[danans]

> Nevertheless, the average private school applicant had only a 18.3% chance of admission, well below the 25.8% average for public school applicants.

As a parent of a student in a private school, this is how it should be. For the amount of support and resources that private school students receive vs their public school peers, the standards should be higher. My child understands this, and knows that they will have to achieve more to get admission to a UC than a kid at a low income public school.

There should be exceptions, for example: very low SES student attending a private school on scholarship - although such students are usually exceptional or else they would not have qualified for private school scholarship.

The working class shouldn't be subsidizing the higher education of the wealthy.

[qwerpy]

This seems backwards to me. Colleges should be prioritizing strong students for admission and nothing else. Our country needs the best engineers and doctors. Colleges are a scarce, valuable resource and should be reserved for the best students, regardless of why they are the best students.

[kccqzy]

> Colleges should be prioritizing strong students

I agree with this, but I think you didn’t get the point. The point is, the way we measure strength has to be considered in light of the environment. If a student is in a high school where the average strength is 100, and the student has achieved a strength of 200, it shows that the student has tenacity and grit and drive. Whereas another student might be in a high school where the average strength is 200 and has a strength of 200, and this shows that the student is content to be just average. After admission, the first student has a much higher potential of outperforming the average freshman. The first student’s strength could very well be limited by the amount of resources available in this high school, and not by his/her innate ability.

At least, this is what is supposed to happen, if you believe the UC admission officers.

[qwerpy]

I understand that point and I still disagree with it. There are objective, direct measurements of strength (standardized tests, performance at state/nation-wide academic competitions, admissions essays), and we don't need to resort to this more flimsy chain of subjective comparisons that use "relative strength of student within school" and "relative strength of school across all schools".

[technothrasher]

> There are objective, direct measurements of strength (standardized tests, performance at state/nation-wide academic competitions, admissions essays)

You are begging the question, especially with standardized testing, by presuming these things are measuring what you think they are measuring.

[cweld510]

You said above that our country “needs the best engineers and doctors.” Are the tests you mention really objective, direct measures of which student is likely to be the best engineer or doctor in the future? What does it even mean to be the best engineer, and how do you test that?

[apparent]

This doesn't describe what UC is doing, however. LCFF is for (1) kids in foster care, (2) English learners, and (3) low income. If you go to a school that has lots of these kids, but you yourself do not have one of these disadvantages, then it doesn't mean that you've risen up out of poverty to achieve relative greatness. It means that you're not an immigrant/poor, but you go to school with a lot of such students. And in the age of grade inflation, getting good grades at a school with lots of low-performing kids is especially easy.

[addaon]

> This seems backwards to me. Colleges should be prioritizing strong students for admission and nothing else. Our country needs the best engineers and doctors. Colleges are a scarce, valuable resource and should be reserved for the best students, regardless of why they are the best students.

It seems unlikely that Americans would be so massively overrepresented in American colleges under this policy...

[apparent]

You seem to be falsely equating private schools with "the wealthy" and public schools with "the working class". Plenty of people are wealthy and send their kids to public schools. They fund them via property taxes rather than tuition payments.

[alexchantavy]

> You seem to be falsely equating private schools with "the wealthy" and public schools with "the working class"

Agree. Plenty of non-wealthy get to attend private schools through scholarships and financial aid