Here are details of a proposal to prohibit law schools from relying on the LSAT, because of the "disparate impact" the test has on African American and Mexican law school applicants. This proposal will be brought to the relevant ABA committee in June. I wouldn't normally give this a snowball's chance of passing, but who would have thought that the relevant ABA committee would pass a proposal that blatantly misconstrues Grutter and requires law schools to disobey the law, all in pursuit of "diversity"?
There are three noteworthy oddities in the memo (by Prof. Vernellia Randall) accompanying the proposal. The first is that it states that the "LSAC recently reported that virtually no law school is implementing Grutter." Given that all Grutter did was allow (but not require) law schools to use racial prefernces to achieve racial diversity if they have determined that racial diversity is a compelling educational interest, it's not clear what "implementing Grutter" could possibly mean. My best guess is that Prof. Randall (who is webmaster of the bizarre "Whitest Law Schools" website) seems to associate Grutter with the idea that every law school should have a "critical mass" of Black and Latino students. Grutter certainly allows law schools to pursue a "critical mass" under the circumstances noted above, but doesn't require them to, and indeed forbids it for reasons other than the "diversity as a compelling educational interest" rationale.
Another oddity is the claim that law schools are relying too heavily on the LSATs at the expense of minority students to raise their ranking in U.S. News, which uses schools' LSATs in its ranking. (She writes: "Perhaps the most pervasive reason is that many schools are undertaking a crude attempt to increase their ranking in the U.S. News and World Report at the expense of admission of minorities.") I've heard this claim often, and I'm sure that part of what is motivating the ABA's recent aggressive actions against law schools without "enough" minorities is the view of some professors that law schools who aren't taking their "fair share" of African-American students are shirking, and are benefitting in the US News rankings at more "progressive" (what is progressive about admitting and then failing out Black students?) schools' expense.
This view, however, neglects how U.S. News works. Average LSATs are irrelevant. Rather, the magazine has traditionally looked at median LSATs (last year they switched to 25 and 75 percentile scores). If you simply replace your lowest LSAT white students with even lower LSAT Black or Latino students this will have no effect on your median (or 25th or 75th percentile, unless a school already has 25% plus Blacks and Latinos) LSAT. Thus, schools that do not engage in vigorous affirmative action preference policies are not getting any meaningful competitive advantage from U.S. News.
The third oddity is the concern only with inputs (number of minority students being admitted to law schools) and not with outputs (how many actually graduate and pass the bar). As I've noted before, at many law schools more than half of African American matriculants never become attorneys. Shouldn't this problem be dealt with before requiring law schools to change their standards to favor even less-academically ready applicants?
Related Posts (on one page):
- Update on the ABA's New "Diversity" Standard:
- Proposal to Forbid Law Schools from Relying on the LSAT:
- Interesting Comment from an Earlier Post on the ABA's Diversity Rules:
- Addled "Diversity" Logic:
- Prof. Bracey on Articulating Normative Commitments to Racial Preferences:
- More on the ABA's Illegal Racial Preference Requirement:
Given that the LSAT has been shown to be the most accurate pre-admission indicator of success in passing the bar, and given that passing the bar would seem to be part of satisfactorily completing a law school's educational program...
Hasn't the objective evidence already proved that reliance on the LSAT is valid and reliable?
Then went one step further, abolished the same racist practices in Medical schools and licensing that the ABA seems to be trending. Me thinks that none of the ABA lawyers would want their Doc to be screened, schooled and certified in the same fashion. That leads me to a joke.
You call the lowest academically ranked West Point Grad the class "Goat".
Question: What do you call the lowest ranked medical school grad?
Answer: Doctor
This view, however, neglects how U.S. News works. Average LSATs are irrelevant. Rather, the magazine has traditionally looked at median LSATs (last year they switched to 25 and 75 percentile scores). If you simply replace your lowest LSAT white students with even lower LSAT Black or Latino students this will have no effect on your median (or 25th or 75th percentile, unless a school already has 25% plus Blacks and Latinos) LSAT. Thus, schools that do not engage in vigorous affirmative action preference policies are not getting any meaningful competitive advantage from U.S. News.
That is incorrect. The 25%ile lower bound will shift anytime a white student that would have been above that value is removed from the admissions pool and replaced with someone with an LSAT value below that bound. That is true without regard to the existing racial composition of the admissions pool. Assume that you are a school, and your 25%ile score is 160, but you only have two minority admits (out of 300), both with a score of 150. If a third minority candidate comes along with a 150, the 25%ile drops anytime they replace another White candidate above a 160.
You are assuming (and I believe incorrectly) that minority admits with lower LSAT scores always replace the White admit with the next-lowest LSAT score. That is not the case, given my understanding of admissions.
The LSAT is such a poor indicator of so many subsequent values (grades, job placement, bar passage, etc.) that it is frustrating to a great many people. But people never ask "as compared to what?" And, sadly, there's not to many other objective measurements that predict those other attributes particularly well.
I do think, as a statistical matter, you are putting too much emphasis on the failure of many minority matriculants to become attorneys. Your assertion seems to be that this phenomenon stands entirely outside of the LSAT's alleged causing of it. My instincts say you're probably right, but you would certainly need a control group of some sort before concluding that there was not a causal relationship between the LSAT poor/culturally biased fit and the failure of minority applicants to become attorneys.
Also, their is an unrecognized locational bias in Prof. Randall's assessment. Would you really expect Montana, Maine, or Idaho Law Schools to have high minority enrollment? (These are three of the four "whitest" law schools.)
I certainly can understand the desire for the percentages of students of all races who apply to an individual law school to correlate closely with the percentages of students admitted to that individual law school. I can also understand the desire for percentages of all races of students graduating from law school and all races of students passing the bar to correlate with the percentages of those races who attend law school. That sounds like a fine goal to me.
But the LSAT is not a racist test. (Could it be? I would be very interested to hear someone who thinks it is a racist test make their case.) It seems to me that Prof. Randall wants to remedy a symptom of a problem (the symptom being African American students' and Latino students' lower academic performance) instead of looking for the problem itself. The problem may very well be racism, encountered by these students from childhood onward. It may also be a economic or even cultural problem. But throwing out the test that is the best indicator of success in law school and success on the bar exam that we have (without proposing an alternative) to alleviate a symptom of a greater problem, seems short sighted in the extreme to me.
This sentiment may not be as marginal as it might seem at first look: Certainly, laws against violent crime up to and including murder, drugs offenses, and the so-called quality-of-life violations have a disproportionate effect on blacks and Latino-Americans (I could mention the Hells Angels and other motorcycle gangs, but that would muddy the waters).
Should the aforementioned laws be abolished, that is to say, should we not punish abberant behaviors because approved groups embrace them?
I hate to harp on this, but:
(2) admitting students whose statistical probability of graduating and becoming attorneys is slim is immoral, especially if they are not warned of that fact.
I don't think that's quite right: I think that "admitting students whose statistical probability of graduating and becoming attorneys at the expense of others who are more likely to do so is immoral..." represents a more accurate statement of the issue, but it also lays bare some of the problems with the position:
(1) what if the depression in attorney probabilty is a RESULT OF the LSAT
(2) as a factual matter, the appropriate comparison is not between the fraction of minority matriculees that become attorneys and the fraction of white matriculees that do so, but between the fraction of minority matriculants that gain spots and the fraction of White matriculants that they could lose them to.
Lee
For once, I really agree with DB. Fact is, assuming DB's stats are true, we got a real problem --- a huge % of African-American's not graduating law school who have been admitted. This could be the result of a couple of things: (1) African-Americans are not prepared because of a culturally biased lower school system; (2) African Americans are not prepared because the law school curiculum itself is culturally biased; (3) the overall legal system is itself culturally biased and the law schools reflect this. But trying to use a bandaid by just saying let's throw more into a system which is getting the job done is stupid and a feel good measure which causes more harm than good.
I think we can both agree that a school that wanted to continue its AA policies without affecting its median LSAT could do so.
All due respect, the argument is not that the test is "racist." I happen to disagree with inferences the argument's proponents would have us draw, but the notion that the LSAT has a disparate impact is hardly that crazy. The problem, after all, is "what can we really do about certain racially disparate consequences."
The argument is familiar: the test trafficks in standard written english, which is just a dialect with an army and a navy; success on the exam correlates with class (because of tutoring) which correlates with race; the logic games tend to traffic in symbols (e.g. european film directors) that are more familiar to whites, etc.
Despite your protests, I'm not sure how many people dispute that there actually is some statistically significant disparate racial impact. The problem is that there's no real way to correct for that phenomenon without making all kinds of other sacrifices.
So I don't think anybody is really claiming the test is "racist" in the sense that it deliberately discriminates, but are instead making the claim that it implements a practice with disparate racial results at an unacceptable opportunity cost.
I'm not going to pretend as though I'm not, as a policy matter (to be distinguished from a constitutional one), in favor of AA, because I am. I am also very subject to being swayed with data about things, so I am pretty receptive to it. I think it is a problem that successful minority candidates aare sometimes stigmatized as having gotten where they are on the basis of skin color rather than merit, and I think there are a variety of other counterveiling considerations. It's a tough question.
Having now revealed both my ultimate political position and my preference for untainted data, I can't agree with the position that bar passage rates reflect actual attorney quality. Sure, the two are correlated, but bar certification is subject to many of the same biases the LSAT is - and in many instances it is worse. For example, assume that race correlates with income which correlates (very, very strongly) with ability to take bar test prep. The ability to take a three thousand dollar test preparation course is a dramatic, overwhelming advantage - and an advantage the enjoyment of which correlates with income, which in turn correlates with race.
I am not saying that the takeaway from this phenomenon is to abolish the bar, but to the extent that you are relying on the "they don't become attorneys" logic to undercut the AA argument, you've got to remain mindful of the profound statistical biases that go into bar certification as well.
Again, I don't know what to do about the problem - but I wouldn't base my argument that we shouldn't do anything about LSAT biases on the idea that bar certification rates accurately depict the quality of minority attorneys relative to their white counterparts.
1- What do you mean by "a dialect with an army and a navy"? Do you think we could gear the LSAT to be written in a dialect that would be more race neutral? Do you think mastery of the English language is an important skill for being a lawyer in this country? (I don't care what language we use, but it seems to me, in application to the legal profession, the prevailing language should be as universal as possible, with words having the same (or as similar as possible) meanings to all practitioners of all races.
2- My logic games on the LSAT were about children in a hispanic family, with traditional hispanic names, and (I think) who sat where at the table on what day. I am not hispanic. Should I have expected to do worse on this logic game than the one about dinosaurs? Let me add, I love dinosaurs.
I hear your argument about underlying cultural bias in standardized testing and it some level you are probably right. HOWEVER
1. Though it's not well correlated to Law school success, I understand that the LSAT is the best correlated measure thus far found, which is why it is used.
2. One could clearly make a better case for the cultural bias of the equivalent medical screening tests MCAT (or whatever) as it relates to the practice of medicine. After all a human body is a human body whether in Persia, Peru, or Peoria. However, like it or not, the practice of law In the US is the practice of standard written English. Legal practitioners that have a poor comprehension of standard English, or can't express themselves well in written or oral communication in standard English will fair poorly (and so will their clients) compared to those that can.
In this sense, the LSAT as a cultural test of English does serve like those screening tests for the fire department hated by 100 pound women. You know, the carry the 200 pound partner on your back down a ladder tests. Some tests are unfair and others just produce results that aren't PC.
I also find your recommendations strange. You suggest either making law an undergrad subject or doing away with the bar exam - both of which would presumably lower the standards for admittance into the bar. This could lower the quality of lawyers without necessarily addressing the problem of minority representation.
Thanks for the response above.
Re: Randall, agreed. I think abolishing the LSAT is asinine. All that will do is shift emphasis to other variables that exhibit even more bias. It's not a particularly thought out position, I don't think.
But this statement:
I think you'll agree that it isn't the LSAT that is racially biased, but rather the level and quality of education achieved well before the LSAT is taken.
I'm sorry, I don't really agree with that, at least as I understand it. I do agree that this country's educational assets are not only unevenly distributed, but are unevenly distributed in a way that correlates with race. But your proposition seems to be that the test does nothing more than replicate that already-existing inequality of educational assets. I agree to an extent. But, for example, with respect to the "standard written english" criticism, I cannot agree. I don't want to get into the crevices of theoretic linguistics here, but suffice it to say that there is a very substantial, if not overwhelming, body of scholarship that considers the rules of SWE to be arbitrary. Again, I'm not saying whether this scholarship is right or wrong, I'm just saying it's there. And, if it is correct, and differences between SWE and other dialects are not differences in quality but differences in context, then testing in SWE does in fact constitute a "bias" in favor of a particular educational background, without respect to its quality.
Again, I happen to think that a lot of that cog sci/linguistic scholarship is correct. You may not, and if you don't your statement above may be perfectly correct. But if you do - and again, this is not some wingnut left wing linguistics theory - then the LSAT is in fact biased in a sense beyond what you imply in your post above.
That was not a particularly thoughtful or helpful comment.
I do agree with K that bar exam scores are not highly correlated to attorney quality, and that there are many people who would make perfectly fine attorneys in one way or another who don't do well on standardized tests. But you still can't escape the fact that right now, there is a cartel, and if you can't pass the standardized test, you can't become a lawyer. It's ridiculous and potentially quite damaging to the "beneficiaries" to set admissions criteria without keeping that in mind.
K -- explain two things to me that I don't understand:
1- What do you mean by "a dialect with an army and a navy"? Do you think we could gear the LSAT to be written in a dialect that would be more race neutral? Do you think mastery of the English language is an important skill for being a lawyer in this country? (I don't care what language we use, but it seems to me, in application to the legal profession, the prevailing language should be as universal as possible, with words having the same (or as similar as possible) meanings to all practitioners of all races.
I just mean to refer to the idea that the exam tests standard written english, which is generally considered a "dialect," which is a nice-but-pejorative way for linguistics people to convey that the dialect's internal organization is not objectively "better" than other dialects of that same language. It's just different. Of course I think English is an important skill for lawyers in this country. But there are ways to test English proficiency without having that proficiency influence a test-takers score on other qualities - is a Spanish speaker really worse at logic games if their only "inferiority" is that they don't speak the language in which the game is explained? I know that I have to keep underscoring this, but I don't agree with Randall. I'm just saying that it's not an anathema to suggest that the test has a disparate racial impact. The rubber hits the road when you're talking in terms of what to about it.
2- My logic games on the LSAT were about children in a hispanic family, with traditional hispanic names, and (I think) who sat where at the table on what day. I am not hispanic. Should I have expected to do worse on this logic game than the one about dinosaurs? Let me add, I love dinosaurs.
Walker, I think I have stated several times that I don't find all the arguments about disparate impact persuasive. I was just pointing out that they were hardly new. For the record, I think the "familiar concepts in the logical games" argument is the silliest of the bunch; we're talking about formal manipulation of symbols - it doesn't matter what the symbols themselves are, just their logical relationship. That being said, and again as I pointed out above, even if I did think that this element of the LSAT created a "disparate impact," I would quite obviously never suggest that the solution would be to conduct the logic games in Spanish.
All of those arguments may be factually wrong or otherwise unconvincing, and I'm making no claim in their defense. But these points/arguments aren't the same thing as calling for a ban on any/all uses of the LSAT.
But with the LSAT, language and standard English comprehension is substance! In law, we need to all use a language that has the same grammatical rules and the same substantive meanings. If minorities do poorly on the LSAT for failure to comprehend the language used, and the language is the standard language of our legal system, than this is indeed a clear indicator that those minority students will not fair as well in law school or in the practice of law as those people who places they took in the name of diversity. Maybe this is a sacrifice we as a society should be willing to live with, I dunno.
As long as the LSAT uses language as similar as possible to the predominant language used in our legal system, then it is still the best predictor of legal aptitude and success in the American legal system possible. Your criticisms of the language (or dialect) used lead me to believe then that it is not the LSAT you wish to change, but rather that the English we use in the practice of law should be expanded and augmented to include allm dialects. We might lose something in precision, but we would gain something in inclusion. Do you think this is worth it?
Still though, I am left with the feeling that attacks on the LSAT are a red-herring. Three reasons: one, the problem you recognize with language is a cultural and economic issue, not strictly a racial issue. (Barak Obama didn't seem to have much of a problem with the English the legal institution uses...) Two, I think the LSAT uses a solid approximation of standard English as used in the legal industry, and as I stated above with my logic games example, strives to include ideas and topics that are culturally diverse. Finally, while valuing cultural (and dialectic- no pun intended) diversity, our primary educational system should teach all people standard English. I still believe its failure to do so is the root cause of minority struggles with the LSAT's brand of English.
Again, couldn't get above a 160 if I tried on that test, but I sure out-performed most who did.
LaShawn Barber recently noted how African immigrants to America do quite well, with their children getting in Harvard at much higher rates than so called "African-Americans" who have never been to Africa. So why does America refuse to talk about certain cultural mindsets that lead to poor academic performance as opposed to merely skin colour? Note, I am a minority and I went to college in the US and still don't understand the terminology.
See:
lashawnbarber.com/archives/2006/02/14/my-brothers-keeper/
I have no idea what can be done, particularly at higher levels of education, but acknowledging that the problem exists and is a serious problem is a start. In particular, I find putting the word "diversity" in quotes is telling. Your previous remarks suggest that "diversity" is code for "affirmative action", and hence the quotes. However, it can just as equally be taken to meant "equal representation", and indeed placing "diversity" in quotes without an acknowledgement that underrepresentation of minorities is a problem suggests that either equal representation is a poor goal or is no longer a problem.
I find it interesting that you think getting rid of the bar exam would increase the percentage of black lawyers. Is this becuase blacks, when equally prepared, do worse than whites on standardized tests? If that's the case, then affirmative action is appropriate. Or is it because, without the bar exam, one could apply affirmation action at that point? In this case, why not have affirmative action with law school admissions instead of admissions to the bar? Or is there another reason for your statement that I'm missing?
So I'll just stick to the bar issue. Right now, a significant percentage of African Americans who get through law school fail the bar, much higher than whites. If they didn't have to pass the bar,they could all be lawyers, thus increasing the percentage of African American lawyers. QED.
Rather than having an undergrad degree, likely with a significant debtload, and then taking a 3 year, typically very expensive, law program, all with little prospective chance of graduating and passing the bar, one would be pursuing a major that enabled you to take the bar. This would be similar to Accounting where your undergrad courses (possibly with a few additional postgrad credits for some who came in from other majors) enable you to pursue the CPA accreditation without sacrificing so many years of earnings.
LSAT, graduate law school, and bar are all cartelization strategies on the part of lawyers and shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic won't appreciably change the outcomes. As mentioned, the act of shuffling to admit more low probability passers is itself immoral.
I'm disappointed in the commenter that is saying that DB is making racist arguments: he's making an argument based on the data with regards to how we should attempt to address disparities of outcome. He is not saying that certain broad groups of people AREN'T capable of becoming lawyers or ARE LESS capable, but that the statistics show that certain broad groups of people TEND not to complete the law school/ bar exam process. Given these facts (which I am taking at face value from DB) what should be done?
He also specifically states that he is not examining why certain people tend not to graduate, but rather that given that they don't is shoving more low percentage students into the pipeline really a good thing? Seems to me that it is a further scheme by the cartel to extort money from supplicants while further lowering the population of guildmembers, thus increasing rents taken by current guildmembers.
All else being equal, sure. It seems like you want to get rid of affirmative action, which would counter some of those gains (and given the percentage of African American law students, it would still be a problem).
Your view on that is hypocritical. As far as I can tell, you must think that either 1) the bar exam is racially biased, so getting rid of it is eliminating a social injustice, 2) the bar exam is a useless test of one's ability to be a lawyer, or 3) getting rid of the bar exam will allow worse lawyers to slip through the cracks.
If 1), then why not have affirmative action for the LSAT, which is presumably similarly biased. If 2, then you agree with the loon you are criticizing, if for a different reason. If 3, then we get to this quote:
Admitting students whose statistical probability of graduating and becoming attorneys is slim is moraly problematic at best, especially if they are not warned of that fact, yet there is a move on to force law schools that have this concern to do it anyway.
Ooops. It's morally wrong to string people who are likely to be unsuccessful along through law school, but it's morally ok to string people along who are likely to be unsuccessful for many years. Is there a 4th possibility that I am missing?
One could do the flip side: assuming that the bar exam is a decent threshold test of skills needed to practice law (an assumption, I know) why is three years at an ABA-acredited school a requirement just to take it? If it sets the minumum standard, then why shouldn't anyone who passes it (with zero, or two years, or with time in a non-accredited school) be allowed to practice? If it doesn;t set a threshold, then why is it there (other than to add one more entry barrier to a profession, i.e., to try to skirt the antitrust laws?)
1. The rate of children growing up in single parent homes.
2. The rate of children produced by and their subsequent abandonment by teenagers and men who are in reality nothing more than irresponsible sperm donors to certain irresponsible women.
3. The percentage of families who value education in their children. Who take the time to be involved in their lives and education. Who take the time to supervise their children, make sure they are doing their homework and learning the material at school.
4. The relative percentages of alcohol and drug use by *certain* minority parents versus non-minority parents.
5. The relavtive percentages of violent crime committed by *certain* minority parental groups versus non-minority parental groups.
These are the factors much more than MONEY that result in a reduced level of preparation of *certain* minority students for standardized tests.
A second tier of factors that also has significant influence are produced by the lack of competition in primary and secondary education. Laws and regulations designed to protect professional education schools and the NEA dues machine that fund a lot of political corruption in this country with regard to education.
The lack of competition in education and the monopolies in primary and secondary education of state and local government combined with teacher's unions and tenure laws have a largely disparate and negative impact on poorer and minority students.
But hey rather than upset the big government apple cart, failing primary and secondary schools, liberal social policy experiments in public education, and NEA corruption machine why not just pretend its the fact that the LSAT isn't offered in ebonics.
One real possible effect of taking seats in law school away from whites with a better chance of passing the bar and giving them to *certain* minorities with less of a chance of passing the bar is that it will result in a higher percentage of those *certain* minorities being among the total of licensed attorneys not by increasing the number of minorities with the ability to pass the bar but by reducing the number of whites given the opportunity to enter law school and ultimately take the bar.
Lastly, why did I keep using the term *certain* minorities in my little rant above? Because as others have pointed out above there are many minorities in this country who are poor, come from poor families, have a different language when they arrive, etc. that perform as well or better on standardized tests than do the other *preferred* minorities. While these minorities share being poor, different cultural values, different languages etc. with other *preferred* minorities what they don't share with the *preferred* minorities are the negative cultural and personal lifestyle choices listed in items 1 to 5 above.
Says the "Dog"
It's nice to see that you only treat minorities monolithically within an individual category, and not across them.
Wow.
To improve minority success in law school and in passing the bar, the use of LSAT should be INCREASED, not decreased. Indeed, most schools could admit more minorities than they do now while taking a little less risk than they do now, if they would just weight the LSAT more heavily in making their choices of which minorities to admit.
I strongly favor Affirmative Action in admissions, but if the LSAT is not used, then one would have to cut back on minority admissions just to keep the same (poor) rate of success in law school and on the bar as we have now. Schools should be free to choose their own levels of minority admissions, but they should emphasize LSAT more in choosing which minority applicants to admit than they do now.
The new proposal discussed in the post seems to be designed to induce law schools to do an even worse job of picking which minorities to admit than they do now.
In other words: set the level of minority admits you want for diversity reasons (most schools use about the percentage of applicants they get), but choose which individual minority group members to admit primarily by emphasizing the LSAT.
1. If, as many posts in here to date say, the primary purpose of the LSAT is to somehow test English comprehension because that is the essence of success in law school and beyond, then, shouldn't the applicants be given instead English tests, including long and short essays, as well as oral exams instead?
2. If, as some posts in here to date say, the LSAT is an indicator of success in law school and beyond, isn't it serving the same purpose as various aptitute tests in identifying and discriminating among job applicants? And are those tests "legal" since they do not relate to essential job characteristics yet have "disparate impact"?
3. What was that phrase the Census uses...."hispanic may be of any race."
You are one person and while your experience is great, it's tough to design policies around it. Having said that, it is also possible (and likely) that the real problem is not in the students who get 158's as opposed to 167's. I think the problem is with the students who get 145's as opposed to 154's. I think that at some point, there is a cut off score, that is too low for someone to be able to do well in law school (even a bad one) and then be able to pass the bar exam. It may not be that there is great correlation between LSAT scores and law school performance. But it is possible, and I think likely, that if you score below a certain point, then there is almost no chance of doing well. Do you get my point here? It could be just an on/off condition, rather than some continuous dependence between the variables.
Affirmative action treats *preferred* minorities and whites monolithically. If treating groups or sub-groups monolithically is a bad to you then you must oppose affirmative action. Nothing could be more abusively monolithic in its implementation and effects.
Only a monolith supporter could support a system designed to give Clarence Thomas' son a leg up into getting into law school because he is black while applying reverse discrimination to the poor white son of an appalachian coal miner who never graduated from high school simply because that son is white.
Maybe monolithic treatment of groups and sub-groups is in the eye of the beholder? You think? If you find it offensive then you should oppose it in all its forms, especially in affirmative action.
Says the "Dog"
Sorry, let me be more precise. What I am saying is that there could be two correlation regimes. One correlation regime that is quite high on the lower end of the scale and one correlation regime beyond a certain point. Maybe when you start looking at scores 155 and above, the correlation is quite low, but if you look at scores below 155, the correlation is quite high. So while yes, the overall correlation is not good, the correlation that really matters, that on the lower end (which could signify certain deficiencies in reading, logical skills, etc) is pretty high. I am not sure if this is true, but I wonder if there is any work on this. I wonder what Richard Sander who guest-blogged here a while ago on this precise issue would have to say about this.
Yep. You are mostly right. I've been pointing out part of this for nearly 10 years.
The relationship between LSAT & Law School grades is curvilinear. In each school, LSAT is a good predictor for the bottom half of the entering students, and a poor predictor for the top half of the entering students. Thus, for the very students who are on the cusp, LSAT is a particularly good predictor. The curvilinear effect is one reason that existing (linear) admission indices underweight LSAT in admissions.
I appreciate the sentiment, but what you're saying isn't true in any meaningful sense. AA gives all minorities a leg up, but it doesn't treat them as the same as eachother. That is in stark contrast to you, who thinks that within a minority category, every constituents bad lot in life is a product of poor lifestyle choices. I'm sorry, the poor lifestyle choices argument is so profoundly stupid that people that make it should be flogged. As if a young black kid from New Orleans' 9th ward made any choice about her mom being poor, or her dad not being there, or her older brother stealing money for drugs, or her school having no funding or teachers, or a hurricane obliterating her only semblance of support. What is so bizarre about the "lifestyle choices" argument is that is always seemingly invoked to hold children accountable for precisely those choices over which they have the least control, as if they should be accountable for choices their parents, siblings, government, and mother nature made.
Except that I believe the LSAT and I know law school grades are based on curves with fixed standard deviations. On the top end of grade distributions, then, it takes a huge difference in work quality to climb from, say, an A- to an A. Given the bunching of a pretty broad spectrum of quality in a specific grade, it's not surprising that the LSAT doesn't predict grades well at the high end. But it's not for the reason that some imply - that the LSAT is a poor predictor of work quality - it's because of the way raw scores on tests are forced into grades on the outer wings of a bell curve.
I hope it's also clear that I'm saying it is the role of government or educational institutions to compensate an individual for the way her lot in life reflects the poor choices of others, but it's toxic in the utmost to pretend that her predicament is any product of her exercising her own free will.
Second, I agree the ABA is following a path in oblivion. Forcing law schools to admit unqualified students will not remedy the lack of representation in law firms. Law firms have clients that pay a lot of money for quality work. This forces law firms to recruit the most qualified students that have a long record of success and academic excellence. Allowing students to enter law school without a record of achievement is setting those students up for failure once they hit the real world. Minorities would be better served by offering them a rigorous academic life starting in grade school. In the alternative, submitting prospective legal students to a rigorous academic prep program in their undergraduate years.
But, minority representation in the legal community, specifically law firms are terrible. Even in liberal Seattle, minority representation barely reaches 10%, and this is after a decade of affirmative action initiatives. It’s embarrassing when the military does a better job at recruiting and promoting minorities than the legal community. My first three Sergeant Majors (the highest enlisted rank) were all minorities (2 African-Americans, 1 Hispanic). My first Commanding General was a minority (African American). I still have yet to meet a minority partner at a large law firm in Seattle.
I think one of the successes of the military in recruiting and promoting minorities is that they start off with a completely clean slate when they enter. Their past is not held against them. The only thing that matters is performance now. Additionally, they are trained in a challenging manner. They must live up to standards and when they fail, they are given remedial training until they can meet the standard. I believe this supports my assertion that we should offer rigorous academic preparation early in a student’s education, and when they fail, hold those students to standards, but provide remedial training until they meet that standard.
“So what” some may ask about the lack of minorities in the legal community. That’s the million dollar question… I’ll leave that up to the social theorists.
AA gives all minorities a leg up, but it doesn't treat them as the same as eachother.
It absolutely does, it gives them all as a group the benefit of the AA program without looking into individual circumstances. It also treats all non-minorities as the same as each other, as regards the application of benefits and detriments of the AA program.
That is in stark contrast to you, who thinks that within a minority category, every constituents bad lot in life is a product of poor lifestyle choices.
You are wrong. I didn't say nor do I think poor personal choices cause poor lots in life for any minority category only. I think poor personal choices cause poor lots in life for EVERYBODY in EVERY category. What I said was minorities make these choices in larger preportions of their total population as do other groups and it is this larger percentage of bad choice makers that results in the larger percentage of minority persons prepared to take standardized tests not administered in ebonics.
We are all responsible for the choices we make in life. Those who choose to be irresponsible and to conceive and raise children in an irresponsible manner give their children a substantial disadvantage in life. It is not the responsibility of a poor white kid from parents who didn't graduate high school but made less poor choices in life with regard to child rearing to pay the price, via reverse discrimination, for the poor lifestyle choices of other irresponsible minority parents.
In this country there is absolutely no excuse for trans-generational poverty to exist. Any person or generation can find themselves being poor for some period of time, but if they make proper life choices and care about their children's futures, then no matter how low their beginings they can make choices that guarantee their children will have more wealth and more income than they enjoyed. By the third generation a share croper's grandchildren can be attending Harvard in this country.
All they have to do is work hard, never give up, never give in to the professional negativists who tell them they and their children can never succeed, and each generation will build more wealth and income than the previous one. Show me any family from any group that fails to build wealth and income levels from generation to generation, and I will show you a family that has something wrong with their work ethic and lifestyle choices.
The only thing stupid about this observation is its denial by those locked in to the same old failed thinking that perpetuates lack of responsibility and an endless cycle of poor choice makers producing future poor choice makers. Poor choice makers claiming perpetual victimhood is the reason they fail from generation to generation and not their life decisions to buy expensive chrome rims for their junker car while neglecting to provide better supervision and opportunities for their children.
Neither of my parents graduated from high school. My father was a construction worker all his life. My parents didn't know what an SAT exam was much less why a person would ever want to take it. No person in family had ever graduated from college before I did it.
I had no money from my parents. No help from anybody. No government aid. No school loans. I worked full-time during the day and went to school full-time at night. I had to test out of extra courses in order to complete my first degree in 4 years to keep up with my peers from more well to do families. I completely supported myself and paid in cash all my tuition and books, etc. as I went through school. There were many kids my age who didn't sacrifice and work hard, and who chose to go to work at some factory job or something. They had money to buy a new car and go out and do things from time to time. I lived on baloney sandwiches, a single pair of canvas slip on tennis shoes, a couple pairs of slacks, and a few T-shirts and knit shirts.
When I graduated college and started making a lot more money than the people who chose not to make any sacrifice but to work in a factory for immediate financial gratification, I suddenly began to hear comments about how easy I had it making good money working in an office as though it was just LUCK that put me in that position.
Those same people weren't anywhere to be found stating how envious they were of me working full-time carrying hide a beds up to 4th floor walkups in Chicago while driving a 10 year old piece of junk car around town to my full-time night school classes.
When they were going out and spending money on wives and dates, they weren't around being jealous of the big night outs we had on rare occassions when we would gather with a few similarly situated friends to watch TV and play pool on a 2ft. kid game pool table owned by one in the group lucky enough to have come into possession of that 2ft kid game pool table.
In this country, no matter what bad hand life deals you, YOU CAN EITHER CHOOSE TO MAKE YOUR LIFE AND THE LIVES OF YOUR CHILDREN BETTER OR NOT. In this country you can choose to sacrifice current rewards for greater future rewards. Its everyone's choice to make no matter what their lot in life at the beginning. If they make good choices either they or their children and grandchildren can be rich or going to Harvard and Yale or some other good school for their educations.
Anyone who writes to someone like myself who has lived the american dream in this country or someone who is a wealthy high school graduate only entrepreneur that started with nothing and no relatives in this country that they are profoundly stupid for understanding that lifestyle choices and personal responsibility are the single biggest factors to success in this country is someone who is themselves pontificating in a profoundly stupid manner about things that are merely theories and abstract concepts to their own lives. The magic of this country and the opportunities it provides to anyone of any race who are willing to make good life choices and to work hard for themselves and/or their children's benefit are the reasons why more people of color line up to enter this country every year than any other country in the history of the Universe.
I've seen many blissfully ignorant comments in my life. None quite so profound however as your profoundly dismissing the effects of lifestyle choices and personal responsibility on trans-generational wealth building within families of any race or creed.
Knows the "Dog"
Um, that is simply incorrect. You can bestow benefits upon an entire group without necessarily treating each constituent of the group as fungible. You are just wrong here, with all due respect.
You just spent 8 paragraphs and 3 minutes of my time arguing with a point I quite expressly said I was not making.
I drive a '98 chevy prism, and my muffler has been tied on with a hanger for upwards of a year.
How you like THEM apples?
This is a cheap dodge. Without mandatory accreditation, private, independent accreditors would inevitably spring up, because people need to be able to distinguish competent lawyers from incompetent ones. Although these private accreditors' criteria might vary somewhat from those of today's bar associations, there's every reason to believe that they'd hardly be more willing than today's bar associations to accredit members of minority groups--or anyone else--who are incapable of passing today's bar exams.
We would therefore be in exactly the same position as we are today, in terms of minority representation among active lawyers--except that David Bernstein, instead of sneering at government-mandated accreditation, would be defending the rights of private accreditation services.
Like David, I vehemently oppose the ramming of racial preferences down the throats of academic institutions. But unlike David, I don't pretend that the magic elixir of privatization will solve the problem (if it is indeed a problem) of professions whose racial composition doesn't precisely match that of the population at large.
David is responding to my point, that the bar exam favors otherwise equal candidates on the basis of ability to pay (3000 bucks for barbri). Because of the plain-as-day income bias, there is an undeniable related racial bias in the process as well. Of course we would have the same problem with private accreditation services - because they would also be profit maximisers willing to sacrifice some objective measurement in favor of a bottom line. I have no earthly idea, however, how you get from the proposition that private accreditation services would do the same thing, to the proposition that it is appropriate that a public accreditatorial entity do that as well.
Don't get me wrong - there may be no way to measure attorney quality without having an exam you can get a leg up on by spending 3 grand - but that condition has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that private services would behave the same way.
Am I misunderstanding your point?
The LSAT is not racially biased AT ALL: Two otherwise identical candidates who happen to be of different races will, upon taking the LSAT, get the same score. Because the LSAT has no way, whatsoever, of measuring someone's race.
It may be biased on the basis of English comprehension, facility with logic, and any number of other basis which have some correlation with success as a lawyer, but none of these biases are "racial" bias, even if races statistically differ on these axis.
Finally, destroy every measure which stands in the way of blacks becoming lawyers in equal percentages as whites, without adressing the underlying causes that ACTUALLY were responsible for the difference, and people will quite rationally avoid black lawyers like the plague, because by destroying a meritocratic system of generating lawyers, you will have created a situation where a lawyer's skin color is a reasonably accurate proxy of their competence as a lawyer.
That's the cost of abolishing meritocracy, to get crude statistical equality: You will encourage public racism, by making it rational.
Are these really the only three possible reasons? I personally have a belief that students who perform well educationally do so not because of good schools but because of good parenting or, more accurately, a parental focus on schooling. As an example, my parents were teachers, I rode to school everyday with the son of a plumber and contractor whose fathers made about 5 times more money than my dad. Both kids did very poorly in school because in my opinion (and I have lots of anecdotes to support this) the value education was not stressed in their homes.
I have heard the statistics on minority performance on the LSAT and the SAT. I would be interested to see a similar statistic based on a parent's level of education. I bet you'll see similar low performance on average for student's whose parent's dropped out of HS and rising performance as the parent's level of education rises. I realize that if fewer black and hispanic parents went to college or beyond it is very likely the result of discrimination in past generations but I think that someone should consider the notion that low test scores for minorities may not reflect a current cultural bias but may be a legacy of past bias. If I am right, perhaps the most useful approach would be to attack this problem in the home and this would apply to all races.
A friend of mine worked for some time teaching surgical residents how to do, for example, heart surgery. He failed on resident, not for trying, but because he just couldn't hack it. He didn't have the hands or the concentration for that type of surgery. If he had been white, it would have ended there - the resident who couldn't hack it as a heart surgeon would have gone into a specialty that, for example, didn't require the type of hands that this one did. But, he was Black, which meant that he couldn't be failed, which means that, to this day, he is practicing this type of surgery. Any surprise then that this doctor is now willing to use race as an initial proxy for competence? Or, maybe even those of us who have heard the story from him?
In a perfectly diverse, criteria free world, I wonder how members of the "Council on Racial and Ethnic Diversity" would go about selecting a personal heart surgeon?
1. Of course affirmative action lowers the mean LSAT. As Kovarsky hints, many non-"favored minorities" are not admitted to schools where they are well above the 25th percentile. This would happen less without affirmative action. The idea that affirmative action makes a clean switcheroo of the bottom 15-25% is not accurate.
2. Bernstein makes way too much of the bar situation. Much of the point of affirmative action is to get favored minorities into better law schools, not just to get them into law school, where according to Bernstein they will fail out anyway.
I appreciate the effort to come up with creative arguments against affirmative action. And perhaps they do alert people to problems with the status quo.
As far as I'm concerned, though, there are much bigger problems, such as (1) Affirmative action is extraordinarily unfair in how it decides who is the right kind of minority, which people are disadvantaged, whose perspectives are important or unimportant, and a host of other things, and (2) Affirmative action allows us to ignore the class issues which are the real problem by promoting people who really aren't disadvantaged, often over those who actually are -- but don't fit in the right race. Ok, so it gets back to fairness.
Plus it leads to resentment and race concsiousness which I think we would be better off without. It's just such a weird idea to me, that rather than finding who is actually disadvantaged, we're just going to use race as a proxy and help those people who fit the right description.
As far as whether it helps the people who get promoted, though, I think that's pretty clear.
Law school is not undergraduate school, where you can do well despite low reading and writing skills in standard American English by, for example, concentrating on the hard sciences. Rather, adequate reading comprehension of the overly complex English found in our case law is absolutely essential to minimal competence in the field.
Back to my illustration of the affects of affirmative action in the medical field, and in that case, a surgery residency, I see lack of ability to adequately understand complex written standard American English as somewhere between having big hands and a tremor for a surgeon.
Yes, much of surgery is migrating to the use of computer assisted tools, where big hands and tremors can be accomodated. And, so, maybe some day we can get to a point where we have Eubonics translators that allow someone who speaks and understands that dialect, instead of the one tested on the LSAT, to flourish in our legal environment. But we aren't there yet, and may not be for the forseeable future.
Universities could easily avoid this problem by using a lottery to choose their applicants, but there would be a loss of prestige to any university not following the current path. If you eliminate LSAT scores, then you fall back on gpas. I'm guessing that minority gpas are not any better than their LSAT scores. Do we then eliminate gpas as well?
The attack on the LSAT is an attack on the whole idea of measurable accomplishment.
Law schools should ask students if they took an LSAT prep course. Those who took the course should have their effective scores reduced by the amount the program claims it raises the scores.
This is, of course, one of the big reasons that "The Bell Curve" by Herrnstein and Murray became one of the most vilified books of the 1990s - because they suggested that there may be some racial differences in this area. Interestingly, the one ethnic group that they pointed to who did statistically significantly better on IQ tests than average were Jews - and I would suggest that their success in areas like law is precisely because they are now treated as "White" (and note Eugene's point that half the faculty at his law school are of Jewish descent).
In any case, we all now accept that there are racial characteristics that statistically advantage some races in certain sports. You just have to watch an NBA game to see this. Ditto for the racial composition of our various Olympic teams. No one questions any more why our fastest sprinters come predominently from one part of Africa originally, and many of the best long distance runners from another. They aren't on the team because they are Black, but because they are the fastest we have. And, yet, our best skaters are more likely to be east-Asian than Black.
This is not to say that some Whites, or even Asians, can't play top level basketball, because, of course, they can, and do. What we are talking about is exactly what Summers was asking about - statistical means and standard deviations. There are just significantly more Blacks out there in the tail of the distribution of whatever qualities it takes to play NBA level basketball than there would be if all things were equal, including distributions and standard deviations of these characteristics.
So, maybe part of the problem here is not overt racism, lack of good schools, etc., but rather innate differences between different racial groups, and law is one area where statistically, the genetic chacteristics of Jews make them more likely to succeed in law, and Blacks less likely (and, according to Hernstein and Murray, East-Asians slighly less likely, as they tend to score slightly lower verbally, but not logically, than Whites on IQ type tests).
Note that I am not stating that this is the case, but, rather, asking the same type of question that got Summers in so much trouble with the feminists at Harvard - is it possible? Are all the other explanations merely attempts to not address this question because of its political incorrectness?
There's not a meaningful difference anyways between most of the top 10 other than personal preference on atmosphere, preferred professors or fields, and where you want to work when you graduate. Other than Yale/Harvard/Stanford (for those looking for SCOTUS clerkships), it makes little difference IMHO. Thus even if Michigan was somehow "losing out" it's no big deal to move up.
To the extent that reading comprehension is a learned behavior, class can be important. The more highly educated the parents, the more likely that their children will be pushed in this direction, both implicitly and explicitly. Implicitly, because parents, etc., who are well educated and articulate tend to talk in more complex language to their kids, and have more complex reading material available around the house. Explicitly, because a lot of us push our kids in this area - for example, by giving them a subscription to the New Yorker and the Economist when entering high school, and then making sure they are getting read and understood (true story). (I should add that having a bunch of lawyers in the family talking law at the dinner table makes this even worse).
So, you have one kid who is reading these magazines at 14, and another, just as smart, who doesn't even know what those magazines are at graduation from high school, and, instead spent his high school years playing basketball and video games. Which one statistically is going to do better in law school a mere four years later, and then in the practice of law three years after that?
To some extent then, ignoring class and family environment means that these much less well prepared kids are going to be competing with much better prepared peers. When are they going to get the time to catch up? In law school? Probably anyone who has graduated from law school remembers how much spare time they had for almost anything, esp. during their critical first year there. Now imagine 1L without nearly the level of reading comprehension that you had when you entered law school.
The experience with the MCATs is probably similar to that of the law schools with the exception that law schools are not as selective as medical schools. URM students with lower MCATs tend to do worse on the paper and pencil tests (which include the Part 1 of one of the national licensing exams) but did just as well on the clinical side. American medical school graduates appear to pass the state boards in very high numbers in spite of the above mentioned differences in grades.
Most likely this reflects the aptitudes of the students, which is high to begin with, but the differences in academic performance is still present in spite of this selection issue.
When I googled "MCAT and Minorities" I got an instant hit on the official MCAT site which linked to all the research in the field and to opinion papers concering minority admissions. The MCAT offers a 100% breakdown of GPA and MCAT for all 17.000 med students who entered and all 37,000 applicants (by mean scored according to category) so you can get an idea of the credentials of these students. I could not find a similar set of statistics for law schools. It makes me wonder if there are too many law schools or too many law students.
I understand from other threads that law schools are cash cows for some universities. The ABA evidently accredits law schools which may have something to do with the number of schools (the AMA does not accredit schools, the AAMC does - they administer the MCAT too) and thus have control of both the national professional organization and the schools. Maybe there is a conflict of interest here or at least a problem with the standards of accreditation if certain students are doomed to fail using the ABA standards.
In 1910, the Carnegie Foundation had Abraham Flexner study every medical school in the United States and Canada to determine the quality of the schools. This study was prompted by the idea that there were too many physicians and that many of the schools were in business just for the fees paid by the students. The report brutally examined each school and by 1920 any school that he panned was no longer in business. Perhaps the answer to the bar failure/poor performance problem for law students lies in another study, this time aimed at law schools. ;~} (What are the odds of that happening when the fox is guarding the hen house?)
You're not supposed to even hint at the "TABOO". Man, don't you know that that's the 3rd rail? How dare you inject rationality &empirical reality into a discussion of these issues? Let the name-calling begin!
Kovarsky, could you try to use "bias" in a more conventional sense? By your current usage of it, blood tests are racially "biased" because they stubbornly show blacks to have sickle cell anemia more often than whites. Whereas an "unbiased" test apparently must show equal results for different races, even if those races actually differ.
Actually a "biased" test is one where the results being tested are skewed one way or the other around the mean, and that distribution is traceable to something other than the variables the test seeks to measure. So my definition of bias would never apply to whatever asinine sickle cell anemia example you just gave. Forget for a moment that the analogy doesn't apply. Let's pretend it did. What on earth do you want someone to respond to your sickle cell anemia comment, ignore racial bias all the time? It sounds strikingly like the intelligent design argument that because science is wrong a lot we should favor the least probabilistic outcome.
The LSAT is not racially biased AT ALL: Two otherwise identical candidates who happen to be of different races will, upon taking the LSAT, get the same score. Because the LSAT has no way, whatsoever, of measuring someone's race.
That sounds purrty but the inference you're trying to create from it is untrue. Sure, if you had two peopel with identical DNA and identical social conditioning, but different skin color, they would get the same score. That also, incidentally, has very little to do with whether a data sample and associated test results are biased. The idea is that you never have that identity situation because the test does not control for variables such that the two test subjects take the exam under the conditions you are talking about, ever.
It may be biased on the basis of English comprehension, facility with logic, and any number of other basis which have some correlation with success as a lawyer, but none of these biases are "racial" bias, even if races statistically differ on these axis.
Actually, you would prefer this to be the case, but I have a feeling you just don't understand the statistical terms you are using. I think you mean to say that they aren't a product of racial prejudice, which is defensible enough, but as a factual matter the sample from which test scores are measured is racially biased.
Finally, destroy every measure which stands in the way of blacks becoming lawyers in equal percentages as whites, without adressing the underlying causes that ACTUALLY were responsible for the difference, and people will quite rationally avoid black lawyers like the plague, because by destroying a meritocratic system of generating lawyers, you will have created a situation where a lawyer's skin color is a reasonably accurate proxy of their competence as a lawyer.
Brett, I think you are aware that this has nothing to do with anything I've said. But it sounds nice in a soap bozy kind of way.
I'm sure it gives you a frission of "political incorrectness" to suggest that intelligence is linked to "race" -- or to suggest that even asking raising the issue bravely breaches some evil taboo. But the fact is that biologists are essentially unanimous that "race," as the term is used in U.S. policy debates has no scientific meaning. Genetic differences *among* "races" (black, white, whatever) are much greater than genetic differences *within* races.
There are reasons that some groups underperform others on some types of tests. It's a complicated question, as is the question of what schools and other institutions should do about the fact that some groups underperform others. But to attribute the differences to genetics is junky pseudo-science of the worst kind.