissions processes constitute an argument against structural and institutional racism, certainly not against a policy designed to tackle it.

Importantly, affirmative action also celebrates the idea that diversity is a fundamental good in college communities, an idea I have personally come to appreciate these past few months. During my short tenure as a Harvard student, I have heard Farsi, Serbian, and Russian from my friends, eaten food and listened to music I never tasted or heard before, and most importantly, met people who have revolutionized my way of thinking just by being who they are.

Last semester, for the first time in my life, I talked about religion and my struggle in understanding it when a Muslim friend discussed her faith with me for hours past midnight. I learned so much about public service and struggle in the week I spent with community organizers, activists, and passionate fighters during my pre-orientation program. I have been more vulnerable in this community than I have ever before — the openness and inclusivity that the Harvard community promotes is derived from the idea that there is no one correct way to think, no one correct way to live, and no one correct way to “be” a Harvard student. The diversity of experiences and perspectives that every student brings to Harvard is what prevents the institution from becoming even more isolated from the average American experience than it already is. It is this diversity that sparks intellectual discourse and allows for such a vibrant extracurricular life to thrive. Ultimately, diversity means that the true teachers at Harvard are often the students, constructing a community that is always learning from itself.

Having lived my entire life alone in a sea of familiar people, I am not an Asian-American who is harmed by affirmative action; quite the opposite, in fact. I benefit every day from living in a community that is so rich, so strange and quirky and interesting and wonderful, and one that I can confidently call home.

 

[hand2handking]

Affirmative Action Lawsuit Against Harvard in Judge's Hands
In deciding the case, a federal judge will have to weigh complex and competing statistical evidence presented by both sides.

People walk past Harvard University t-shirts for sale in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Nov. 16, 2012.Jessica Rinaldi / Reuters file

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-...lawsuit-against-harvard-judge-s-hands-n971776

BOSTON — A federal judge will now decide whether Harvard University intentionally discriminates against Asian-American applicants, an allegation made in a 2014 lawsuit that was debated in a final round of arguments Wednesday.

Lawyers for both sides clashed at Boston's federal courthouse, largely recapping cases they made during a trial that ended in November. The case will be decided by U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs, although any ruling is expected to be appealed.

The case carries implications for other U.S. schools that consider race in admissions decisions as a way to bring a diverse mix of students to campus. It has added fuel to a national debate about whether and how race should influence admissions.

The lawsuit argues that Harvard's admissions office holds Asian-Americans to a higher standard and uses a subjective "personal rating" to limit their admission to the elite Ivy League school.

Students for Fair Admissions, the group behind the lawsuit, says students of Asian descent have the strongest academic records yet receive the lowest scores on the personal rating, which scores applicants on traits including "courage" and "likability."

Harvard says it uses race only as one of many factors to choose from more than 40,000 applicants a year. It says race can only help, never hurt, an applicant's chances of getting in.

On Wednesday, lawyers for Students for Fair Admissions argued that Harvard's admissions officers aren't "evil" and may simply have "fallen prey to racial stereotyping," but the group said their treatment of Asian-Americans still amounts to intentional discrimination.

Adam Mortara, a lawyer representing the group, said Harvard's own admissions records show that students of Asian descent are treated differently from how students of other races are, yet the school has failed to provide any explanation.

"Harvard has yet to come up with any race-neutral explanation for the Asian penalty in the personal rating," he said. "No Harvard admission officer was willing to come here and testify as to why this is happening."

Harvard's lawyers countered that the group failed to provide any direct evidence of discrimination. They noted that no students came forward during the trial to say they were wrongly rejected from the school.

"It's not just that SFFA has failed to provide a smoking gun, they failed to find evidence of a single victim of discrimination," said Seth Waxman, a lawyer for Harvard.

Students for Fair Admissions has previously said its 20,000 members include some Asian-Americans who were unfairly denied admission from Harvard, but none were called to testify at trial.

The Virginia-based group is led by Edward Blum, a legal strategist who unsuccessfully fought against the use of race in admissions at the University of Texas, and who is now leading a similar lawsuit against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In deciding the case, Burroughs will have to weigh complex and competing statistical evidence presented by both sides.

Students for Fair Admissions built its case around a Duke University professor's analysis of Harvard admissions records. It concluded that the university's personal rating works against Asian-Americans while favoring black and Hispanic students.

Harvard provided a dueling analysis from a University of California, Berkeley economist who studied the same admissions records but found no evidence of discrimination.

Burroughs, the judge, is not expected to make a decision immediately. Speaking to one of Harvard's lawyers during the hearing Wednesday, she suggested that both sides have weaknesses in their arguments.

"They have a no-victim problem," Burroughs said, referring to Students for Fair Admissions, "but you have a personal rating problem."

https://www.msnbc.com/david-gura/wa...-harvard-racially-discriminates-1311284292002

 

[tay1]

If only they knew that a large percentage of incoming students are white legacy students. Yet they want to claim AA is the reason they're not getting in. Goes to show how people benefit from the **** we fought for and still sell us out

 

[nawghtyhare]

I don’t have no opinion on this either way
Where they be at when we claim they same thing
They don’t help us fight

 

[hand2handking]

Hollywood actors, including Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, and a slew of chief executives are among 50 people charged in a nationwide college admissions cheating scam, according to court records unsealed in Boston Tuesday.

Those indicted allegedly paid bribes of up to $6 million to get their children into elite colleges, including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown and the University of Southern California, federal prosecutors said.
"Beginning in or about 2011, and continuing through the present, the defendants -- principally individuals whose high-school age children were applying to college -- conspired with others to use bribery and other forms of fraud to facilitate their children's admission to colleges and universities in the District of Massachusetts and elsewhere, including Yale University, Stanford University, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California, and the University of Southern California -- Los Angeles," the indictment said.

In most cases the students did not know their admission was contingent on a bribe, officials said.

The 200 pages of charging documents in the case were unsealed in Boston federal court.


According to the charging papers, Huffman "made a purported charitable contribution of $15,000 ... to participate in the college entrance exam cheating scheme on behalf of her eldest daughter."

Huffman later made arrangements to pursue the scheme a second time, for her younger daughter, before deciding not to do so," the documents allege.

Federal agents secretly recorded telephone calls with Huffman and a cooperating witness, according to the court papers.

The documents say actress Lori Loughlin -- best known for her role as Aunt Becky on the ABC sitcom "Full House" -- and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, "agreed to pay bribes totaling $500,000 in exchange for having their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team -- despite the fact that they did not participate in crew -- thereby facilitating their admission to USC."

Federal agents obtained emails from Loughlin implicating her in the scam, according to the documents.

Federal authorities ultimately had three cooperating witnesses to help them build their case.

One of the cooperating witnesses is a founder of the non-profit Key Worldwide Foundation based in California and another worked as the director of college exam prep at a prep school and sports academy in Bradenton, Florida, according to the court papers.

This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.

 

[hand2handking]

@47:20

 

[hand2handking]

Only 7 Black Students Got Into N.Y.’s Most Selective High School, Out of 895 Spots

Students at Stuyvesant High School, where only seven black applicants gained admission on Monday.CreditCreditChristopher Lee for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/nyregion/black-students-nyc-high-schools.html

Only a tiny number of black students were offered admission to the highly selective public high schools in New York City on Monday, raising the pressure on officials to confront the decades-old challenge of integrating New York’s elite public schools.

At Stuyvesant High School, out of 895 slots in the freshman class, only seven were offered to black students. And the number of black students is shrinking: There were 10 black students admitted into Stuyvesant last year, and 13 the year before.

Another highly selective specialized school, the Bronx High School of Science, made 12 offers to black students this year, down from 25 last year.

These numbers come despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vow to diversify the specialized high schools, which have long been seen as a ticket for low-income and immigrant students to enter the nation’s best colleges and embark on successful careers.

But Mr. de Blasio’s proposal to scrap the entrance exam for the schools and overhaul the admissions process has proved so divisive that the state’s most prominent politicians, from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have mostly avoided taking a definitive position — even as black and Hispanic students are grappling with increasingly steep odds of admission into the city’s eight most selective public schools.

Students gain entry into the specialized schools by acing a single high-stakes exam that tests their mastery of math and English. Some students spend months or even years preparing for the exam. Stuyvesant, the most selective of the schools, has the highest cutoff score for admission, and now has the lowest percentage of black and Hispanic students of any of New York City’s roughly 600 public high schools.

Lawmakers considering Mr. de Blasio’s proposal have faced a backlash from the specialized schools’ alumni organizations and from Asian-American groups who believe discarding the test would water down the schools’ rigorous academics and discriminate against the mostly low-income Asian students who make up the majority of the schools’ student bodies. (At Stuyvesant, 74 percent of current students are Asian-American.) The push to get rid of the test, which requires approval from the State Legislature, appears all but dead.

Attempts to diversify the schools without touching the test have failed. Neither the expansion of free test prep for minority students nor a new plan to offer the specialized high school exam during the school day made a dent in the admissions numbers.

The mayor and other supporters of the effort to overhaul the admissions system cited the statistics released Monday as the clearest evidence yet that the system is broken.

“These numbers are even more proof that dramatic reform is necessary to open the doors of opportunity at specialized high schools,” Mr. de Blasio said.

But at the same time, a slew of prominent Democrats in Albany and downstate, ranging from the city’s public advocate to the Democratic leaders of the Assembly and Senate, either declined to comment or issued statements that indicated the latest numbers are unlikely to change their positions.

Dani Lever, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cuomo, pointed to the governor’s previous comments on the proposal, saying, “It’s a legitimate issue that there are two sides to, and that should be looked at in the wider discussion of education in New York.”

The president of Stuyvesant’s alumni organization did not reply to requests for comment. Larry Cary, president of the Brooklyn Technical High School alumni foundation, said the numbers did not highlight a flaw in the admissions system, but rather the general lack of high-quality education for black and Hispanic students.

Jumaane Williams, the city’s newly elected public advocate and a graduate of Brooklyn Tech, said his opposition to completely scrapping the test remains unchanged. “The numbers are abysmal, we knew that,” said Mr. Williams, who is black. “The question is what do we do about it, how do we do it without needlessly pitting communities against each other?”

John Liu, the state senator from Queens who chairs the Senate’s New York City education committee, said any proposal should consider the needs of the Asian-American community. “A desegregation plan can only be effective if the problem is viewed as a whole, and one that is not formulated to the total exclusion of Asian-Americans,” he said.

The question of how to racially integrate the city’s elite high schools underscores how hard it is to tackle educational inequality and discrimination. It is a struggle playing out in real time as the future of affirmative action is being challenged at Harvard University and as last week’s college admissions scandal revealed the extreme ways in which wealthy and well-connected families try to game admissions.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan to diversify the high schools last summer.CreditDave Sanders for The New York Times

Though black and Hispanic students make up nearly 70 percent of New York City’s public school system as a whole, just over 10 percent of students admitted into the city’s eight specialized high schools were black or Hispanic, according to statistics released Monday by the city. That percentage is flat compared to last year.

Of the nearly 4,800 students admitted into the specialized schools, 190 are black — compared to 207 black students admitted last year out of just over 5,000 offers. About 5,500 black students took the admissions exam this year out of a total of about 27,500 applicants. Of the five specialized schools that were added under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, only one, the Brooklyn Latin School, has a larger percentage of black applicants who were offered seats: 57 out of 540.

Stuyvesant made 33 offers to Hispanic students, up slightly from 27 seats last year. Asian-American students received 587 offers, and white students were offered 194 seats. Asian-American and white students make up about 15 percent each of the total public school system. The percentage of black students at Stuyvesant has been declining for two decades.

The number of Hispanic students who gained admission to Bronx Science also dropped from 65 last year to 43 today.

The numbers are a stark reminder that the exam tends to produce specialized schools with classes that do not reflect the school system as a whole.

The specialized school admissions process has been protected by state law since 1971, but last summer, Mr. de Blasio asked for Albany’s approval to scrap the exam and replace it with a system that admits the top performers from every city middle school.

Though the city has acknowledged that it could implement that system at five of the eight schools — not including Stuyvesant, Bronx Science or Brooklyn Tech, whose admission system is controlled by state law — Mr. de Blasio has argued that such action would create a confusing two-tiered system that would fail to diversify the schools with the fewest black and Hispanic students.

A recent report found that offers to Asian-American students, who now make up about 60 percent of the specialized schools, would drop by about half under the mayor’s plan, while offers to black students would increase fivefold if that plan is approved.

Critics of Mr. de Blasio’s plan have expressed frustration that he did not offer the Asian-American community any concessions, such as a new specialized high school, for all the seats they would lose under the proposal.

The city is relying on a less sweeping part of its plan to help force a measure of integration as soon as this fall: the expansion of Discovery, a summer program that prepares students who just miss the cutoff score for admission into a specialized school.

Though the city has not yet released data about this year’s Discovery class, officials said they believe the plan to set aside 20 percent of seats for Discovery students at each specialized school over the next two years will roughly double the number of black and Hispanic students in those schools.

But with so few black and Hispanic students in the schools, the bigger issue is the future of the test. Over the last few months, city officials have taken their plan to abandon it on the road, trying to sell it in local town hall meetings. They have faced furious parents from the Upper East Side to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, who have at turns accused the city of trying to destroy the schools and of focusing too much on a tiny number of schools at the expense of the larger system.

In Albany, the issue has taken a back seat to more popular progressive legislation, including voting reform and abortion rights.

Democratic leaders in the Senate and Assembly have not signaled any willingness to champion an issue that appears to be a political loser; Assembly majority speaker Carl Heastie recently said his conference had not even raised the matter in talks.

And this past weekend, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez did not take a position on the admissions proposal when she spoke about the specialized high schools at an event in her Queens district.

Instead, she argued for broad school improvement, noting that her father traveled across three boroughs from the Bronx to Brooklyn Technical High School.

“My question is, why isn’t every public school in New York City a Brooklyn Tech-caliber school?” she asked, to applause from the audience. “Every one should be.”

 

[hand2handking]

What College Cheating Scandal Says About Race
Affirmative action supporters point to scandal

Harvard University campus

http://www.wfmz.com/news/what-college-cheating-scandal-says-about-race/1058903724

(CNN) - The college admissions scandal reinforced for many what they have long believed: That the process can be gamed by those with wealth and influence.

It has spurred discussions about why factors such as donations, athletics and legacy status are baked into the admissions process, which has traditionally benefitted wealthy families. Yet affirmative action, which is intended to help underrepresented minorities, gets intense scrutiny and legal challenges.

"Some people have said wealth is affirmative action for white people," said Anthony Jack, an assistant professor of education at Harvard University.

It is not affirmative action that threatens the fairness in the college admissions process, its supporters say, but rather the advantages of the rich and powerful.

Fifty people -- from Hollywood stars and top industry CEOs to college coaches and standardized test administrators -- are accused of participating in a scheme to cheat on admissions tests and to get students into leading institutions as athletes regardless of their abilities, prosecutors revealed Tuesday in a federal indictment.

"These families exposed a system and I hope (this) injects into the American imagination just how much money and backdoor ways that wealthy, especially white wealthy families, get into college and universities," Jack said.

Larry Summers, the former Harvard University president, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that there needs to be a lot of soul-searching in higher education.

Americans are "not entirely wrong" to think "that elites are rigging the system for their own benefit and for the benefit of their families," he said.

Discourse Around Affirmative Action

The scandal has hit a nerve, going beyond discussions about elitism and raising issues of race.

"Imagine believing it's affirmative action that's the problem with college admissions," the ACLU tweeted.

Jack says there is a connection between the scandal and affirmative action.

"It's so written into the American imagination that these spots (at prestigious institutions) are for white people and anytime a black student or a Latinx student gets in, it's taking a spot away from them. That's not what's happening," said Jack, the author of "The Privileged Poor," about the experience of low-income students at elite universities.

"What this is exposing," he said of the scandal, "is the steps and the leaps and bounds that wealthy families take to secure a spot that is rightfully no one's -- that they think they have proprietary ownership of."

Many underrepresented minorities say they're constantly having to prove themselves and their qualifications for a spot.

A person of color has to "prove yourself at every turn," said Tiffany Cross, the co-founder and managing editor of The Beat DC, in a panel discussion on "CNN Tonight" with Don Lemon.

"You can be an Ivy League graduate and show up to the table and somebody's going to question your existence there. Nobody ever asked, 'How did this basic, ordinary person next to me, who isn't a person of color, earn their space here?'"

Yet there is little discussion about underqualified white students who benefit from preferences in the admissions process such as sports, family influence and legacies, some say.

Legacies are applicants who are regarded preferentially because they are the children of alumni. They also tend to be white and wealthy, wrote Daniel Golden, the author of the 2006 book "The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges."

Athletes of patrician sports, such as sailing or water polo, are recruited to college athletics. These types of sports aren't accessible for students from inner-city schools.

"It shows the hypocrisy of the elevated status that legacies and athletes get in the admissions process," Jack said. "There's no moral, social or political justification for those two groups to get preferential treatment in admissions."

These preferences benefit mostly white and wealthy applicants, but aren't part of the ongoing debate about affirmative action and what should be considered in the admissions process, he said.

Meanwhile affirmative action remains the target of several lawsuits, including a pending case against Harvard, that was brought on behalf of several Asian-American students by a group called Students for Fair Admissions. The group was set up by Edward Blum, a longtime opponent of affirmative action who in the past has used white plaintiffs to challenge racial policies.

The group argues that Harvard disfavors high-achieving Asian-Americans and gives a boost to African-American, Hispanic and other traditional beneficiaries of affirmative action.

"They're really a conservative group who is using the face of Asian students to say that they're taking admissions access from Asian students to give them to black and brown people," Cross said during a Tuesday panel discussion.

"It's interesting that the privileged people will have other people of color thinking that we stole something from them. They're not going after privileged people."

 

[hand2handking]

How the College Admissions Scandal Busts Racist Stereotypes About Who Gets Into Elite Schools
And shows why we need affirmative action.

The campus of Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Georgetown and several other schools including Yale, Stanford, and the University of Texas, were named in an FBI investigation.
Win McNamee/Getty Images

https://www.vox.com/first-person/20...admissions-fbi-felicity-huffman-lori-loughlin

A massive college cheating scandal was uncovered this week. Dozens of wealthy parents, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, have been accused of using bribes to get their children into exclusive colleges. I read the list of the 50 defendants and noticed something: Nearly all of them appeared to be white.

As a researcher who studies race and elite universities, I know that when many Americans hear “college fraud,” they associate it with people of color. Whether that’s black students getting into school solely because of affirmative action or Asian-American students pushed by merciless “tiger moms” to do whatever it takes, popular stereotypes around race tend to fuel the idea that people of color are “cheating” their ways into elite schools.

The narrative that black students are given an unfair leg up in admissions through affirmative action is pervasive among critics of the program. The idea — that beneficiaries have not earned their place in top colleges — is damaging to many black students. It ignores the historical and ongoing ways that race shapes opportunities for children in the United States. The truth is that black students on elite campuses tend to come from less wealthy families than their white peers. Affirmative action is one of the few non-academic criteria of admission that attempts to reduce inequality in access.

Then, of course, there is another famous admissions scandal at the T.M. Landry school in Louisiana. An unaccredited private school in Louisiana serving a predominantly African-American student body, T.M. Landry was exposed in November for large-scale fraud in the college admissions process. School officials exploited narratives of hardship among African-American youth, asking students to lie about adversity in their lives in order to gain admission to top colleges, in addition to falsifying transcripts. This fraud played into elite colleges’ love for stories of the most disadvantaged black youth succeeding despite all odds, and the need for unlikely stories like the ones the school fabricated to have a chance for admission to top colleges when a teen does not come from privilege.

Then there are the ugly stereotypes surrounding Asian-American students and their “tiger moms” who supposedly push overachievement through means that many deem unacceptable. In her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Amy Chua claims that Asian parents push their children to attain uber-high levels of achievement in academics and extracurriculars through means that some perceive as abusive and downright wrong. In college admissions, some worry that stereotypes of Asian Americans as high-achieving but robotic might affect admissions officers’ evaluations, or about the “personality” rating at Harvard that has been under scrutiny in an admissions lawsuit there.

In my research in suburban communities, I’ve found that some parents even suggest that the pressure Asian parents place on their children can affect their peers’ mental health, because it raises standards at school to seemingly impossible levels. Still, I found that black students reported more pressure from their parents than did white and Asian-American students, suggesting that the reality of students’ lives is much more complex than these simplistic accounts.

In contrast to these stereotypes, most plaintiffs in this week’s college scandal are wealthy whites from the top 1 percent. The suit makes clear that all parents, across lines of race, class, and, of course, celebrity status, will do whatever they can to ensure their children’s success, however advantaged those children already are. A small minority will even turn to illegal means, as the families in this case are accused of doing.

While parents always do their best by their children, they have different resources at their disposal to do so. White and Asian-American families, for example, benefit from higher incomes than black, Latinx, and Native American families and face less discrimination in the housing market, more frequently enabling their children to live in areas of concentrated wealth and to spend more money on developing their children’s extracurricular talents. Legacy families are also disproportionately white, given the enrollments of elite colleges in the past, another mechanism that boosts white enrollment on those campuses. The list of mechanisms that promote privilege in college admissions is long.

The way forward is to implement systems that ensure, as much as possible, that families without privilege, wealth, and social connections also have a chance at success. But it also serves as a warning not to place such a high stake in the admissions game. Beyond these criminal activities, privilege will always play some role in an unequal society because advantaged parents, just like disadvantaged parents, will do everything they can to help their children succeed.

 

[hand2handking]

Elite College Admissions Scandal Shows Irony Of Affirmative Action Complaints
“Who’s getting the thumb on the scale? Largely it’s not low-income or brown or black kids, it’s wealthy kids,” one expert said.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/college-bribery-scam-affirmative-action_n_5c896a88e4b0450ddae6f19c

For many, the college admissions scam of wealthy people allegedly paying bribes to get their kids into elite universities only confirmed what they already knew: Higher education is rigged to benefit wealthy, white students. But the scandal also laid bare the irony of people who complain affirmative action gives an unfair advantage to students of color in admissions, when in fact rich, white kids get the scales heavily tipped in their favor.

“This scandal is just the extreme, the illegal extreme, but it’s in a continuum with legacy admissions, with Jared Kushner, with all these other thumbs on the scale that wealthy kids get that are legal,” said Susan Dynarski, professor of economics, education and public policy at the University of Michigan.

“There’s a lot more kids at elite colleges because their parents are rich than because they’re brown or black,” she added.

Critics of affirmative action policies ― which allow institutions of higher education to account for an applicant’s race or ethnicity to a certain extent when considering admission ― claim that these give an unfair advantage to nonwhite students.

But experts HuffPost spoke to pointed to the many ways, not even reaching the illegal, that access to higher education is already structured to benefit wealthy, white students over others.

Sarah Hinger, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s racial justice program, pointed to “non-criminal ways that privilege shapes college admissions,” such as legacy admissions preferences, donations and athletic scholarships, as well as experiences long before college such as private tutors and test prep to get into elite K-12 schools.

“Societally, we’re accustomed to families seeking to advantage their children through these methods,” Hinger said. “And the ability to do so is a privilege that largely accrues to wealthier white families.”

Meanwhile, in response to the cheating scandal, many people of color on Twitter who went to elite schools spoke of how they were often unfairly scrutinized as supposedly being there because of affirmative action, while rich white students were not targeted for being there due to their wealth.

“I’ve been told when I got in Amherst [College] that I was an ‘affirmative action baby,’” said Anthony Jack, assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “And at Harvard as a grad student and a faculty member, it’s used as an insult.”

Hinger pointed to the acceptance, or relative lack of criticism, for advantages of wealth and privilege compared with the frequent criticism of affirmative action programs.

“The irony is that affirmative action or race-conscious admissions programs are intended to mitigate the disparities that privilege creates, to even the playing field at least slightly,” she added.

“Who’s getting the thumb on the scale?” Dynarski said. “Largely it’s not low-income or brown or black kids, it’s wealthy kids. ... If you look around a college campus and you’re thinking about who got in because of a thumb on the scale, it’s the rich white legacy kids.”





It is a notable “falsehood” in the affirmative action debate that students of color who get into a school that uses affirmative action in admissions are not as qualified as others, according to Jin Hee Lee, who oversees the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s education and economic justice work. By the time Harvard considers any student, given the high demand for entry, they are weighing race as a factor among a pool of students who are “exceptionally qualified,” she noted.

“For black and Latinx students to be seen as not worthy of attending select universities, it’s not reflective of the facts,” Lee said, noting these are students with “exceptional” grades, test scores, extracurriculars and more. “Black and Latinx children are seen as though it’d be a surprise for them to be smart or they’re not as capable, when that’s really not the case.”

Meanwhile, this scheme of rich parents allegedly bribing college athletic coaches and exam proctors to get an illegal “in” for their children is just “the tip of the iceberg,” as Jack put it.

“A lot of people are focusing on this scandal. ... It’s the culmination of a lifetime of opportunity hoarding, of parents thinking their children deserve better than other people,” Jack said, pointing to parents who hire private tutors to improve their kids’ SAT scores and writing coaches to massage their kids’ college applications. “It’s a story of power and privilege reproducing itself.”

Wealthy families in the U.S. already use a variety of methods, short of the illegal, to buy their kids’ way into college, including large donations to schools, like Kushner’s dad pledging $2.5 million to Harvard University. Then there’s the extra tutors, essay coaches and interview prep professionals who help the elite get their kids into Ivy League schools.

But perhaps most egregious of all, the experts said, is the issue of legacy admissions ― or students being more likely to get accepted simply because a parent or other relative attended.

“Legacy admissions, in particular, is affirmative action for people who’ve had a very privileged life,” Dynarski said.

Legacy tips the scales heavily in an applicant’s favor ― and disproportionately favors white students. At Harvard University, for instance, legacy applicants were accepted at nearly five times the rate of non-legacies ― with legacy applicants accepted at a rate of nearly 34 percent from 2009 to 2015, versus a rate of 5.9 percent for non-legacies in the same period, per NPR.

“It’s absolutely hypocritical that children of alumni are given a leg up in admissions when there is no moral social justification or historical legacy of exclusion,” Jack said.





Race-based affirmative action was meant as a correction to historical, systemic inequality in access to education because of one’s race.

Hinger pointed to the long, well-documented history of race discrimination in the U.S. from legally segregated public schools to the racial wealth gap. She noted advantages like legacy admissions likely had a greater impact on college admissions than the consideration of race.

“The point of it, whether race- or class-based, is to try to counter the enormous inequities that hold back these kids all the way through elementary, high school ― they’re given a small boost at college entry,” Dynarski said. “It’s not anywhere near the advantage given to legacy students.”

Even with affirmative action, black and Hispanic students are more underrepresented at Ivy League schools than they were several decades ago, per The New York Times.

Meanwhile, white people are the racial group most likely to oppose affirmative action, according to The Washington Post. Nearly two-thirds of white people opposed such policies, according to a 40-year study of public opinions, while only 10 percent of black people did.

Affirmative action has also been repeatedly under threat in recent years, with a high-profile lawsuit involving the University of Texas (ironically one of the schools the alleged scammer parents bribed to get their kids into). In 2016, the Supreme Court ruled in Fisher v. University of Texas that the use of race as a factor in admissions was constitutional.

Most recently a lawsuit against Harvard, claiming the university discriminates against Asian-American applicants, is likely to bring another affirmative action decision before the high court.

Some people have argued this elite college cheating scandal has only magnified just how much programs like affirmative action are needed to level the playing field in a system already rigged to benefit rich white people.

“What these parents are accused of doing is paying to give their children a leg up above everyone else ― a leg up they didn’t deserve ― so they could gain admission to the school of their choice. Because this is how privilege works. This is how white privilege works,” Monique Judge wrote in an article for The Root.

“Shame on everyone involved in this. And shame on anyone who still thinks affirmative action is unnecessary,” she said.

And the processes that provide unfair advantages to children and adults with wealthy parents do not start or stop at college admissions, Jack noted.

“Let’s not think this is just one moment. This is a lifelong system,” he said, noting that these are the same types of parents who then pay their kids’ rent so they can afford to take a prestigious unpaid internship or call a friend to get their kids an internship in the first place.

“This is power and privilege putting you in positions that you don’t earn,” he said. “If this doesn’t show you the myth of meritocracy, I don’t know what will.”

 

[hand2handking]

SAT Scores of Asian Students Cancelled Over Cheating

https://www.voanews.com/a/sat-scores-of-asian-students-cancelled-over-cheating/4009281.html

The organization that oversees the leading college admissions test says it has cancelled the scores of several international students and is reducing future test dates overseas in an effort to crack down on cheating.

The College Board, which administers the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), said the students whose scores are in question might not be allowed to retake the test. It is looking into the scores of other international students, as well, it said.

The Reuters new agency reported the update as part of its ongoing investigation into the SAT and test taking, mostly in Asia.

Most U.S. colleges and universities use the SAT to measure the capabilities of student applicants. More than 6.7 million test-takers completed the SAT or a pre-SAT test during the 2015-2016 school year, said Maria Eugenia Alcón-Heraux, College Board director of media relations, to Student Union.

A hidden coil in a shirt, two batteries, a mobile phone and a receiver were found on a student and confiscated by the authorities as cheating equipment for a Chinese test in Chengdu, Sichuan province in 2014. (REUTERS)

Among the class of 2016, nearly 1.7 million students took the SAT at least once in their high school career, Alcón-Heraux responded in an email.

Also in response to the cheating, the non-profit College Board said it will reduce the number of test dates overseas from six to four a year to limit test questions being shared and duplicated.

The international SAT test scheduled for June has been canceled. The next SAT tests will be held in October and December. In 2018, the test will be held in March and May. Some students take the test more than once to try to increase their scores. This must be done within yearly application cycles and deadlines.

A student goes through a security check as she enters the classroom to take the National College Entrance Exam in Shenyang, Liaoning province in 2013. (REUTERS)

The SAT asks nearly 100 questions in three topics: Math, Reading and Writing. Those questions are designed to tell colleges the level of knowledge a student has gained as they approach university. The test is an intense three- to four-hours long, and a student’s higher education and career can hinge on a high or low score.

Because the SAT and similar tests are standardized over a large student population year after year, questions may be used numerous times. Reducing test dates reduces the number of times SAT questions are asked each year. The fewer times the questions circulate among students, the less likely they can be passed on to others.

Sample questions to help students prepare are commonly available online. Students leave the tests and share questions and answers with colleagues. Tutors who help students prepare for the tests are also eager to know what is on the test.

Many companies offer test preparation services and manuals that offer sample questions. Reuters reported extensively last year about the rise and complexity of cheating in Asia to boost students’ access to U.S. institutions.

SAT exams with fresh questions are first given in the United States. The exams are sent to test centers in other countries after that.

A police officer displays a pair of glasses with a hidden camera and a tiny receiver attached to a coin, which are both exam cheating equipment confiscated by the police, in Shenyang, Liaoning province in 2013. (REUTERS)

The College Board had reduced SAT administrations from six to four in South Korea, Egypt and Saudi Arabia after determining in 2013 that tests had leaked there, Reuters reported. At the time, it did not to take similar action in China while knowing a Chinese website had hacked four SAT exams, according to an internal College Board PowerPoint presentation seen by Reuters.

"A spate of cheating incidents in China and other countries ensued," Reuters reported.

Reuters said that parts of the June exam in the U.S. were duplicated six months later on the test given in Asia. The June test “was widely available in China and had been sold to students in South Korea,” Reuters said, based on more than 200 pages of scans and photographs of the leaked exam.

A year ago, the College Board cancelled test dates at 45 test centers in China and Macau after determining that students may have received copies of the tests in advance.

Also last year, more than a dozen Chinese nationals and dual citizens wereconvicted of federal charges related to taking the SAT and other exams in Pennsylvania after five years of cheating.

Most of the 13 found guilty of the cheating were deported to China. Chinese students had paid up to $6,000 to have the imposters take the admissions tests for them.

The College Board said it is alerting law enforcement about individuals and businesses that reproduce test content illegally. It said it asked legitimate test takers and those who administer the test to anonymously report cheating.

Peter Schwartz, the College Board's chief administrative officer and general counsel, said his organization is working to protect exam questions.

"We are unwavering in our commitment to SAT test security and we will continue to confront any efforts to undermine it," Schwartz said in a statement released by the College Board.

Around 1,200 students at Dongguan University of Technology took their English examination in a large hall so as to prevent exam fraud in 2007. (REUTERS)

However, critics say duplicating questions on the domestic and international exams year after year is a problem.

The College Board "did not say they're going to stop recycling tests, which is the primary tool used in all these international cheating scandals," said Bob Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, to the Washington Post.

Schaeffer said social media contributes to the widespread sharing of test questions.

"The only way to stop unethical test-prep companies and individuals from gaining advance knowledge of upcoming test items is to stop reusing test questions," Schaeffer said to the Post.

The College Board “has increased test form development to reduce reuse," it said in a written statement.

"We are reducing re-use,” said College Board’s Zachary Goldberg. “We recognize that's an issue."

Steve Syverson, an administrator at the University of Washington-Bothell, has served on the National Association for College Admission Counseling. He told Reuters that the College Board will need to find a way to return to the time when test scores could be trusted.

“The College Board does a lot of good things, but it will clearly be a major challenge for them to restore trust in the integrity of the test,” Syverson told Reuters in 2016.

The test questions are written by Educational Testing Services, headquartered in Princeton, N.J. “ETS develops and administers the SAT” and other exams “on behalf of the College Board,” according to its website. “The College Board, headquartered in New York City, sponsors these testing programs and decides how they will be constructed, administered and used.” ETS says the College Board is its largest client, but works with dozens of other organizations and associations.

 

[hand2handking]

Riot After Chinese Teachers Try To Stop Pupils Cheating
What should have been a hushed scene of 800 Chinese students diligently sitting their university entrance exams erupted into siege warfare after invigilators tried to stop them from cheating.

Riot after Chinese teachers try to stop pupils cheating

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wo...ese-teachers-try-to-stop-pupils-cheating.html

The relatively small city of Zhongxiang in Hubei province has always performed suspiciously well in China's notoriously tough "gaokao" exams, each year winning a disproportionate number of places at the country's elite universities.

Last year, the city received a slap on the wrist from the province's Education department after it discovered 99 identical papers in one subject. Forty five examiners were "harshly criticised" for allowing cheats to prosper.

So this year, a new pilot scheme was introduced to strictly enforce the rules.

When students at the No. 3 high school in Zhongxiang arrived to sit their exams earlier this month, they were dismayed to find they would be supervised not by their own teachers, but by 54 external invigilators randomly drafted in from different schools across the county.

The invigilators wasted no time in using metal detectors to relieve students of their mobile phones and secret transmitters, some of them designed to look like pencil erasers.

A special team of female invigilators was on hand to intimately search female examinees, according to the Southern Weekend newspaper.

Outside the school, meanwhile, a squad of officials patrolled the area to catch people transmitting answers to the examinees. At least two groups were caught trying to communicate with students from a hotel opposite the school gates.

For the students, and for their assembled parents waiting outside the school gates to pick them up afterwards, the new rules were an infringement too far.

As soon as the exams finished, a mob swarmed into the school in protest.

"I picked up my son at midday [from his exam]. He started crying. I asked him what was up and he said a teacher had frisked his body and taken his mobile phone from his underwear. I was furious and I asked him if he could identify the teacher. I said we should go back and find him," one of the protesting fathers, named as Mr Yin, said to the police later.

By late afternoon, the invigilators were trapped in a set of school offices, as groups of students pelted the windows with rocks. Outside, an angry mob of more than 2,000 people had gathered to vent its rage, smashing cars and chanting: "We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat."

According to the protesters, cheating is endemic in China, so being forced to sit the exams without help put their children at a disadvantage.

Teachers trapped in the school took to the internet to call for help. "We are trapped in the exam hall," wrote Kang Yanhong, one of the invigilators, on a Chinese messaging service. "Students are smashing things and trying to break in," she said.

Another of the external invigilators, named Li Yong, was punched in the nose by an angry father. Mr Li had confiscated a mobile phone from his son and then refused a bribe to return the handset.

"I hoped my son would do well in the exams. This supervisor affected his performance, so I was angry," the man, named Zhao, explained to the police later.

Hundreds of police eventually cordoned off the school and the local government conceded that "exam supervision had been too strict and some students did not take it well".

 

[ninjahood]

Only 7 Black Students Got Into N.Y.’s Most Selective High School, Out of 895 Spots

Students at Stuyvesant High School, where only seven black applicants gained admission on Monday.CreditCreditChristopher Lee for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/nyregion/black-students-nyc-high-schools.html

how many asians got in thou...

 

[hand2handking]

The Disgraceful Cheating Scandal at One of America’s Best High Schools

Daniel Shapiro
Stuyvesant High School students haven’t learned their lesson.

https://nypost.com/2018/01/27/cheating-still-rampant-at-disgraced-stuyvesant-school/

Five years after a nationally publicized cheating scandal led to the principal’s ouster and the suspension of a dozen kids, academic dishonesty is rampant at the city’s educational crown jewel, students say.

“You could call Stuyvesant a meritocracy. Your worth is kind of judged on your academic success. Everyone here is pushing for the Ivies,” freshman Matthew Qiu, 15, told The Post. “Some kids do it by studying. Other kids don’t want to put in the effort or they aren’t able to, so they cheat.”

A survey by the student newspaper, The Spectator, found a stunning 83 percent of 329 responding students admitted they cheated at the elite institution.

“We all are just helping each other out. Stuyvesant breeds a culture of cheating, and you’re honestly stupid to not take advantage of it,” one student told The Spectator.

Cheating is most common among students in their third year, the most academically challenging because the grades count heavily on college applications, the December survey found. A whopping 97 percent of juniors said they had engaged in academic dishonesty, while 56 percent of freshman said they had already cheated after just four months in the school.

Students interviewed outside the downtown school last week weren’t surprised by the survey results.

“This school has a competitive environment, so some kids feel like they have to [cheat] in order to succeed,” Qiu said. “There is this bar. You are always trying to be on top, to be the best.”

“For some people, the pressure can be so much that they’ll take the risk even a second or third time after being caught cheating,” said junior Rafsan Zaman, 17.

Stuy’s brainy kids hold the city’s highest average SAT scores — 1450 (out of 1600). It’s the city’s most coveted high school, accepting only 926 of nearly 23,000 eighth graders who applied to get in last year. Admission is based solely on a test given for eight “specialized” city high schools.

Last spring, Stuy administrators caught students sharing Spanish homework answers in a Facebook group with nearly 100 students, senior Rafsan Hamid, a member, told The Post.

The Facebook group was started as a way to discuss the class and homework, Hamid said, but it turned into a cheating ring. Students would submit their homework to the Vista Higher Learning Central site, an online homework submission portal, which kicked back instantaneous answers. Kids then took photos of assignments with the correct answers filled in, and posted them for classmates to copy.

A whistleblower student eventually alerted Spanish teacher Abigail Carpenter and the school administration launched a probe, The Spectator reported. Several students who orchestrated the scheme received zeros on some assignments.

Hamid said the Spanish department’s assistant principal lectured each class, then teachers began giving pop quizzes on homework and made tests harder. No students were suspended. The Facebook group has since been shut down.

Carpenter, who resigned this month, is no stranger to cheating at Stuy. She was a proctor for the statewide Regents exams in 2012, when 71 Stuyvesant students had their scores tossed for sharing cellphone photos of a test.

Carpenter told investigators she didn’t see any hanky panky. Longtime principal Stanley Teitel, who was accused of hiding the wrongdoing, was fired over the scandal and a dozen students were suspended.

According to the recent survey, 73 percent of students said they have copied someone else’s homework, and 58 percent said they’ve cheated on a test more than once.

A 15-year-old sophomore told the Post that students memorize the sequence of correct True/False answers on tests and share them with friends in later classes who have yet to take the tests.

Seventy-six percent of students in the survey said their teachers have taken steps to stop cheating, but only 10 percent said they’ve been busted.

For years, the school has tamped down on plagiarism by requiring students to submit papers via Turnitin, a website that scans work for passages that appear in publications on the Internet.

But that didn’t stop one of junior Rafsan Zaman’s friends from plagiarizing two papers — once in freshman year and again in sophomore year — which led to the pal’s suspension, he said.

The school notifies parents of students caught cheating, according to Stuyvesant’s academic dishonesty policy, and the kids are also “subject to suspension,” which can be reported to colleges.

Despite the consequences, students are defiant.

“It’s not academic dishonesty if you don’t get caught,” one said.

That attitude alarms David Bloomfield, a Brooklyn College and CUNY Grad Center education professor.

“Cheating seems to have achieved a degree of social acceptance, where the kids feel pressure to not get caught, rather than to live up to high ethical standards,” he said. “That’s a responsibility for the school to teach.”

Principal Eric Contreras said in a statement to the Post, “We hold students to high academic integrity standards and have a strict policy in place that is reviewed with students at the start of each school year.”

 

[hand2handking]

how many asians got in thou...

probably 3 right?

Stuyvesant made 33 offers to Hispanic students, up slightly from 27 seats last year. Asian-American students received 587 offers, and white students were offered 194 seats. Asian-American and white students make up about 15 percent each of the total public school system. The percentage of black students at Stuyvesant has been declining for two decades.

587

 

[hand2handking]

In Harvard Affirmative Action Case, Judge Appears Skeptical

JONATHAN WIGGS/GLOBE STAFF
Harvard University is embroiled in a court case regarding its admissions policies.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2...-plaintiffs/edyDesuJv9eedn6sRqhfuK/story.html

US District Judge Allison Burroughs appeared skeptical Wednesday that plaintiffs had offered enough proof that Harvard College intentionally discriminated against Asian-American applicants, given that no rejected students testified during a three-week trial.

Burroughs, speaking from the bench during the final oral arguments in the case, said the lack of Asian-American student witnesses was a “problem” in the lawsuit, brought against Harvard by Students for Fair Admissions.

In a case that could overturn decades-old law on the use of affirmative action in higher education, Students for Fair Admissions has alleged that Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants by giving them lower ratings on personal scores, which are crucial to admissions and measure such qualities as courage and kindness. The organization has argued that Harvard’s use of race to create a diverse undergraduate class hurts Asian-American applicants.

But during the trial, Students for Fair Admissions called no members of the organization to the stand and relied primarily on statistical analysis, its experts, and documents and testimony from Harvard officials.

Previous cases over the past 40 years that have challenged affirmative action in college admissions have traditionally centered around an individual student who was denied a seat on campus. Abigail Fisher, backed by Students for Fair Admissions, challenged the University of Texas system’s admissions policy a few years ago. Allan Bakke went up against the Regents of the University of California in the 1970s. Barbara Grutter sued the University of Michigan and its president more than 15 years ago. All those cases involved white students.

Students for Fair Admissions said its decision not to present student witnesses was based, in part, on its fear that in the current polarized climate they would be harassed.

“Somebody would have done something horrible to one of our students,” said Adam Mortara, an attorney for the group.

Mortara and attorneys for Harvard on Wednesday appeared briefly in front of Burroughs.

The judge, who is likely to rule on the case in the coming months, also warned Harvard that it, too, had a weakness in its case.

In particular, Burroughs said, the statistical analysis that showed Harvard gave Asian-American applicants lower personal scores was a problem.

No matter what Burroughs decides, legal and higher education experts have said that they expect the ruling will be appealed and that the fate of the case and of affirmative action could eventually be determined by the Supreme Court.

While this case has focused on Harvard, it could have repercussions throughout higher education, since many elite universities use similar admissions practices to ensure diversity on their campuses.

This case, involving admissions by one of the most selective universities in the world, has drawn widespread attention.

On Wednesday, activists, law students, Asian-American families, and the media spilled into an overflow courtroom.

‘Somebody would have donesomething horrible to one of our students.’

Harvard’s president, Lawrence Bacow, sat in the audience, as did Edward Blum, the head of Students for Fair Admissions and the chief architect of the case against the university.

The trial has pulled back the curtain on Harvard’s secretive admissions process, revealing sometimes embarrassing details, particularly about the lengths to which it goes in order to cater to well-heeled and well-connected donors.

Harvard’s former president and its admissions gatekeepers were forced to take the stand, detailing how they select 2,000 undergraduates out of more than 40,000 applicants each year.

Harvard officials defended the admissions practices and insisted the university considers hundreds of factors, from grades and extracurriculars to where applicants live and what their parents do for a living.

Race is one of many factors and plays a significant and positive role only when students are on the bubble and officials are trying to figure out whether to admit them, said Seth Waxman, an attorney who represents Harvard.

Harvard has insisted that eliminating the use of race in admissions would create a far less diverse campus and significantly reduce the number of black and Hispanic students admitted every year.

At Harvard, 21 percent of students are Asian, nearly 12 percent are Hispanic, and 8 percent are black; the majority of the campus is white.

Harvard’s attorneys accused Student for Fair Admissions of using laws crafted to curb discrimination and expand opportunities for minorities to instead limit access.

The case relies heavily on dueling statistical analyses of six years of Harvard admissions data.

According to Students for Fair Admissions, only 22 percent of Asian-American applicants on the top 10th of the academic ladder received high personal ratings, compared to about 30 percent of white applicants. Harvard’s top black and Hispanic applicants were even more likely to get high personal ratings.

The organization pointed out that an internal analysis done by Harvard’s staff before the lawsuit was filed also raised questions about whether Asian-Americans were disadvantaged in these ratings.

Mortara said Wednesday that Harvard has failed to explain why Asian-Americans receive these lower scores on personal qualities.

He also pointed out that as the case was being prepared for trial, Harvard for the first time explicitly instructed admissions officials not to use race in the personal ratings. Harvard said the instructions simply formalized existing practice.

Burroughs on Wednesday also indicated she is weighing arguments about whether, in order to prove discrimination, Students for Fair Admissions must show that Harvard acted intentionally and out of some animosity toward Asian-Americans.

“I’ll get to work on this,” Burroughs said before ending the session.

 

[KHUFU]

Boy, a lot of pressure associated with bring a model minority.

 

[nawghtyhare]

how many asians got in thou...

hell i see like 7 asians in just that photo