Georgetown Law professor is fired after saying black students are bottom of her class almost every semester

[ronburgundy]

Considering how many times I had to do it, it's an absurd statement on your part. But not surprising. You were in complete denial in the thread even as it was unfolding ������

Put up or shut up.

He has put up. It's time for you to shut up and quit promoting a proven lying white supremacist propaganda rag as a valid source for any factual information.

 

[TSwizzle]

Considering how many times I had to do it, it's an absurd statement on your part. But not surprising. You were in complete denial in the thread even as it was unfolding ������

Put up or shut up.

He has put up.

Not once, ever.

 

[Elixir]

Considering how many times I had to do it, it's an absurd statement on your part. But not surprising. You were in complete denial in the thread even as it was unfolding ������

Put up or shut up.

He has put up. It's time for you to shut up and quit promoting a proven lying white supremacist propaganda rag as a valid source for any factual information.

Cancel culture?
Waaaaaaah!

 

[atrib]

For an in-class situation one I recall reading about. Physics problem, it gave the details of the stadium and how the ball was hit and asked if it was a home run. Foreign student was stumped, asked the teacher about it. The teacher was working through the problem with him, he understood everything--so what's the problem? "What's a home run?" Had that been a test rather than homework he would have had a 50% chance of getting it wrong due to a lack of sports knowledge rather than a lack of physics knowledge.

Do you have a citation for this? I find it incredibly hard to believe that a question like this would have been set in an in-class exam, or even as a homework assignment. I have never come across anything like this in my college experience, in physics class or engineering/math.

Then you have a very narrow, lucky experience. The fact is, I could easily put such a question on a test.

I have had a pretty diverse educational experience. Middle and High school in Stamford, CT, undergrad engineering at Auburn, AL, and grad engineering at Georgia Tech and UC Berkeley. Through all those years I don't remember an assignment in physics or engineering where I needed cultural context in order to figure out what a question meant. It's possible they were there and I simply don't remember, but that possibility is small.

We are generally going to be blind to the cultural contexts that are required for understanding various culturally specific constructions because it's just too familiar to us.

Agreed, but this is not just a cultural thing, there are also differences based on gender. My wife grew up in western Tennessee and became a doctor, and she has no interest in sports. Zero. She couldn't tell you what a touchdown is, as strange as that might sound for a woman who has lived most of her life in the South, and is married to a man who lives for college football. She would be in exactly the same position as a foreigner who has no knowledge of US customs and sports with such questions.

 

[Gospel]

And the Mavericks defeated the Bulls today 107 to 92. The whites on the Bulls just underperformed today, while the blacks were very hot for the Mavericks.

Huh. Did the teams select players for the strength of their basketball skill or was some lesser criterion used?

Haha.
I was trying to think of a way to ask about the NBA's affirmative action plan. How do they plan to make every team reflect the racial demographics of the USA?

But, I couldn't think of a way to do that that didn't appear drenched in snarkiness. I don't want to trigger anybody. So I just kept my opinions to myself, like a well-trained white boy.
Tom

Was just reading through this thread looking to see if any more info was added and came across this rubbish. Bruh, when were white people kept from playing basketball? The issue is not whether or not one is skilled enough to perform it's about giving them the chance to perform in the first place. It's too early to tell right now as the Civil Rights movement happened basically yesterday in comparison to the centuries black people were shitted on in America. Get yo head right man. Privilege got you comfortable in your ignorance.

 

[Jarhyn]

Then you have a very narrow, lucky experience. The fact is, I could easily put such a question on a test.

I have had a pretty diverse educational experience. Middle and High school in Stamford, CT, undergrad engineering at Auburn, AL, and grad engineering at Georgia Tech and UC Berkeley. Through all those years I don't remember an assignment in physics or engineering where I needed cultural context in order to figure out what a question meant. It's possible they were there and I simply don't remember, but that possibility is small.

We are generally going to be blind to the cultural contexts that are required for understanding various culturally specific constructions because it's just too familiar to us.

Agreed, but this is not just a cultural thing, there are also differences based on gender. My wife grew up in western Tennessee and became a doctor, and she has no interest in sports. Zero. She couldn't tell you what a touchdown is, as strange as that might sound for a woman who has lived most of her life in the South, and is married to a man who lives for college football. She would be in exactly the same position as a foreigner who has no knowledge of US customs and sports with such questions.

Indeed, there are a lot of formulations of questions wherein the question itself assumes additional contextual information which will not be available to the test taker. In this way, it seems readily apparent that the legacy of racism and sexism in the US has created a certain momentum wherein tests filter people and favor selection of those like the people who wrote the test, who are largely white men.

For the record, I see genders more as cultures anyway? There's definitely an aspect of cultural silo-ing going on for gender at any rate.

As to physics, I'm surprised you didn't have more contextual exposure to sports. The earliest lessons in physics can be utterly dominated by (boring) discussions of what men do with their balls.

Personally, I'm still going to pretty confidently assume that you yourself were blind to the cultural contexts that were necessary because they were too familiar to you to be "memorable".

I'm honestly more interested, as Gospel is, in the question of what the resident "critical race theorists" (ie, fucking racists) around here have to say about the fact that minority SAT scores seem to just keep inching up while white SAT scores sit stagnant. What I would like to see is the curve as it currently stands. I wonder where the asymptote that black SAT scores are approaching lives in relation to white people.

Though in answer to their discussion of asian scores, it's not really surprising. Smart Asians seem to tend to know that Asia is not a great place right now to be smart in.

 

[Trausti]

I'm honestly more interested, as Gospel is, in the question of what the resident "critical race theorists" (ie, fucking racists) around here have to say about the fact that minority SAT scores seem to just keep inching up while white SAT scores sit stagnant. What I would like to see is the curve as it currently stands. I wonder where the asymptote that black SAT scores are approaching lives in relation to white people.

Though in answer to their discussion of asian scores, it's not really surprising. Smart Asians seem to tend to know that Asia is not a great place right now to be smart in.

How hard could it be to invent a valid test on which blacks and hispanics score as well as Asians? Obviously, the reason we don’t have such a test today is because it never ever occurred to anybody until last week to try to invent one.

 

[ronburgundy]

Then you have a very narrow, lucky experience. The fact is, I could easily put such a question on a test.

I have had a pretty diverse educational experience. Middle and High school in Stamford, CT, undergrad engineering at Auburn, AL, and grad engineering at Georgia Tech and UC Berkeley. Through all those years I don't remember an assignment in physics or engineering where I needed cultural context in order to figure out what a question meant. It's possible they were there and I simply don't remember, but that possibility is small.

We are generally going to be blind to the cultural contexts that are required for understanding various culturally specific constructions because it's just too familiar to us.

Agreed, but this is not just a cultural thing, there are also differences based on gender. My wife grew up in western Tennessee and became a doctor, and she has no interest in sports. Zero. She couldn't tell you what a touchdown is, as strange as that might sound for a woman who has lived most of her life in the South, and is married to a man who lives for college football. She would be in exactly the same position as a foreigner who has no knowledge of US customs and sports with such questions.

Sports as the basis for problems in math/statistics and physics is very common. I've seen it often. There are even peer reviewed journal articles directed towards math teachers that show them examples of how to integrate sports into their lessons.

Here is a website dedicated to providing k-12 teachers with "professional development" tutorials. Teachers are required to engage in these kinds of tutorials on an annual basis. This one gives unqualified praise to the idea of using sports to teach kids "real world math". These are supposedly people with degrees in how to teach teachers, and nowhere is there any kind of warning or qualification about how the use of sports might bias instruction in favor of boys or particular groups. They have other sections that even talk about "racism in the classroom", "how to empower girls in the classroom", yet gave zero thought to how the use of sports in math could be problematic. That illustrates how blind instructors are to the ways their teaching and testing materials can be biased or disadvantage/discourage some students.


Here is a paper by a University statistics prof. who had the very common thought that using sports examples in stats would make it more interesting and relatable to students. Their assumption was very common and many teachers do it, but they did the rare thing of actually trying to study the impact of doing it on learning and then publishing a paper. Contrary to their expectations, students in the "sports" version of the class did significantly worse (a full letter grade) on all objective learning measures of learning. The author admits that unfortunately they didn't use an approach that allowed meaningful interpretation of that result. The class was advertised as "sports stats", so more males signed up, and it was offered early in the morning, so more freshman signed up b/c they get last pick of classes. But their poorly controlled study isn't the point. The point is it's an example of the common notion of using sports in stats, which as the author notes has been advocated and done by many others:

[P]"Other authors (e.g., Albert and Cochran, 2005) have advocated using sports examples in
the teaching of statistics. Some (like Gallian, 2001) teach a special seminar-type course based on
sports examples, while others use a particular sport (see Albert, 2002 for a baseball case)
throughout the course. Other instructors (such as Cochran, 2001) use sports as a motivating theme
for a specific portion of a traditional course."[/P]

And note that even though this Prof. thought to report the gender breakdown of the sports vs. regular stats class, nowhere do they ever give thought to the possibility that the sports version might impact the genders differently, so they don't bother to test it.

 

[Trausti]

If sports analogies are the most biased part of standardized testing, then the tests are fine.

 

[barbos]

If sports analogies are the most biased part of standardized testing, then the tests are fine.

I don't know. Baseball is not played in Russia and it's weird to encounter problems based on it in tests right after you landed in US. Lucky for me I was able to figure it out.

 

[Trausti]

If sports analogies are the most biased part of standardized testing, then the tests are fine.

I don't know. Baseball is not played in Russia and it's weird to encounter problems based on it in tests right after you landed in US. Lucky for me I was able to figure it out.

Ah, that explains why Asian-Americans top standardized tests. They do like their baseball.

 

[Gospel]

If sports analogies are the most biased part of standardized testing, then the tests are fine.

I don't know. Baseball is not played in Russia and it's weird to encounter problems based on it in tests right after you landed in US. Lucky for me I was able to figure it out.

Ah, that explains why Asian-Americans top standardized tests. They do like their baseball.

As does privilege explain the petrified White-American SAT scores. They do like their privilege.

 

[Trausti]

Ah, that explains why Asian-Americans top standardized tests. They do like their baseball.

As does privilege explain the petrified White-American SAT scores. They do like their privilege.

Everything has changed about test stats:

1972
1 Orientals
2 Caucasians
3 Chicanos
4 Blacks

vs.

2020
1 Asians
2 Whites
3 Latinx
4 African-Americans

 

[Gospel]

Blah, We should cancel the SAT anyway. The Asians are beating whites at their own game & It was invented by a racist who believed the negro would cause intelligence to go down in this country because of our blood (& some other weird shit only white people come up with).

 

[J842P]

Ah, that explains why Asian-Americans top standardized tests. They do like their baseball.

As does privilege explain the petrified White-American SAT scores. They do like their privilege.

Man that's dumb.

 

[Gospel]

Ah, that explains why Asian-Americans top standardized tests. They do like their baseball.

As does privilege explain the petrified White-American SAT scores. They do like their privilege.

Man that's dumb.

No disagreement here.

 

[jab]

Another third-year student pointed out that Sellers and Batson’s class was a participation-based course, “making Black students particularly susceptible to biased grading” given Sellers’ racist views. A quarter of the final grade is based on “pure class participation,” a highly subjective criterion that gives professors broad latitude to inject their personal prejudices into the grading process.

It has not been established that Seller has racist views (unless observations of fact count as 'racist').

However, if Georgetown alters (reduces) its emphasis on 'class participation', that would be a welcome change. My law courses (not any of my other courses in any other subject area) often had a "class participation" aspect worth around 10%, which I hated at the time and think is nearly completely subjective, unnecessarily zero-sum, rewards certain personality types, and ultimately pointless. If a teacher did have prejudices of any kind, the class participation mark is where they could easily exercise that prejudice.

I would have thought one perquisite for being a good lawyer was an ability to participate in discussions. Sorry you didn't like doing it. Myself--I disliked written exams, particularly those attached to particular courses, but I did them, and I can somewhat see their validity.
As for teaching at a university, (but not, thank God, in law) for decades, I can say that there has almost always a small group of underachieving students in my courses, and that they have very diverse in everything except underachieving. Well, mature students have tended to be less likely to fall into that group, perhaps because they are attending University because they want to; however even an occasional mature student does not perform up to their capabilities.

 

[Metaphor]

I would have thought one perquisite for being a good lawyer was an ability to participate in discussions.

I have the ability to participate in discussions, but large group discussions in an academic setting is not a prerequisite for being a good lawyer. (Clinical) psychologists probably need 'discussion' skills as much as lawyers, but class participation was not a component of my psychology courses.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

For an in-class situation one I recall reading about. Physics problem, it gave the details of the stadium and how the ball was hit and asked if it was a home run. Foreign student was stumped, asked the teacher about it. The teacher was working through the problem with him, he understood everything--so what's the problem? "What's a home run?" Had that been a test rather than homework he would have had a 50% chance of getting it wrong due to a lack of sports knowledge rather than a lack of physics knowledge.

Do you have a citation for this? I find it incredibly hard to believe that a question like this would have been set in an in-class exam, or even as a homework assignment. I have never come across anything like this in my college experience, in physics class or engineering/math.

This was many years ago.

Some teachers like to do things like that, set up the physics problem in a real world context rather than just abstract numbers. It's perfectly reasonable other than not considering foreign students. I never had a physics teacher do that but I did have a math teacher who did that sort of thing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Then you have a very narrow, lucky experience. The fact is, I could easily put such a question on a test.

We are generally going to be blind to the cultural contexts that are required for understanding various culturally specific constructions because it's just too familiar to us. It would in fact be better if someone from a different culture wrote 100% of the questions.

I'm not sure I would call his experience "lucky"--making you figure out how to set the problem up which is what you would have to do if you were doing it for real.

I had a history teacher that had a good way for handling such problems--the next day after a test we could argue why a "wrong" answer wasn't wrong--and if we made a decent case the answer would be accepted. In a problem like this the student could work out where the ball went, then argue about it in going over the test. Besides, this was homework, no big deal.

With a bad teacher this would be a problem.