Should the government institute programs to get more disadvantaged groups into the very highest echelons of society? These would be paid through taxes, they would benefit the best-to-do of the disadvantaged groups, people who are far more privileged than most of the population in total. In Sweden, there are a serious number of people who advocate quoting in women in company boards, as an example of the above.
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College admission processes can be changed. Classes given in various places can be changed. You CAN let people be equal before the law and NOT enforce discrimination.
You "can." And people "can" ignore your request that they do so, and they usually will. Which is why, for example, college admissions procedures have not changed.
And no, I did not call anyone lazy. Please show me where I did, if you think so.
From you: "Is Chris SMARTER than Watermelondrea now? Because if he is smarter and has a work ethic that others don't, maybe he deserves a better life situation?" You've just called Watermelondrea both stupid and lazy, because she couldn't get a legacy admission into a decent university.
And, of course, that's one of the standard complaints about "that sort"; those stupid, lazy, n-words who can't hold down a decent job (ignoring the well documented fact that their very name will help prevent them from even getting a callback for that "decent job.")
Similarly, "What is interesting here is that Chris has quite likely had to work his butt off for several years, including taking financial risks." Of course, Watermelondrea has also been working her butt off for the same amount of time, but hasn't been able to escape her situation. (Oh, and the financial risks? You mean the ones Chris' parents assumed by subsidizing his education. [Tip of the pen to Freehold for pointing this out originally.])
Basically, why is Chris' hard work rewarded, but Watermelondrea's isn't?
This isn't just hypothetical. Here are some recent (2014, quarter 4) numbers.
Median weekly earnings for
* White males with bachelor's degree only: $1,287
* While females, likewise: $975
* Black males, likewise: $929
* Black females, likewise: $870
... and here are the numbers for people with "advanced degrees."
* White males: $1,642
* White females: $1,188
* Black males: $1,331
* Black females: $1,059
Oh, yeah. Watermelondrea must not have worked as hard in graduate school. <rolleyes>
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Should the government institute programs to get more disadvantaged groups into the very highest echelons of society? These would be paid through taxes, they would benefit the best-to-do of the disadvantaged groups, people who are far more privileged than most of the population in total. In Sweden, there are a serious number of people who advocate quoting in women in company boards, as an example of the above.
Look, I can't speak to any of that. I've been to Sweden once, for maybe 18 hours at longest, back in the summer of 1988; all I can remember about Sweden is that MacDonald's had really high prices given the exchange rate, and there was a woman sunbathing in a park without her top on. If you asked me about it at the age of 16, I would have been willing to pay three times that much for a Big Mac just for the view, but I've (sort of) matured since then.
If, on the other hand, you're asking me if the government of a nation has a responsibility to provide equal opportunities to all of its citizens, my answer's yes. I really can't tell you whether I think the government of Sweden in particular has a functional definition of disadvantaged groups, though. I wouldn't even know where to start forming an opinion on that one.
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And which branches do these people with advanced degrees work in? Is there a difference between men and women? Between whites and blacks? Can you account for people choosing a job not only based on prospective income? How many women and men get advanced degrees each year? Whites and blacks?
You put that up, you need to provide more information.
EDIT: BLAH.
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In fairness, that was in response to my post mentioning, for the first time that Chris needed to have the brains and work ethic to take advantage of the opportunities his privilege gave him.
And no, I did not call anyone lazy. Please show me where I did, if you think so.From you: "Is Chris SMARTER than Watermelondrea now? Because if he is smarter and has a work ethic that others don't, maybe he deserves a better life situation?" You've just called Watermelondrea both stupid and lazy, because she couldn't get a legacy admission into a decent university.
I stand by my interpretation. You suggested merely that Chris had to be smart enough not to flunk out of college -- which I accept. (The world is filled with college dropouts.) Somehow Sissyl decided that this meant that Chris was smarter than Watermelondrea, who never had a chance to flunk out of (or to succeed in) college.
Basically, you said that if Chris is successful, he must be good at what he does.
Sissyl seized on that to conclude that the only reason not to be successful is not to be good at what you do. Formally, this is called "affirming the consequent." Informally, it's a privilege-based prejudice against people who have not had your opportunities.
And which branches do these people with advanced degrees work in? Is there a difference between men and women? Between whites and blacks? Can you account for people choosing a job not only based on prospective income? How many women and men get advanced degrees each year? Whites and blacks?
You put that up, you need to provide more information.
But then, I am just a Swede, so I should shut up, I suppose.
No said "just a Swede" before you introduced the phrase. :)
I stand by that actually getting through higher education is possible for the absolute majority of the population. Not everyone wants to. The US system seems to make it difficult to get in, though, and I have no experience with that. I objected to the comment about smarts and work ethic, because the example gets more useful if they are about as smart and about as dedicated.
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And which branches do these people with advanced degrees work in? Is there a difference between men and women?
Lots. When you control for industry, for example, the gap between men and women's pay decreases but does not disappear. (According to one source, "Data for both women’s and men’s median weekly earnings for full-time work are available for 116 occupations; these include only one occupation—‘health practitioner support technologists and technicians’—in which women have exactly the same median weekly earnings as men, and one—‘stock clerks and order fillers’—where women earn slightly more than men.")
Can you account for people choosing a job not only based on prospective income?
I can, but I don't need to, because the social pressures that cause women and minorities to choose lower-paying jobs is also part of the privilege that white men enjoy. Every time Susan (or Watermelondrea) is discouraged from studying STEM in high school makes Jacob's degree in engineering that much more valuable, and Susan's degree in elementary education that much less valuable. Every time Watermelondrea sends a resume in for a job, and doesn't even get a phone call, she's that much less likely to pursue that career.
Basically, you've just proven my point for me, and I thank you.
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So, Orfamay, did I get you right:
Everyone wants to get into higher education, particularly STEM, but not-white-men are blocked from doing so.
Everyone who is not a white man ends up working in a job they didn't want.
Everyone works the same hours, and still not-white-men get lower salaries.
Right?
I stand by that actually getting through higher education is possible for the absolute majority of the population.
Possibly, but there's little evidence supporting that for the American system. (This is one area where your Swedish background seems to be hampering you. The USA is a different country, and almost a different planet in this regard).
The US system seems to make it difficult to get in, though,
No, it's not difficult to get into the US higher education system, and that's one of the problems. The majority of US universities practice "open admissions," but as soon as you're in, you're immediately tracked into a remedial program that more or less guarantees that you won't actually complete the degree, while accumulating unsustainable amounts of debt.
Which was why I specified that Chris' advantage is not that he can get into college, but he can get into a "better college," one that in turn maximizes his chance of graduation and minimizes his chance of taking out loans he can't repay. (Remember that "surplus intake" is largely confined to the lower end of the food chain in the US system, because the point is not to educate the students, but to make money off their tuition dollars.)
It's not quite "Yale or jail," but it comes close sometimes.
I objected to the comment about smarts and work ethic, because the example gets more useful if they are about as smart and about as dedicated.
But all that he suggested was that Chris needed smarts and a work ethic to graduate, not that there was any difference between him and the others.
Nevertheless, that was what I objected to.
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So, Orfamay, did I get you right:
Everyone wants to get into higher education, particularly STEM, but not-white-men are blocked from doing so.
Everyone who is not a white man ends up working in a job they didn't want.
Everyone works the same hours, and still not-white-men get lower salaries.
No. But for "everyone" read "someone" and you're much closer to the truth.
For example, focusing specifically on women, it's fairly well-documented that "women [in STEM] may encounter ambient cues that represent STEM fields as masculine (Cheryan, Plaut, & Davies, & Steele, 2009), stereotypes that allege that women lack ability (Appel & Kronberger, 2012; Steele et al., 2002; Thoman, Smith, Brown, Chase & Lee, 2013) and men in STEM settings who treat women in subtly sexist ways (Logel et al., 2009). One focus-group participant in the present research relayed that a female professor, “told [classmates] not to present themselves as women first if they wanted to be taken seriously as engineers.” In this climate, even highly skilled and motivated women may wonder if they will be fully included, valued, and respected in STEM (Cheryan et al., 2009; Flam, 1991; Good, Rattan, & Dweck, 2012; Murphy, Steele, & Gross, 2007; Shapiro & Sax, 2011; Steele et al., 2002; Yoshida, Peach, Zanna, & Spencer, 2012)," and that this is a problem.
And the effects are marked. Women's participation in computer science, in particular, has dropped from about 40% in 1984 to less than 20% today.
No. What I am saying is that not everyone wants higher education, and there may quite likely be a difference between groups in this. Not everyone chooses their job based on salary, and there may be a difference between groups in this. As for working hours, the US has far and away more stay-at-home-moms than Sweden does, which would be expected to cut into their salary and its development. Aggregate data will only ever show so much. And of course, the idea of privilege does matter, but it is far from the only factor.
And what are the data on male/female medical students?
No. What I am saying is that not everyone wants higher education, and there may quite likely be a difference between groups in this. Not everyone chooses their job based on salary, and there may be a difference between groups in this. As for working hours, the US has far and away more stay-at-home-moms than Sweden does, which would be expected to cut into their salary and its development. Aggregate data will only ever show so much. And of course, the idea of privilege does matter, but it is far from the only factor.
And what are the data on male/female medical students?
Not to derail, but most of those US stay at home moms (ugh, when did we start saying "moms" instead of "mothers?" That's baby-talk! Well, terminology is terminology) are staying at home out pragmatism rather than laziness. If you've got a spouse who's willing to support the family while you stay at home, and your pay will barely cover the cost of a nanny, you might as well stay home to raise your kid.
It's the single working mothers who need state support, and frequently don't get it, just due to socio-economic issues.
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Here is some data on medical students.
From 35% or so in 1984 to a bit less than 50% in 2011. That accounts for quite a fair number of the missing computer science female students, no?
But if those women stay at home for a good part of their careers, is it any surprise that women as a group have a worse salary development? Sure, you could say the number of years you actually worked shouldn't factor in your salary...
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So, Orfamay, did I get you right:
Everyone wants to get into higher education, particularly STEM, but not-white-men are blocked from doing so.
Everyone who is not a white man ends up working in a job they didn't want.
Everyone works the same hours, and still not-white-men get lower salaries.
Right?
It isn't "blocked" but "discouraged."
A recent study (published in the last month or so) demonstrated that teachers of middle school math graded assignments with girls names lower than the exact same paper with no name. Likewise, they graded assignments with male names higher than the exact same assignment with no name.
The cultural bias is real and really does discourage young girls away from STEM fields and young boys into STEM fields.
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So, Orfamay, did I get you right:
Everyone wants to get into higher education, particularly STEM, but not-white-men are blocked from doing so.
Everyone who is not a white man ends up working in a job they didn't want.
Everyone works the same hours, and still not-white-men get lower salaries.
Right?
It isn't "blocked" but "discouraged."
A recent study (published in the last month or so) demonstrated that teachers of middle school math graded assignments with girls names lower than the exact same paper with no name. Likewise, they graded assignments with male names higher than the exact same assignment with no name.
The cultural bias is real and really does discourage young girls away from STEM fields and young boys into STEM fields.
...How is that even possible? It's math, it's either correct or incorrect.
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Yeah, it seems like quite a weird correlation to me too.
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...How is that even possible? It's math, it's either correct or incorrect.
It isn't "blocked" but "discouraged."
A recent study (published in the last month or so) demonstrated that teachers of middle school math graded assignments with girls names lower than the exact same paper with no name. Likewise, they graded assignments with male names higher than the exact same assignment with no name.
The cultural bias is real and really does discourage young girls away from STEM fields and young boys into STEM fields.
There are plenty of cases where partial credit becomes a thing. That said, I remember that coming up as early as 9th grade for typical progression. It's possible it would happen for introductory Algebra courses, though. Anything with multiple steps can pretty reasonably have partial credit.
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But if those women stay at home for a good part of their careers, is it any surprise that women as a group have a worse salary development? Sure, you could say the number of years you actually worked shouldn't factor in your salary...
Not to quibble, but I feel like we need to define the difference between "actually worked" and "took parental leave" before I can answer that question, even in the hypothetical. I mean, if you take parental leave and it eats up "a good part" of your career, doesn't that mean you just weren't employed all that long to begin with?
On the other hand, if you've been edged of every promotion you've ever had a chance at because the higher-ups think a female employee is just trying to get into a position with really good maternity leave, that's a problem.
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Oh well if that's the case, that's dumb anyway.
*Has flashbacks to Calculus where points were docked because a triangle wasn't drawn properly*
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So, Orfamay, did I get you right:
Everyone wants to get into higher education, particularly STEM, but not-white-men are blocked from doing so.
Everyone who is not a white man ends up working in a job they didn't want.
Everyone works the same hours, and still not-white-men get lower salaries.
No. But for "everyone" read "someone" and you're much closer to the truth.
For example, focusing specifically on women, it's fairly well-documented that "women [in STEM] may encounter ambient cues that represent STEM fields as masculine (Cheryan, Plaut, & Davies, & Steele, 2009), stereotypes that allege that women lack ability (Appel & Kronberger, 2012; Steele et al., 2002; Thoman, Smith, Brown, Chase & Lee, 2013) and men in STEM settings who treat women in subtly sexist ways (Logel et al., 2009). One focus-group participant in the present research relayed that a female professor, “told [classmates] not to present themselves as women first if they wanted to be taken seriously as engineers.” In this climate, even highly skilled and motivated women may wonder if they will be fully included, valued, and respected in STEM (Cheryan et al., 2009; Flam, 1991; Good, Rattan, & Dweck, 2012; Murphy, Steele, & Gross, 2007; Shapiro & Sax, 2011; Steele et al., 2002; Yoshida, Peach, Zanna, & Spencer, 2012)," and that this is a problem.
And the effects are marked. Women's participation in computer science, in particular, has dropped from about 40% in 1984 to less than 20% today.
There is also a story of a biologist who was having a difficult time getting published in a high-impact journal because one reviewer was pitching a fit over minute details. The biologist finally decided to publish in a journal with less prestiege because it was clear that the reviewer was simply not going to approve the article under any condition. The biologist happened to in the process of transitioning from female to male. Later that year he went to a conference to present his paper and lo-and-behold the reviewer was there. After the biologist made his presentation the reviewer came up to speak to him. "Oh, Dr. Soandso, I recently reviewed a paper by Dr. Mssoandso are you to related?" "Erm... Yes?" "Oh, you are such a better scientist than her!"
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...How is that even possible? It's math, it's either correct or incorrect.So, Orfamay, did I get you right:
Everyone wants to get into higher education, particularly STEM, but not-white-men are blocked from doing so.
Everyone who is not a white man ends up working in a job they didn't want.
Everyone works the same hours, and still not-white-men get lower salaries.
Right?
It isn't "blocked" but "discouraged."
A recent study (published in the last month or so) demonstrated that teachers of middle school math graded assignments with girls names lower than the exact same paper with no name. Likewise, they graded assignments with male names higher than the exact same assignment with no name.
The cultural bias is real and really does discourage young girls away from STEM fields and young boys into STEM fields.
I thought that once, too. Then I actually had some to mark! You generally try to give some marks for the bits that are right but sometimes what was written was so convoluted you couldn't work out what they were saying at all.
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...How is that even possible? It's math, it's either correct or incorrect.
It isn't "blocked" but "discouraged."A recent study (published in the last month or so) demonstrated that teachers of middle school math graded assignments with girls names lower than the exact same paper with no name. Likewise, they graded assignments with male names higher than the exact same assignment with no name.
The cultural bias is real and really does discourage young girls away from STEM fields and young boys into STEM fields.
Partial credit. More or less points for "showing your work". That kind of thing?
I haven't seen this study and don't really have any idea what middle school math assignments look like these days.
Ninja'd, but BigDTBone, any source on that. I'd love to see more on it.
Actually published in February, sorry :(
Full study behind a paywall :(
Slate article
Npr- Morning Edition
Not to quibble, but I feel like we need to define the difference between "actually worked" and "took parental leave" before I can answer that question, even in the hypothetical. I mean, if you take parental leave and it eats up "a good part" of your career, doesn't that mean you just weren't employed all that long to begin with?
On the other hand, if you've been edged of every promotion you've ever had a chance at because the higher-ups think a female employee is just trying to get into a position with really good maternity leave, that's a problem.
Absolutely. Let's call the number of years the person has spent doing the job (not counting absenses of various kinds) X. X is a measure of the direct experience the person has. Let's call time on maternity leave Y. Y does not give you work experience.
So, if you assume that men and women should have the same salaries (median and over their careers) despite a difference in Y, you have two basic options:
* Ignore differences in X for salary development. Your experience becomes null. Differences in experience between two men or two women become null as well.
* Pay women MORE than men for the same X.
I would welcome other suggestions. Of course, a better course could be to encourage men to be stay-at-home-dads. But as long as the data remains as they are, you WILL see a lower salary for women from just this issue.
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College admission processes can be changed. Classes given in various places can be changed.
Sissyl, no offense, but you're speaking from a European reality that doesn't exist in the U.S.
Let's start with schools, by all means. Schools are supported by the tax bases of their individual districts, so they're massively unequal. Little Suzie in Fairfield, Connecticut is learning college-prep math in a class of 24 other nice kids, from a qualified teacher. Meanwhile, Little Sharelle lives one town over in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and she's lucky just to survive through the day with 45 parentless, mostly gang-affiliated kids in a class, no security, and a teacher who can't add but was desperate enough to show up for what they're paying. Even if they both move to a high school with AP classes, Sharelle is literally years behind in her education when she finally gets there; there's no way she can compete with Suzie.
If Sharelle's parents are poor, Sharelle can never hope to go to Suzie's school. Even if they won the lottery and had enough money to move there, the color of their skin might actually prevent them from buying a house there -- yes, it's illegal, but yes, it still happens if the realtor and/or neighborhood association is at all smart about it.
Also note that Sharelle's parents might be working 2 jobs each just to make ends meet, leaving her to watch her siblings, cook dinner, etc. when she gets home, and/or work a night job of her own. Suzie's mom might stay home cleaning the house and cooking dinner, then help Suzie with her homework, and/or hire a tutor if Suzie falls behind. Suzie has plenty of study time, plenty of help, and plenty of sleep. Sharelle gets almost none of any of the three.
None of these inequities are addressed in the U.S.
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First, let's not just call time on maternity leave Y. Let's also include things like "Hiking the Alps" in Y.
My understanding (and I don't have studies on-hand to back this up) is that this applies to starting salaries, as well.
Long story short, when you control for these features, the difference lessens but does not vanish. Making the decision of which data to lead with is important, too. Because people will reasonably say "Well you didn't control for Z so your results are meaningless." If you're dealing with an audience that will actually read what you're controlling for, the most precise numbers are probably the best to use. If you're dealing with an audience that won't, you probably want the ones that show the widest reasonable gap so that people glancing at it will recognize it's a real problem.
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It's not like they think girls shouldn't be good at math so they're purposefully down grading them to discourage them, but that they know girls aren't good at math, so their actual perception of the work changes.
I used to administer the year-end state Standards of Learning test for Earth Science. The scores were very enlightening. On average, the girls blew away the boys by a very statistically-significant margin. Make the SOL test (which they were required to take anyway) count as the course final exam, and it's amazing how much the grades would even out, I suspect.
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Thanks. No details on the grading in the summary, but still good to see a bit more detail. At least I've got something to reference next time it comes up.
I'd like to suggest that the teachers doing this are completely unaware of it. That's what some of the other bias studies show. It's not like they think girls shouldn't be good at math so they're purposefully down grading them to discourage them, but that they know girls aren't good at math, so their actual perception of the work changes.
Human minds are funny things and nowhere near as rational as we like to think they are.
What my ex-husband said about marking lab books, was that he would recognise the hand writing, and when an explanation wasn't very clear, he found it hard not to think, 'I know this person understands this', or not, and mark it up or down based on them and not their work. Which is obviously open to bias. I suppose at least he was aware and tried not to.
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Thanks. No details on the grading in the summary, but still good to see a bit more detail. At least I've got something to reference next time it comes up.
I'd like to suggest that the teachers doing this are completely unaware of it. That's what some of the other bias studies show. It's not like they think girls shouldn't be good at math so they're purposefully down grading them to discourage them, but that they know girls aren't good at math, so their actual perception of the work changes.
Human minds are funny things and nowhere near as rational as we like to think they are.
I'll agree with the perception changing based on the student it's coming from. I did a stint a math grad student before dropping out to get a programming job. There were cases the rubric I pre-built didn't cover that students would do and depending on other work they did, sometimes that minus sign that didn't make it through was what amounted to a typographical error and sometimes it was a fundamental misunderstanding of how coefficients work. The former would be worth one lost point while the latter deserves to be a much bigger difference.
It has been about 5 years, so I don't remember specific examples, but I'm sure there were papers that had the same content that, separated by 100 other papers, I didn't grade 100% the same way.
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First, let's not just call time on maternity leave Y. Let's also include things like "Hiking the Alps" in Y.
My understanding (and I don't have studies on-hand to back this up) is that this applies to starting salaries, as well.
Long story short, when you control for these features, the difference lessens but does not vanish. Making the decision of which data to lead with is important, too. Because people will reasonably say "Well you didn't control for Z so your results are meaningless." If you're dealing with an audience that will actually read what you're controlling for, the most precise numbers are probably the best to use. If you're dealing with an audience that won't, you probably want the ones that show the widest reasonable gap so that people glancing at it will recognize it's a real problem.
Indeed. But claiming that women are discriminated due to THIS gap in mean salary means very little unless you have done your controls on THIS data set properly.
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What my ex-husband said about marking lab books, was that he would recognise the hand writing, and when an explanation wasn't very clear, he found it hard not to think, 'I know this person understands this', or not, and mark it up or down based on them and not their work. Which is obviously open to bias. I suppose at least he was aware and tried not to.
Teaching science, I spent a lot of time developing clear rubrics for grading tests, projects, reports, etc. It made my life easier, made the expectations clearer for the students, and massively reduced the amount of bias in grading.
For projects, I used to hand one out the rubric as a checklist and say "Here, you can calculate your grade before you even hand it in."
I have no idea how you'd do that for an English Composition class or whatever.
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Even in the short run, Sharelle might not actually catch up if she moves to Suzie's school, but she'll get most of the way. And without causing any real problems in the new school.
Yeah, but drop Suzie in Sharelle's middle school, and little Suzie may not live out the week. I'd hardly call that equitable, either.
Also, the demographics don't work out for large-scale adoption, in a lot of cases. If you have one decent school district and bus in kids from the surrounding 6 lousy ones, you simply end up with 7 lousy school districts as you massively increase class sizes without proportionately increasing funding.What you'd really need to do is organize and fund it all at a federal level, but I really don't see that happening when the entire Republican party is not only rabidly anti-federal, but also wants to dismantle public schools entirely.
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And the effects are marked. Women's participation in computer science, in particular, has dropped from about 40% in 1984 to less than 20% today.
The good news is that, anecdotally, I'm seeing a lot more women in hard (physical) science and engineering than we did in 1984, so some progress is being made, even if it's massively disproportional between disciplines. I doubt it's enough to even the playing field, but it's a step in the right direction.
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Except as I said, and as the article said, it did work. Not instantly and not completely, but better than anything else we've tried and it was still getting better.
Sure it worked -- specifically, at reducing the achievement gap. If you reduce the mean funding per student in the better districts to something a lot closer to the mean in the worst districts, I don't doubt the achievement gap will be reduced proportionately.
One a scale of 1 to 10, take 1+1+1+1+10, divide by 5, and everyone comes in just under 3. That means the worst-off kids are now almost 3 times better off, and the better-off kids are now getting just under a third of the education they were. That's certainly very fair, but it may not bode as well for the future of science and technology innovation in the U.S., if all of the top people are suddenly cut off at the knees.
Sadly, I don't have the answers here. I'm just pointing out the problems.
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No, it's not difficult to get into the US higher education system, and that's one of the problems. The majority of US universities practice "open admissions," but as soon as you're in, you're immediately tracked into a remedial program that more or less guarantees that you won't actually complete the degree, while accumulating unsustainable amounts of debt.
I am not sure what you mean by using the phrase "tracked into a remedial program".
Students who apply to colleges and universities often have deficiencies in their scholarly abilities (minority students are disproportionally represented in these often due to poor primary and secondary education opportunities, families with little means of supporting their children educationally, etc.). What should school do about these deficiencies?
Let's take mathematics as that is the one I know the most about and is also the most widely needed remediation. Students who don't know that -16 + 3 = -13, let alone a lot of other arithmetic basic knowledge, are ill prepared for being placed in a college algebra course. Colleges could say, "Tough luck, put them in college algebra and let them sink or swim." Some might reasonably criticize this as setting the students with deficiencies up for failure, taking their money (forcing them to collect debt), and gain little real education since they are so far over their head that they have no idea what is happening.
Alternatively, schools could not require a mathematics course for any non-STEM major. Though I would imagine most universities would not look favorably on that and it would quickly turn some degrees into being viewed as not worth much (lower standards are rarely a selling point for employers). Thus some individuals may end up wasting a lot of money going to such a school only to still have to take the courses in order to get a degree from a reputable university.
A third option might be to create alternative mathematics courses that didn't use algebra. Still like the no math alternatively this ultimately is going to do devalue those degrees. Part of the problem with high school diplomas is you have people with 3 years of mathematics that never did anything more complicated than balancing a check book. I am not sure making similar mathematics courses at the college level would be ultimately the best choice.
Or we could put the students in say college algebra, but also force them to take support courses. Again, this is a shell game, you are still driving up the cost for the courses, and this may not be enough help to compensate for the deficiencies within a single semester.
The current system, used by most colleges and universities (though most universities actually kick the students to the community college level) is to try to access where the student's current skills are and then have a series of courses that students take to build themselves up to the level in order to take college algebra. One should consider the fact that anyone graduating from a high school, should have the skills to take and pass college algebra. Lacking those skills may represent not just one year of high school, but possibly something like 8 years of missing mathematics education, to think that amount of learning is going to be corrected in a single semester is ludicrous.
Now, I personally think the current system is the best choice as someone that cares about mathematics and values it for everyone. Ideally, there should be no need for remedial courses, but we don't live in an ideal world. We have students who dropped out, who didn't try to learn math and avoided it all costs. We have students that didn't go to college right out of high school and instead spend perhaps a couple decades working and haven't used what they knew in years. And of course there are those hard working students that have just got a bad roll in life and had horrible teachers/school systems.
But the reason that students that need remediation often aren't successful in finishing their schooling is multifaceted only some of it has to do with anything the school as control over it.
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So your claim is that the reduction in the achievement gap in the mid-80s was brought about as much by reducing the education of the white kids as by bettering the blacks? Is there any data behind that or is it just assumption?
Your claim, on the other hand, is that increasing class sizes and decreased per capita resources have no effect on educational outcomes? Which of these claims is less likely, exactly?