SAT State Ranking Adjusted for Participation Rates

Posted by James Bowery on Monday, 11 September 2006 16:29.

Since the State rankings of Scholastic Aptitude Tests are so threatening to the mythology promoted by media and academia that the inbred hicks of places like Iowa need the enlightened guidance (if not the sperm donations) of places like New York City, Boston, etc. (you know, places with a lot of Jews who are smarter than everyone else) to become something other than illiterate sheep sodomizers with latent white supremacist tendencies, there is the standard catechism that everyone is taught: “That’s just because states like Iowa have lower participation rates in the SATs by lower performing students.” Moreover, to prove their point a Harvard Study was conducted in the 1990s which adjusted the State SAT scores for participation rates: Powell, B., and L. C. Steelman (1996), “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildering: The Use and Misuse of State SAT and ACT Scores,” Harvard Educational Review, 27-59. In this glorious Harvard Study, which you have never heard about, Iowa’s #1 SAT rank, when adjusted for its lower participation from lower performing students, plunged to an abysmal #2. No more studies like this were conducted for some reason.

Now, you won’t find this paper on line. It is referenced, but its all discussion promoting the “dumb hicks need our guidance” catechism of the Holocaustian theocracy. If you search long and hard enough, you find that some guy has extracted the data from that paper and actually put it on line.

That would be me.

No one else could be bothered to put it on line since they were too busy “debunking” the use of State rankings of SAT scores and the data would simply confuse the readers.

Well I’m here to Bewitch, Bother and Bewilder you, my hapless readers, by providing not just the data they won’t put online, but actually provide the rank ordering of what other things are most strongly associated with a State’s SAT rank adjusted for participation rates.

PS: To do this, I put up the money to reactivate the CGI processing of The Laboratory of the States website—something I was additionally motivated to do since State Master, a similar website, as of this writing couldn’t be bothered to provide the correlations with autism rates. I really had hoped that State Master would pick up the work on this problem, since they have such a spiffy user interface and such a wide range of data. But it seems that when important questions come up, State Master frequently doesn’t have the critical data or won’t provide the correlations. (Also, they apparently consider “per capita” variables to be optional much of the time and then don’t let you do arithmetic on absolute variables to adjust for population sizes—a fallacy unworthy even of sophomoric journalists that nevertheless journalists commit all the time.)

NOTE: Since this is correlation with the rank, not the scores themselves, the things associated with higher scholastic aptitude are preceded by a minus “-” sign.

You will noticed that high scholastic aptitude is associated with things like the presence of Scandinavians and IQ. I just can’t imagine why Harvard “educators” wouldn’t want to post to the net corrected data that shows correlations like this.

Scale	Strength %	Associated demography
	66	with log(AlcoholAbstainersPercentage1987)
(log)	65	with -sqrt(NorwegianPercapita1990)
(log)	64	with -sqrt(NorwegianPercentOfWhites)
	61	with log(AlcoholAbstainersPercentage1991)
	61	with log(AlcoholAbstainersPercentage1986)
	60	with log(AlcoholAbstainersPercentage1988)
	60	with log(AlcoholAbstainersPercentage1989)
	60	with -log(SwedishPercapita1990)
	60	with sqrt(AlcoholAbstainersPercentage1990)
	59	with -log(CzechPercapita1990)
	58	with -IQ1965
(log)	56	with log(PrisonerDeathsPerInCustody1994)
(log)	55	with log(PrisonerDeathsMalePerInCustody1994)
	54	with -log(MothersAgeAtFirstLiveBirth1990)
	54	with log(AlcoholAbstainersPercentage1995)
	54	with -log(MothersAgeAtFirstLiveBirth1980)
(log)	54	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1981)
	53	with -log(BelgianPercapita1990)
(log)	52	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1986)
	52	with log(Unclassified_or_not_reportedPercapita1990)
	52	with sqrt(AlcoholAbstainersPercentage1993)
(log)	52	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1995)
(sqrt)	52	with -log(WorkingParentsPercapita1990)
	52	with sqrt(United_States_or_AmericanPercapita1990)
	51	with AlcoholAbstainersPercentage1992
	51	with -log(FinnishPercapita1990)
(log)	51	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1985)
(log)	51	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1987)
(log)	51	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1980)
	50	with AlcoholConsumedPerDrinker1986
(log)	50	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1993)
(log)	50	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1989)
(log)	50	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1990)
(log)	50	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1988)
(log)	50	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1992)
(log)	50	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1997)
(log)	50	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1982)
(log)	50	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1983)
(log)	50	with sqrt(IncarceratedPercapita1996)
(log)	50	with -SATIMeanMath2000
	49	with sqrt(FoodInsecureWithoutHungerPercentage3YearAverageStartin)
(log)	49	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1998)
(log)	49	with -GermanPercapita1990
(log)	49	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1994)
(log)	49	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1984)
(log)	49	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1991)
(log)	48	with log(IncarceratedPercapita1999)
(log)	48	with log(Race_or_Hispanic_origin_groupsPercapita1990)
(log)	48	with -WorkingParentsPercapita1990
	48	with log(FoodInsecureWithOrWithoutHungerPercentage3YearAverageStartin)
(log)	48	with log(BlacksOrHispanicsPercapita1990)
	48	with -sqrt(FemaleStateLegislatorsPerc)
(log)	48	with -SATIMeanMath2001
(log)	47	with sqrt(PrisonerDeathsPerInCustody1992)
(log)	47	with -SATIMeanMath1996
(log)	47	with -SATIMeanMath1991
	47	with -log(MothersAgeAtFirstLiveBirth1970)
(log)	47	with sqrt(PrisonerDeathsMalePerInCustody1992)
(log)	47	with log(FoodInsecureWithoutHungerPercentage3YearAverageStartin)
(log)	46	with log(MurderPerc)
(log)	46	with log(IncarceratedPercapita2000)
	46	with FamiliesWithIncomeLessthan5000PercapitaIn1990
(sqrt)	45	with -log(DanishPercapita1990)
(log)	45	with log(BurglaryPercapita2001)
	45	with -log(AlcoholConsumptionPercapita1991)
	45	with -log(MothersAgeAtFirstLiveBirth2000)
	45	with -log(HateCrimeEstimatedPercapita1998)
	44	with BlackPercapita1990
	44	with BlacksPercapita1990
(log)	43	with log(FoodInsecureWithOrWithoutHungerPercentage3YearAverageStartin)
	43	with -log(RussianPercapita1990)
(log)	43	with log(HIVPositiveTestsPercapita2001)
	43	with -log(FamiliesWithIncome47500to49999PercapitaIn1990)
(log)	43	with -SATIMeanVerbal2000
	43	with -log(AlcoholConsumptionPercapita1987)
	43	with log(SyphillisFemalePercapita1997)
	42	with -log(AustrianPercapita1990)
(sqrt)	42	with -FamiliesWithIncome42500to44999PercapitaIn1990
(log)	42	with -SATIMeanVerbal2001
	42	with log(AlcoholConsumedPerDrinker1989)
(log)	42	with sqrt(PrisonerDeathsMalePerInC)
(log)	41	with -SATIMeanVerbal1991
	41	with log(AlcoholConsumedPerDrinker1990)
(log)	41	with sqrt(PrisonerDeathsPerInCustody1996)
(log)	41	with -SATIMeanVerbal1996
(sqrt)	40	with -WhitesPercapita1990

Tags:

Comments:

Posted by Daedalus on Mon, 11 Sep 2006 19:15 | #

Every few years the same nonsense is trotted out and everyone is forced to silently nod their heads in agreement: the schools are failing American students, and we need to spend more money to make the teacher’s unions happy for “no child can be left behind.” The truth is that the gap between American students and their European peers disappears once you factor out Negroes and Hispanics who depress the national average in international comparisons. Also, in many racially mixed districts, upper and middle class whites have withdrawn their children from the integrated public schools and have enrolled them in upscale private schools, which depresses average white test scores. Compare Negro students in the U.S. which are showered with money compared to Russian students in the TIMSS reports. Amazing how impoverished Russians consistently outscore relatively wealthy blacks year after year.

Posted by J Richards on Mon, 11 Sep 2006 20:15 | #

Anyone interested in the paper by Powell and Steelman can download it here, and someone please put it online, along with the comment by Bowery.

Posted by Calvin on Tue, 12 Sep 2006 09:52 | #

Sorry for being a bit thick James but if the#1 SAT rank, when adjusted for its lower participation from lower performing students, plunged to an abysmal #2. I understand this to mean that Iowa slipped a place in terms of SAT rank when the statistics were adjusted. Doesn’t this tend to indicate that the Harvard study had some merit?

Posted by who on Tue, 12 Sep 2006 13:09 | #

Poor James, can’t get past the fact that all those Jewish students he competed with coming up are still ahead of him. Perhaps a bath and a haircut would help your self esteem.

Posted by James Bowery on Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:12 | #

Calvin , the way sophists distort reality is by taking truths, real truths, and inflating their importance out of proportion. The rank order of correlations is a way of seeing exactly how unimportant the truth of their argument was in this case.

So, yes, I’m afraid you are a bit thick.

Posted by Tile Hats on Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:35 | #

“Perhaps a bath and a haircut would help your self esteem.”

Maybe having your foreskin reattached would help yours.

Any reason to be perturbed about raw data - or the analysis of data, unmanaged by our “betters”, to be forbidden?

Posted by Calvin on Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:09 | #

James, I see what you mean. I’m assuming that your hostile response was inspired by the fact that my post seemed to lend credence to the asshole poster who followed me. I’ll read more carefully in future.

Cheers!

Calvin the thicko

Posted by who on Tue, 12 Sep 2006 20:46 | #

Philo-semites don’t have to brag about Jewish superiority—guys like you do it for them by over-inflating Jewish influence and ability to wreak havoc on Western civilization. If the influence is as pervasive and evil as you all go on about, then they must be superior. If they are not superior how could they have so much influence?

Why did you all chase John J. Ray away from this site? He lent a whiff of credibility to the proceedings. Now you all are no better than a neo-Nazi circle jerk.

Posted by Calvin on Tue, 12 Sep 2006 21:05 | #

“If the influence is as pervasive and evil as you all go on about, then they must be superior”

So using your logic the “evil” Nazi regime that booted them out must have been even more superior?

Posted by who on Tue, 12 Sep 2006 21:38 | #

Where are the Nazis now? (present company excepted)

Posted by Tile hats on Tue, 12 Sep 2006 22:18 | #

“If the influence is as pervasive and evil as you all go on about, then they must be superior. If they are not superior how could they have so much influence?”

The argument would be not that Jews are ‘superior’, but that they are characterized by particular traits - such as high levels of ethnocentrism coupled to high verbal IQ - that enable them to exploit white gentile weaknesses and the ‘civil society’ created by the gentiles.

“Why did you all chase John J. Ray away from this site? He lent a whiff of credibility to the proceedings. Now you all are no better than a neo-Nazi circle jerk.”

Guessedworker’s liberal polices allow you to interrupt the circle jerk to tell us how James Bowery’s analysis is wrong. So far all you’ve done is poke fun at his grooming habits.

“Am I reading this wrong, or is the best correlation with high levels of alcoholism?”

Yes, you are reading it wrong. The correlation is with abstinence from alcohol, not its consumption.

Posted by Tile Hats on Tue, 12 Sep 2006 22:20 | #

“Where are the Nazis now?”

In the Israeli government and the IDF.

Posted by Calvin on Tue, 12 Sep 2006 22:55 | #

“Where are the Nazis now? (present company excepted)”

The Nazis succumbed to an international alliance of the world’s greatest military powers. Jews were not prominent in any of the military forces opposing Nazism; in fact, I’ve heard that Jews were underrepresented in combat roles in the US armed forces and I believe that Russian Jews killed more Russians than Germans during WWII. Where will the Jews be in fifty years time? They will be desperately divesting themselves of their ethnic identity and attempting to assimilate with the Europeans, whose culture and hegemony the Frankfurt School has done so much to compromise, in a febrile bid to escape the wrath of resurgent Islam. Outliers like Horowitz have already started to beg at our feet.

Posted by James Bowery on Wed, 13 Sep 2006 04:47 | #

Alex, you’re right but not for the reason you most likely think.

If you look at <a >the correlations with AlcoholConsumedPerDrinker1986 (excluding the outlier Washington DC)</a> which probably is a measure of alcoholism, you’ll notice that somewhere not too far from the highest correlations is <a >50% (r=.5) correlation with AlcoholAbstainersPercentage1986</a>.

The way I read this is that alcohol abstinence correlates strongly with alcoholism—something that shouldn’t be too surprising to people familiar with the phenomenon.