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

[obeahmyal7]

hand2handking

Thanks for updating the thread. Much respect.

 

[hand2handking]

 

[ninjahood]

587

sounds like asians winning out here.

 

[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

How the Few Black and Hispanic Students at Stuyvesant High School Feel

Members of Stuyvesant High School’s Black Students League and Aspira, the Hispanic student organization, met in Battery Park after school on Wednesday.
Credit: Christopher Lee for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/nyregion/stuyvesant-high-school-black-students.html

Sarai Pridgen had just gotten home from debate practice on Monday evening when she opened her laptop to find her Facebook feed flooded with stories about a staggering statistic: only seven black students had been admitted into Stuyvesant High School, out of 895 spots. The number was causing a wrenching citywide discussion about race and inequality in America’s largest school system.

Sarai said she felt sickened by the statistic — yet unsurprised. A 16-year-old sophomore, she is one of just 29 black students out of about 3,300 teenagers at Stuyvesant.

“I go to this school every day, I walk through the hallways of this school, and I don’t think I see a black person usually through my day,” said Sarai, who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. “It wasn’t shock that I felt, it was the same wave of disappointment I feel every time I look at the demographics of this school.”

New York is being roiled by a fight over the future of its selective schools, but at Stuyvesant, the admission statistics were especially piercing. For students, it is hard enough being a teenager, balancing grades and homework with social pressures and a barrage of Instagram Stories.

But imagine being one of the few black and Hispanic students at one of the country’s most selective public schools.

The nine black and Hispanic students who gathered for an interview after school on Wednesday said the sobering statistics had energized them to be even more vocal in the discussion regarding the city’s elite schools, and to make Stuyvesant a more welcoming place for future students like them.

William Lohier, 17, whose father is black and whose mother is Korean-American, said the numbers had made him feel both angry and committed to improving the school culture.

“I have so much trouble believing that of all of the top students in New York City who are able to change the world, and are able to perform the best in this really rigorous environment, that only seven of them are black,” said William, who spoke quietly and seriously throughout the meeting while wearing a Black Students League T-shirt. Last year, William was the city’s youth poet laureate.

“It’s just wrong.”

After that comment, the teenagers let out a collective sigh. Then they smiled and nodded in agreement.

William Lohier, a Stuyvesant senior and the president of the Black Students League, lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Credit: Christopher Lee for The New York Times

Still, Sarai acknowledged that other students’ comments had occasionally made her question her place at the school.

“I’ve been told that the only reason I got into Stuyvesant is because I’m black, even though the test doesn’t even factor that in,” said Sarai, whose father is black and grew up in New York City and whose mother is from Spain. “Not only is that discouraging and alienating, but it makes you feel like maybe you don’t deserve your spot, even though I know that I work just as hard as every other sophomore in my class.”

And the teenagers hoped they could expand the conversation beyond Stuyvesant, which is just one of the city’s roughly 600 high schools.

Last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a controversial proposal to eliminate the admissions exam — the sole means of entry into the city’s eight so-called specialized high schools — and replace it with a system that offers seats to the top performers at every city middle school. The plan has little if any chance of passing in Albany because it has faced opposition from the schools’ alumni and Asian-American groups.

Asians make up roughly 73 percent of Stuyvesant’s 3,300 students, while white students are about 20 percent of the school. Hispanic students make up another 3 percent, with black students just under 1 percent. The city school system is nearly 70 percent black and Hispanic with white and Asian students making up roughly another 15 percent each.

Yajaira Rodriguez, a Stuyvesant senior and the president of the Hispanic student organization, ASPIRA, lives in Corona, Queens.
Credit: Christopher Lee for The New York Times

Some who defend the entrance exam say Asian-American students at the specialized schools simply worked harder than the black and Hispanic students who did not get in. They say they believed that the numbers, while bleak, reflected a fair system.

But the black and Hispanic teenagers interviewed said they considered themselves proof that there is no disparity of effort or talent — just an imbalance of opportunity.

Venus Nnadi, 18, a Stuyvesant graduate who is a freshman at Harvard, said she remembered when a fifth-grade teacher pulled her aside at her Catholic middle school in Queens Village and encouraged her to consider an elite public school.

Ms. Nnadi, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, had never heard of Stuyvesant, but she bought a test preparation book and started taking practice exams. She thinks often of her classmates who didn’t have the same guidance.

“I had a lot of friends in my middle school who were just as smart as me, and who I know could be thriving at Stuyvesant if they had known it existed,” said Ms. Nnadi, who was a standout on Stuyvesant’s track team.

It was much the same for Hanna Gebremichael, the daughter of Eritrean immigrants, who found out the test existed three months before taking it — by Googling phrases like “best New York City high schools.”

Eugene Thomas graduated from Stuyvesant last year and is finishing his freshman year at Yale. Mr. Thomas grew up in the Fulton Houses, a public housing development in Chelsea.
Credit: Christopher Lee for The New York Times

She crammed practice exams into her schedule and took a test preparation course at the last minute.

“It ended up working out, but a lot of the time it doesn’t, and I can see why,” said Hanna, a 17-year-old senior who grew up in Harlem and on the Upper West Side.

Eugene Thomas, who is now a 19-year-old freshman at Yale, said that when he found out about specialized high schools from his seventh grade classmates, he saved up money from his job as a pharmacy delivery boy to pay for test preparation.

Mr. Thomas, who is black and Puerto Rican and grew up in a housing project in Chelsea, remembered that his tutor gave him a steep discount, in part because he lived with a single mother who is disabled.

Yet even after acing the exam, the students’ moments of triumph were tempered by fears about being one of the few black or Hispanic students at Stuyvesant.

“I remember my mom telling me, ‘You’re going to have to put on your armor every day,’” William said.

Once they got to Stuyvesant, the students said they sometimes felt misunderstood by their white and Asian-American classmates.

Falina Ongus, a Stuyvesant sophomore who immigrated from Kenya when she was three years old, lives in Coney Island, Brooklyn.
Credit: Christopher Lee for The New York Times

When Ms. Nnadi found out last April that she had been accepted into all eight of the Ivy League colleges, her first reaction was to keep the news quiet. She said she feared that her peers would make snide comments.

Ms. Nnadi’s classmates had previously told her that she did not have to worry about her grades because, as a black girl, she was basically guaranteed entry into the college of her choice.

“To have all my hard work, and all the work I’ve done throughout the years invalidated simply because I’m black, that hurt a lot,” she said.

Mr. Thomas was grateful to have Asian-American friends rush to his defense after some students gossiped that he got into Yale only because he is black and Hispanic. (There are currently 100 Hispanic students at Stuyvesant.)

Ultimately, all the students agreed that they had made the right choice in going to Stuyvesant.

Yajaira Rodriguez, a 17-year-old Mexican-American senior who lives in Corona, Queens, got to take a camping trip that bolstered her passion for environmental science.

Bryan Monge Serrano, a 16-year-old Salvadoran-American junior who lives in Flushing, Queens, said he never would have fallen in love with computer science if it wasn’t for the high-level classes at Stuyvesant.

As the sun began to set, the teenagers zipped up their coats and got ready to trek to their respective corners of the city to start their homework. They said they were grateful to have spent another afternoon together.

Falina Ongus, a 15-year-old sophomore who was born in Kenya, said, “We all help each other through.”

 

[ninjahood]

 

[KHUFU]

How the Few Black and Hispanic Students at Stuyvesant High School Feel

Members of Stuyvesant High School’s Black Students League and Aspira, the Hispanic student organization, met in Battery Park after school on Wednesday.
Credit: Christopher Lee for The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/nyregion/stuyvesant-high-school-black-students.html

Fantastic post.

 

[hand2handking]

Harvard Announces High Admittance of Asian Americans as Judge Weighs Affirmative Action
Harvard said 25.4 percent of its admitted undergraduate class of 1,950 students is Asian American this year, up from 22.7 percent the year before.

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-...icans-judge-weighs-affirmative-action-n990051

Harvard University announced demographic details about its newest class of admitted undergraduate students last week, including a record proportion of Asian Americans as a federal judge weighs whether the university discriminates against that group in its admissions process.

The university said 25.4 percent of its admitted class of 1,950 students is Asian American, up from 22.7 percent the year before. The new figure is the highest proportion of Asian American students that the university has published in the last decade. Data released as part of a lawsuit against Harvard suggest that the 25.4 percent figure is the highest since at least 1980.

The figure does not include international students, who made up 12.3 percent of admitted students this year.

The announcement comes as a federal judge in Massachusetts weighs whether Harvard discriminates against Asian American applicants in its undergraduate admissions.

Lawyers for both sides clashed in a three-week trial that ran from October to November 2018.

Students for Fair Admissions, the group that is suing Harvard, alleged that the university discriminated against Asian American applicants, particularly through its use of “personal ratings.”

The trial, which opened to a full courtroom and overflow seating,consisted in large part of two competing statistical models. Lawyers for Students for Fair Admissions — a group founded by conservative activist Edward Blum — argued that their model showed that Harvard discriminated. Harvard argued its statistical model showed that it did not.

A decision in the case by federal Judge Allison Burroughs is expected in the next few months.

The case is being closely watched as it could affect race-conscious admissions policies at elite colleges across the United States. It has also divided Asian Americans, with advocacy groups filing briefs in favor of both sides.

Affirmative action — the practice by some universities to take an applicant’s race into account for admissions purposes — has been ruled constitutional but is subject to strict rules.

Applicants to a program must be pooled together and compete against one another for the same pool of seats. For a university’s race-conscious policy to be considered legal, they must also show that race-neutral methods of diversifying their students — such as plans in which a certain percentage of top students at their high school are offered admittance, policies based on socioeconomic status, or programs based on a student’s area of academic interest — are not enough to achieve their goals.

The case comes at such a time when the role of race in university admissions is being called into question.

In 2011, the departments of Education and Justice under President Barack Obama issued guidelines based on court opinions on how universities may take race into account in their admissions if they desire. While the court opinions underlying those guidelines remain valid, the Trump administration withdrew the guidelines in July.

 

[hand2handking]

SAT To Score Students' 'Disadvantages' To Try To Even The Playing Field

SAT test preparation books sit on a shelf at a bookstore in New York City.
Mario Tama/Getty Images

The College Board has been testing a tool that could give the millions of students who take the SATs every year a score measuring their economic hardships and other disadvantages, the nonprofit said Thursday.

The Environmental Context Dashboard includes information about students' high schools, including the rate of teens who receive free or reduced lunch, and their home life and neighborhoods, such as average family income, educational attainment, housing stability and crime.

The dashboard "shines a light on students who have demonstrated remarkable resourcefulness to overcome challenges and achieve more with less," said David Coleman, chief executive of the College Board, which administers the SAT. "It enables colleges to witness the strength of students in a huge swath of America who would otherwise be overlooked."

The scores won't be revealed to SAT test-takers, but schools will see the numbers when reviewing college applications.

Fifty colleges and universities, including Yale, Florida State University and Trinity University, took part in a pilot program last year to test what some observers are calling an "adversity score."
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/13/7029...llege-some-context-for-the-admissions-scandal
Florida State University officials told The Wall Street Journal that the socioeconomic data helped boost nonwhite enrollment to 42% from 37%.

Tiffany Jones, director of higher-education policy at The Education Trust, said she welcomes schools relying less on standardized test scores. Yet she doubts that the new dashboard data will really make college campuses more racially diverse.

"I don't think this action from College Board of SAT alone will drastically change the opportunities for low-income students and students of color," Jones told NPR. "You cannot use proxies for race. That's probably the weakest part of the strategy."

How race and class figure into college admissions has been in the spotlight. The college admissions fraud scandal laid bare the extraordinary lengths to which many wealthy parents went in trying to get their children accepted to some of the country's most selective universities.

And a high-profile lawsuit in which Asian American applicants accuse Harvard University of discrimination by forcing them to clear a higher admissions bar is still playing out in the courts. The case still awaits a judge's decision.

This isn't the first time an SAT pilot has tried to factor in socioeconomic data.

Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, helped oversee the SAT in the late-1990s during a similar pilot. Known as the Strivers program, it assigned students a score that included race-based and economic factors.

The backlash from schools, parents and commentators was swift, and the program was quickly killed.

"We got hosed," Carnevale said. "There was literally a national outcry."

He said since the College Board's new gauge does not weigh racial factors, it may prove to be more popular.

 

[H3HK]

Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A judge has ruled in favor of Harvard University in a high-profile court case centered on whether the school's admissions process forces Asian Americans to clear a higher bar to get in.

Federal District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs issued her decision Tuesday, saying "the Court finds no persuasive documentary evidence of any racial animus or conscious prejudice against Asian Americans." In the decision, Burroughs said that while Harvard's admissions program is "not perfect," "ensuring diversity at Harvard relies, in part, on race conscious admissions."
In a statement, Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow said, "Today we reaffirm the importance of diversity — and everything it represents to the world."

The plaintiff, advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), accused Harvard of considering race too much and discriminating against Asian American applicants. SFFA President Edward Blum said in a statement that he was disapointed by the ruling and, "SFFA will appeal this decision to the 1st Court of Appeals and, if necessary, to the U.S Supreme Court."

Supporters of affirmative action fear that if this case makes it to the nation's highest court, race-conscious admissions could be eliminated.

Many colleges that already consider race in admissions have been closely watching the Harvard lawsuit. "It matters a lot what the Harvards of the world do," said Tiffany Jones, director of higher education policy at the Education Trust.

According to Jones, Tuesday's ruling might encourage those schools to stay the course.

"This decision helps to reinforce this idea that there are legal ways to incorporate a racial-equity focus in the efforts of higher education leaders to create opportunities and support the success of underrepresented students of color."

SFFA, led by conservative strategist Edward Blum, sued Harvard back in 2014, alleging that the school discriminates against Asian American applicants in the admissions process. The organization says Harvard uses "racial balancing" — which is illegal — to curate its student body and holds Asian American students to a higher standard than others in the admissions process. (Blum was also behind a lawsuit against the University of Texas at Austin, challenging its affirmative action program. The Supreme Court sided with the University of Texas in 2016.)

Harvard denied the group's claims of discrimination, presenting its own evidence to the contrary during a three-week trial in fall 2018. Harvard uses what it calls a "whole person review" in its admissions process, considering many qualities about each candidate. Testimony from Harvard representatives, including the admissions dean, provided a window into the school's normally mysterious admissions system.

Harvard only accepts a small percentage of its applicants, but most American colleges and universitiesaccept a majority of those who apply. And while Harvard is among a large group of selective schools that consider race as one factor in admissions, most schools don't take race into account.

 

[ninjahood]

so its basically gonna be appealed to da supreme Court.

 

[Brownstone]

Yeah, good luck with that. Half the supreme court went to Harvard.

 

[ninjahood]

Yeah, good luck with that. Half the supreme court went to Harvard.

stranger things have happened.

 

[tay1]

Glad they lost the lawsuit. Folks only down with you until they no longer benefit

 

[whatscomplex]

Asian Americans too considerate for this to get any social traction.

Polls that majority of us support it even though it directly discriminates against us.

I still support it even though I know damn well no one would do it for us if it was reversed.

 

[DrizzyNYC]

Just shows how badly we messed up in fighting for the civil rights bill. Black people should have fought ONLY for themselves. No one else showed up in numbers like us and they reaped all the benefits and attempt to undermine us at every turn.

Don't fall for the minority coalition CON GAME.
It doesn't exist at all.

 

[whatscomplex]

Just shows how badly we messed up in fighting for the civil rights bill. Black people should have fought ONLY for themselves. No one else showed up in numbers like us and they reaped all the benefits and attempt to undermine us at every turn.

Don't fall for the minority coalition CON GAME.
It doesn't exist at all.

How are you equating the two? People fighting for civil rights came at no cost to anyone.

You think black people would directly sacrifice their community for another like the majority of Asian-Americans are doing? Come on man. Quit lying. No other minority community would do this in reverse. They have the perfect sacrificial lamb in that most Asian-Americans will just go with it and work around it.

Asian-Americans are taking an L on the chin so that white people can say sorry, you can't have reparations but you can have this, an Asian person's slot in college. And the majority of us are like alright, whatever. What other minority community would do that. NONE.

 

[tay1]

How are you equating the two? People fighting for civil rights came at no cost to anyone.

 

[whatscomplex]

You know what I'm talking about.

Black people didn't say black people will have less in this regard, give more to Asians.

Asian-Americans are doing that in this situation. You can say with a straight face that it would happen in reverse?

What I'm having an issue with is the demonizing of Asian-Americans in this thread, DESPITE the statistical fact that we are by majority willing to take an L for our children for yours. Pretty insane to me but do your thing.

 

[tay1]

You know what I'm talking about.

Black people didn't say black people will have less in this regard, give more to Asians.

Asian-Americans are doing that in this situation. You can say with a straight face that it would happen in reverse?

What I'm having an issue with is the demonizing of Asian-Americans in this thread, DESPITE the statistical fact that we are by majority willing to take an L for our children for yours. Pretty insane to me but do your thing.

Taking an L? Bruh Asians benefit off of Affirmative Action just like every other minority. Since California eliminated affirmative action in its public universities, Asian American students have been less likely to get into the UC system than under an affirmative action regime.

 

[whatscomplex]

Taking an L? Bruh Asians benefit off of Affirmative Action just like every other minority. Since California eliminated affirmative action in its public universities, Asian American students have been less likely to get into the UC system than under an affirmative action regime.

This is delusional man. You can't look at admissions into UC schools to determine whether someone is benefitting from affirmative action. That is noisy data.

It's a fact that looking at applicants, Asian-Americans do more and that there is a soft or hard cap being applied by universities to maintain certain demographic numbers they like. This results in Asian people doing more than any other race when it comes to college admissions.

Like I said, I'm fine with it. And statistically so are a majority of Asian-Americans. So what is with the strong inflammatory language in this thread? You expect 100% of Asian people to be okay with it or you'll start getting mad at our entire race?

 

[DrizzyNYC]

How are you equating the two? People fighting for civil rights came at no cost to anyone.

Everything after you said that became completely irrelevant. Are you trolling or that ignorant that you think black people didn't pay dire consequences as a whole fighting for civil rights for everyone????


Just to have said groups not stand in solidarity with us and attempt to undermine us at every turn. It's clear people have the best interest of their people at heart only, and all I said was black people should have done the same.

 

[moderndarwin]

Test is objective and fair. Life and opportunity prior to the test is not. Letting less qualified kids into a school does nobody any favors and doesn’t solve any problems.

What’s actually not fair is that kids between 0 and 13 have such vastly different levels of access to quality education and resources.

But sure defense spending...let’s not pay teachers...let’s not decrease teacher to student ratios...let’s not fund school facility improvements...let’s not offer free prep courses to everyone....

Race is meaningless. Economic and educational opportunity is all that matters. I’ve worked at a school with underserved inner city kids and I’ve seen them jump from a 1st grade to a 6th grade reading level in less than 7 months. All kids need is the right structure prior to this test and the results will come out a lot more evenly.

What would be a good actual test of this is instead of all this money on legal cases etc it was used to fund resource scholarships for 200-500 Black and Hispanic 5th grade and give them the resources, tutoring, and focus necessary and see how they do on this test at the end of 8th grade. They’d crush it full stop.

Edit: Stop blaming Asians. That’s silly. The entire system is wired against Black Americans and scapegoating little Asian kids for studying hard is like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. If that’s what we’re all focused on the oppressive system wins.

 

[tay1]

Test is objective and fair. Life and opportunity prior to the test is not. Letting less qualified kids into a school does nobody any favors and doesn’t solve any problems.

What’s actually not fair is that kids between 0 and 13 have such vastly different levels of access to quality education and resources.

But sure defense spending...let’s not pay teachers...let’s not decrease teacher to student ratios...let’s not fund school facility improvements...let’s not offer free prep courses to everyone....

Race is meaningless. Economic and educational opportunity is all that matters. I’ve worked at a school with underserved inner city kids and I’ve seen them jump from a 1st grade to a 6th grade reading level in less than 7 months. All kids need is the right structure prior to this test and the results will come out a lot more evenly.

What would be a good actual test of this is instead of all this money on legal cases etc it was used to fund resource scholarships for 200-500 Black and Hispanic 5th grade and give them the resources, tutoring, and focus necessary and see how they do on this test at the end of 8th grade. They’d crush it full stop.

Edit: Stop blaming Asians. That’s silly. The entire system is wired against Black Americans and scapegoating little Asian kids for studying hard is like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. If that’s what we’re all focused on the oppressive system wins.

Bruh what does this have to do with the lawsuit?

 

[whatscomplex]

Everything after you said that became completely irrelevant. Are you trolling or that ignorant that you think black people didn't pay dire consequences as a whole fighting for civil rights for everyone????


Just to have said groups not stand in solidarity with us and attempt to undermine us at every turn. It's clear people have the best interest of their people at heart only, and all I said was black people should have done the same.

Are you trolling or is that how you actually interpreted that sentence?

Civil Rights did not put what's best for black people at odds with what's best for Asian people. It was fighting for rights for everyone. There's no comparison to this situation. Black people aren't going to support any type of legislation that harms their people for Asians. You never did anything different so to say "black people should have done the same" is a reach.

Affirmative Action is doing that. For an Asian person to be for Affirmative Action, that is to say that their child will be discriminated against for the benefit of white, black, and brown students.

Again you say, "just to have said groups not stand in solidarity with us" when the majority of Asian Americans still support Affirmative Action in spite of it being discriminating towards them. You're hostile to a group of people who are by in large taking it in the chin and supportive of a policy because they're thinking about your best interest and literally putting it above theirs. How is it reasonable or logical to be mad at Asians.

 

[moderndarwin]

Bruh what does this have to do with the lawsuit?

Seems like we’ve moved beyond focusing on the specifics of the lawsuit reading the past few pages. But carry on. It’s the internet people r going to dig into their viewpoint.