What's "equity" in this context, btw? Equal outcome?

Is there any evidence at all that AP classes and high GPAs leads to success, when controlling for other variables?

Put some keywords into Google Scholar and you will find heaps of research on this topic. Here’s the first one I found. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/eej.2014.22

> We estimate several models with an extensive list of control variables and high school fixed effects. Results consistently show that high school GPA is a positive and statistically significant predictor of educational attainment and earnings in adulthood. Moreover, the coefficient estimates are large and economically important for each gender.

GPA should be a result of mastering the material. Assuming that is roughly the case, if you ever go on to use any of the skills you were supposed to learn in school (math, computing, etc) you are asking if having learned those skills would help you perform those skills?

I doubt there will ever be a way to satisfactorily control for other variables when it comes to these sorts of real-life studies (there is a reason the majority of social science isn't reproducible[1])

[1] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/21/eabd1705

>GPA should be a result of mastering the material.

I know that personally my grades don't tend to correlate with my actual knowledge at all. I've failed things because I've been bored with them, and I've gotten perfect grades on things I don't understand at all outside the tested material.

Same, I think this is the assumption that doesn't always hold up. However, it often does, and how well it does depends on the teachers and school.

So the answer is no.

I would lean more towards this is one of those truths that can be taken as self-evident. But, at the same time I would be skeptical that any published evidence would account for the infinitude of confounding factors.

My guess is it is similar to IQ results - does a good job weeding out people who know nothing, but does worse differentiating between students who are satisfactory and those who are exceptional

AFAIK there's more evidence supporting that ~B students are the most successful vs A students.

Who cares? You're dealing with millions of school kids every year, and need aggregatable data to make important policy decisions about how education is done. As long as it correlates well, it's easy to collect, and can be trusted not to be manipulated for bad incentives like this article implies is happening, we use it.

OK, where's the data?

> If we do not take advantage of the more capable students because of equity, what will the future of the country be without people who can do the sorts of things that require highly capable individuals?

> No iphones, electric cars, or covid vaccines, for example.

Do we have any data on the correlation between high-school admission criteria and inventing the Covid vaccine or whatever?

We are not talking about taking advantage of excellence, which starts to become visible after highschool. We are talking about 10-year-olds who go to school to be taught the fundamental theorem of arithmetics.

> Even the communists realized that when you've got smart students, take advantage and educate them as best you can. > The third reich idiotically drove out their best scientists, who wound up working for the Allies developing the technology that defeated the reich.

I don't know what the communists and the nazists have to do with changing the admission criteria of a high school. I suppose it's a way of expressing disagreement in American English?

> Do we have any data on the correlation between high-school admission criteria and inventing the Covid vaccine or whatever?

Caltech requires good grades as criteria for admission. Caltech graduates have a disproportionately high percentage of Nobel prizes.

https://www.caltech.edu/about/legacy/awards-and-honors/nobel...

BTW, I think the mRNA vaccine technology is worthy of a Nobel Prize. Don't you?

Wasn't the most successful mRNA vaccine developed by migrants working in Germany?

The CEO of BioNTech, when he was 10, wasn't considered good enough to attend a Gymnasium.

Coming from a family of turkish Gastarbeiters, I am not surprised. You still have that problem in Germany, and I think it only got worse during the pandemic.

Edit: The Biontech founder comes from a turkish family, I don't. But I see that happening a lot, first during my school days. And now at my children's schools.

Maybe it didn’t get worse, but it still demonstrate what’s the result and maybe the objective of these strict selection criteria: that discriminated minorities end up being excluded. Let it be children with foreign origin in Germany (which doesn’t stop after a generation) or whatever minority is being excluded from this very important American school.

And given that people leave high school barely capable of reading newspaper articles (otherwise Breitbart or the Daily Mail would even be a thing), I don’t see what this selection is for.

> that discriminated minorities end up being excluded. Let it be children with foreign origin in Germany (which doesn’t stop after a generation)

Except of course for the founders of BoiNTech: Uğur Şahin, and Özlem Türeci.

Included to the point they got German government-funded PhDs and then other native Germans helped co-found their company.

Perhaps you hypothesis needs more data and less feelings?

Well, two people succeeding against all odds hardly qualify as data. Especially when every single PISA study tells you otherwise.

Unless, of course, you buy into all that dishwasher to millionaire you can achieve anything if you want but don't expect a helping hand BS.

The CEO of BioNTech was told to attend a lower level school, which wouldn’t have allowed him to go to university. He claims that if it weren’t for a German neighbour he would not have gone to a gymnasium. This is a form of discrimination.

> Caltech requires good grades as criteria for admission. Caltech graduates have a disproportionately high percentage of Nobel prizes.

Caltech requires 10-year-old kids to write essays?

Again, are we talking about enrolling 10-year-old kids in highschool or are we talking about hiring microbiologists?

First, high school starts with 14 year olds, not 10.

Second, people don't suddenly learn how to write a competent essay at the last minute. Writing a good one is a combination of many skills learned over many years.

BTW, I did not take any college prep courses prior to Caltech, and found myself way behind the other freshman who did. I found out many years later that the admissions committee had taken a chance on me, and they were very nearly wrong. I came that close to flunking out.

If public schools dump their gifted tracks, inequality will only increase as the top schools will wind up drawing only from private schools.

Admission essays are a literary genre of their own, like the weird language used by some state bureaucracies. Knowing how to write these essays is a splinter skill.

Anyway, so you should not have been admitted but you succeeded anyway without being a gifted kid? It seems like you have proved my point.

8th graders are typically 12-13 years old, not 10 - 10 year olds are typically in the 6th and 7th grade.