Irvine, California
Joined February 2017
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Steve Miller retweeted
A new Johns Hopkins study confirms what we already knew: the SAT is not the test it used to be.
Four out of five findings “suggest that the newer SAT demands less of the test-taker” and a fifth suggests the opposite.
What’s certain is that the SAT (a) tests less vocabulary, (b) uses much shorter reading passages, and (c) focuses almost exclusively on expository rather than argumentative or persuasive texts.
The full report (linked below) notes that “reducing reliance on assumed background knowledge carries real equity advantages,” which surely explains the changes at least in part.
“The older SAT relied more on students' background knowledge and advanced vocabulary, which could
favor those already familiar with certain topics or perspectives. In contrast, the new SAT includes
context-rich passages that are generally more accessible to students regardless of their prior knowledge, which is likely to reduce the extent to which background familiarity shapes performance.
“In short, the older forms more often asked students to arrive already knowing information, whereas the
newer form more often supplies what a passage requires as it unfolds.”
We were concerned that the SAT has become a less reliable measure of student preparedness for a rigorous college curriculum.
So, we commissioned a study from Johns Hopkins University. What does this study tell us about the state of higher education?
The results are shocking. thaq.co/4iLThZ0
Steve Miller retweeted
[These numbers are still not where they're supposed to be if admissions are being done on the basis of merit.]
cremieux.xyz/p/still-discrim…
Steve Miller retweeted
Added some relevant dates.
Asian-Americans in Harvard’s Incoming Class More Than Double, to 43.2 Percent
Newly released data on the Harvard College class of 2030 say the class is 43.2 percent Asian-American, a record high and more than double the level when Students for Fair Admissions first sued Harvard alleging racial discrimination in admissions.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that Harvard was unlawfully using race as a factor in admissions. Since then, the numbers of Hispanic and black students in the incoming Harvard classes have dipped, while the numbers of Asian-Americans have soared.
I remain angry that there have been no apologies and no consequences for the people and institutions that defended and still defend racial discrimination at most universities (not just Harvard).
Truly evil people.
Asian-Americans in Harvard’s Incoming Class More Than Double, to 43.2 Percent
Newly released data on the Harvard College class of 2030 say the class is 43.2 percent Asian-American, a record high and more than double the level when Students for Fair Admissions first sued Harvard alleging racial discrimination in admissions.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that Harvard was unlawfully using race as a factor in admissions. Since then, the numbers of Hispanic and black students in the incoming Harvard classes have dipped, while the numbers of Asian-Americans have soared.
Steve Miller retweeted
Pretty much destroys Harvard's previous contention that Asian-Americans with excellent grades and extracurriculars were undeserving due to some unidentifiable deficiencies.
It took 30 years (this issue was discussed when I was there) but some things do change, eventually
Asian-Americans in Harvard’s Incoming Class More Than Double, to 43.2 Percent
Newly released data on the Harvard College class of 2030 say the class is 43.2 percent Asian-American, a record high and more than double the level when Students for Fair Admissions first sued Harvard alleging racial discrimination in admissions.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that Harvard was unlawfully using race as a factor in admissions. Since then, the numbers of Hispanic and black students in the incoming Harvard classes have dipped, while the numbers of Asian-Americans have soared.
Steve Miller retweeted
And yet Harvard has still not admitted it was discriminating against Asian American applicants and somehow a district judge believed Harvard’s lies.
Steve Miller retweeted
1/ This suggests that @Harvard, prior to the #SCOTUS decision in SFFA, had a heavy thumb on the scale against Asian American applicants.👇
Asian-Americans in Harvard’s Incoming Class More Than Double, to 43.2 Percent
Newly released data on the Harvard College class of 2030 say the class is 43.2 percent Asian-American, a record high and more than double the level when Students for Fair Admissions first sued Harvard alleging racial discrimination in admissions.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that Harvard was unlawfully using race as a factor in admissions. Since then, the numbers of Hispanic and black students in the incoming Harvard classes have dipped, while the numbers of Asian-Americans have soared.
Steve Miller retweeted
What's amazing is how successful mainstream parties in advanced economies are in repackaging these intergenerational transfers from the young to the old as something much more wholesome. They've been so effective that they always get the young to show up to protest in favor of the status quo. And the status quo is clearly very bad for the young.
In Italy is even worse. There is very little welfare state, the vast majority are transfers from the young to the old. This is the reason why at the #festinteconomia I proposed an estate tax on the boomers giornalelavoce.it/news/attua…
Steve Miller retweeted
not good that people have started using the term "optimal tax rate" to refer to the revenue-maximizing rate, the rate at which the marginal dollar taken from taxpayers was almost pure deadweight loss…
Steve Miller retweeted
The second season of ‘Sold a Story,’ a podcast about education, opens in 1966 in an Illinois classroom. The teacher is a former Chicago marketing executive named Siegfried Engelmann. Before him sit seven Black children. He calls out arithmetic questions and they answer together, as is the norm in direct instruction, the teaching method Engelmann pioneered. The lesson moves on to algebra. The children keep pace. Then the creator and host of the podcast, Emily Hanford, cuts in. The children, she notes, are in preschool.
Sixty years later, we have UC Berkeley math teaching professor Zvezdelina Stankova complaining, in a San Francisco ‘Standard’ op-ed that went viral this summer, that students at the University of California’s flagship campus were struggling with “fractions and basic algebra you would expect students to learn in middle school.” What happened?
A year after Engelmann showed off his method in a recorded half-hour lesson, President Lyndon B. Johnson instructed education officials in his administration to evaluate the best way to teach poor children. They landed on Engelmann’s direct instruction — but it was never implemented nationwide. The reason was Engelmann’s “militaristic” approach to education, as the education writer Alfie Kohn explained in his criticism of direct instruction, which he said is today favored by “right-wing activists” who “wanted to make sure that learning itself is conceived as a fundamentally passive process.” Engelmann’s supporters’ politics were off, which meant his ideas were bad. And since Kohn gave this assessment in 2022, it seems that little has changed.
Read more about how we’ve forgotten the art of teaching kids math, from the second season of ‘Sold a Story’: nymag.visitlink.me/1BaDzx
Steve Miller retweeted
Up to a third of students in UC Berkeley nuclear engineering classes arrive unprepared in math, per the department’s own faculty.
They asked UC to bring back the SAT/ACT for 2027. UC says it will bring it back Fall 2028 at the earliest.
Weigh in: garryslist.org/community/thr…
Steve Miller retweeted
Professor Zucman is not an American lawyer so his mistake on this post is thinking the retroactive one-day snapshot date will survive constitutional challenge. It won't.
Retroactive tax changes have survived legal scrutiny in some limited circumstances in the past, but courts frown much more heavily on retroactive enforcement of a “wholly new tax.” The California wealth tax would be “wholly new” not just to the state, but to the country, making this a fairly cut-and-dry case of unconstitutional retroactivity.
The ballot initiative itself even has a provision to rewrite the effective date if/when a judge strikes it down.
Because most people in the know realize this, it absolutely makes sense for the billionaires to move out, just based on this one thing regardless of one's predictions of future California legislation.
Crucially, moving to another state doesn’t allow one to avoid the tax, since the tax would be owed by billionaires who lived in California at the beginning of 2026.
Not 2027 — but beginning of 2026.
There is no incentive to move to another state. One cannot avoid the tax by moving. This is one of the main reasons why it was structured as a one-time tax.
Steve Miller retweeted
“only” 42 percent of students progressed TWICE as fast as projected by national averages in both math and reading. wow alpha school sounds like such a failure
My deep dive on the "A.I.-driven" Alpha School, revealing their internal learning and enrollment data for the first time, just as the network expands into public education.
There is a big gap between the marketing and reality.
nytimes.com/2026/10/23/us/al…
Steve Miller retweeted
While Zucman ponders why on earth billionnaires would react to a one-time 5% wealth tax and consider leaving California, back in France, his mentor is advocating for a combined package of 800bn euros, including a 50% tax on all gains exceeding 100 millions over the past 10 years.
800 milliards d’euros d’ISF : la surenchère fiscale de Thomas Piketty pour sortir de la crise lopinion.fr/economie/800-mil…
Steve Miller retweeted
He is so close to getting how the mere threat of bad policy can cause permanent damage
Hence their result:
Because billionaires leave forever, the state of California loses an infinite stream of income tax revenue.
But because the dreaded annual wealth tax never materializes, the state gains nothing in revenue (beyond the one-time tax).
This is what delivers their net loss of nearly $40 billion.
Steve Miller retweeted
Today in "obviously economically correct and obviously it is an overconfident Yale JD with no economics training who completely misunderstands trivial econ." You can find these every single day....
The point of George Borjas paper is that we should provide H-1Bs to employers who are underpaying specifically. If you are overpaying, his model suggests you won't get visas, because the underpaying is WHY you are willing to pay a fee.
This is the basis of the admin's proposed H-1B fee. A paper that aims to maximize underpayment.