How Raising The Basket Can Lower The Bar
This week, we at History, Rinse, & Repeat celebrated the Easter weekend. In honor of the holiday, this week’s piece is a little lighter than our (or at least my) normal fare.
Last month, Dartmouth College made the headlines when it announced that it would once again require that applicants for admission provide either ACT or ACT scores. Dartmouth’s actions were followed by a number of other elite universities, including Brown, University of Texas, and Yale, the last of which qualified its requirement by allowing students to substitute Advanced Placement exams or international baccalaureate test scores. Earlier, MIT had reversed its test optional policy to require the submission of test scores. Although originally justified as a response to COVID, many experts believe that universities that continue a test optional policy do so in reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard College. Because the disparity in how test scores were treated among various racial groups was strong evidence of racial bias in admissions decisions, eliminating scores obscures how heavily a school weighs race in its admission decisions. Whether for this reason or not, most universities, including the California state university system, continue to dispense with the requirement.
There is a large gap in the performance on such tests among ethnic groups in the United States. For example, a study by the liberal Brookings Institution found that, with respect to the math SAT, 35 percent of Asian students achieved a score of 700 or above, 9 percent of white students achieved those scores (despite claims that the test is racist or culturally biased), 2 percent of Latino or Hispanic students, and only 1 percent of black students. By this measure, Asian students outperformed white students by a ratio of approximately 4 to 1, and Asians outperformed blacks by a ratio of 35 to 1. Although the gap between black and white scores narrowed in the eighties, between 1989 and 2005, the trend reversed itself and the gap widened. Indeed, in 2005, American Indians scored over 100 points higher on the SATs than blacks.
The Altering of Standards To Achieve Equity
The actions of schools that have eliminated the SAT is ironic, as the SAT and other standardized tests were initially intended to allow universities to recognize talented students from underrepresented groups. However, as the gap between whites and blacks widened, the test, although intended to boost the admission of underrepresented students, was deemed to have a “disparate impact” on them.
The reimposition of testing requirements by a handful of schools does not signal a general pushback against the lowering of academic standards. It is just a ripple against the continued trend to eliminate such standards in the name of achieving educational “equity.” Better to lower the standards for underrepresented students than to engage in the harder task of helping them prepare for higher ones.
Recently, for example, the Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to an admissions policy instituted by Thomas Jefferson High School Of Science and Technology, once considered by some to be the top-ranked high school in the country. The school scrapped its rigorous entrance examination, principally because Asians were overrepresented in the student body. The school’s revised admission standard took into account the following factors: students’ grades, an essay, middle school class rank, and GPA. It also took into account race-neutral factors like socioeconomic status, whether students were English language learners, and whether they attended a public middle school that tended to be underrepresented at Thomas Jefferson. The school has already slipped in some rankings.
More recently, the school system of Seattle, Washington went one step further. It simply shut down its gifted and talented schools, the Highly Capable Cohort Schools, arguing that they were “oversaturated with white and Asian students. The schools will be replaced by a more “inclusive, equitable and culturally sensitive” program. New York’s gifted high schools, including Stuyvesant High School and Brooklyn Tech, have so far resisted efforts to eliminate their entrance examinations. But that does not mean the schools are not affected by the lowering of academic standards. In an article last June, the Amsterdam News, New York City’s oldest Black newspaper, noting that blacks comprised 3.74 percent of those who had received admissions offers from Brooklyn Tech, observed that in the 1980s and 1990s, blacks comprised anywhere from 30 to 45 percent of the student body. Why the drop-off? According to the Amsterdam News, it was in large part due to the fact that New York city had eliminated middle school gifted and talented programs in black neighborhoods, leaving black students unprepared for the rigorous exams required for entrance to the prestigious high school.
Lowering academic standards in the name of “equity” is hardly a new phenomenon. Over 50 years ago, City College of New York, then the most prestigious college in New York City’s university system, bowed to political pressure and adopted a system of so-called “open admission.” Prior to 1969, admission to CCNY was, like the City’s high schools, based upon test results, ensuring that the school received the top students in the city high school system. Standards were rigorous, and the school’s reputation and achievements were commensurate with its standards. Known as the “Harvard of the Proletariat,” the school boasts 21 Nobel prize laureates, which puts it in the top two dozen of American universities. However, the college was overwhelmingly white. Indeed, the Amsterdam News charged at the time that CCNY was “almost as lily white during the day as the University of Mississippi.”
However, after the admissions process was changed, the average grade for incoming students was merely 80. Prior to 1969, 70 percent of English classes were literature classes; after 1969, 70 percent were remedial classes, a change necessarily effected as approximately two-thirds of new students required remedial reading. Indeed, CCNY instituted the Search for Education Elevation and Knowledge, or “Seek” Program, one of the qualifications of which was that participants in the program did not meet the academic standard of the university. Needless to say, the graduation rate for SEEK students was approximately 13 percent. CCNY was ultimately forced to pull back from its open admissions experiment, but it no longer holds the exalted position it once did.
The lowering of standards is not limited to schools and universities. According to an article by Heather MacDonald, published in the City Journal, black medical students fared worse on the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam, taken by students across the country. The simple solution implemented by the National Board of Medical Examiners and the Federation of State Medical Boards was to make the examination pass- fail. The Medical College Achievement Test, or MCAT, had already been altered so that one quarter of the questions focused not on medicine, but upon social issues and psychology.
Similarly, in February 2020, only 5 percent of black law school graduates passed the California bar exam on their first try, compared to 52 percent of whites and 42 percent of Asians. To remedy this purported inequity, California merely lowered the grade needed to pass.
MacDonald concludes her article by the assertion that “[l]owering standards helps no one since high expectations are the key to achievement.” She fears that if this country continues on this path, it can only lead to ruin, as we will be unable to compete with other countries whose students have undergone more rigorous intellectual training.
An “Alternative” Altering of Standards To Achieve Equity
The examples set forth above all involve the altering of standards in order to place blacks on a parity with whites or, increasingly Asians. However, we at History, Rinse, & Repeat, like to turn historical arguments on their head. Toward that end, we examined whether history provided an example where blacks dominated a profession, and the rules were changed to bring whites?
The most obvious field dominated by blacks is sports. Within that field, arguably the sport most dominated by blacks is basketball, for which my passion almost exceeds that for opera. Currently, approximately 70 percent of professional basketball players in the NBA are black. Historically, that number has been higher. Little more than a decade ago, the percentage of professional basketball players in the NBA was close to 80 percent.
To be sure, the rules of basketball have been tweaked in a manner that had an arguably disparate impact upon black athletes to the advantage of whites, although most of those rule changes were made for legitimate reasons.
For example, the lane extending from the basket in basketball, known as the “key,” was actually in the shape of a keyhole for decades (I suspect I am a member of a dwindling breed old enough to have actually played in a gym with an original keyhole-shaped “key.”) The significance of the lane is that no offensive player may stand in it for more than three seconds. This rule prevents tall players from camping out under the basket. When the lane was only six feet wide, a player could still stand close enough to the basket. The lane was widened as a result of the dominance of one player, George Mikan, considered by most to be the prototype of the modern big man. Mikan could score with relative (and boring) ease even while outside the lane. Accordingly, the NBA widened the lane to twelve feet. Mikan was also responsible for the introduction of the “goaltending” rule, pursuant to which a player cannot block a shot when it is on its downward arc. Before the introduction of the rule, Mikan and other tall players could stand under the basket, and prevent any shot from going through the rim.
While these rules might disproportionately impact blacks today, there was little racial animus in their adoption at the time. Both college basketball and the NBA were predominately white. The NBA did not integrate until 1950, accepting a handful of black players. George Mikan himself was white.
However, subsequent changes were prompted by black players. In the mid-fifties, the dominance of Wilt Chamberlain is credited with forcing the NBA to widen the lane further, and to institute a rule against offensive goaltending, where a player interferes with a ball while it is on the rim, or within a cone extending above the rim. Later, in the mid-sixties, the NCAA briefly instituted a rule that banned dunking, in an attempt to temper the effectiveness of Lew Alcindor.
Perhaps the most significant rule change in basketball was the introduction of the three-point line, which has been adjusted over the years. It was actually intended to help tall, skilled black players who dominated the sport by forcing defenders to defend all their way out to the line and beyond, thereby preventing them from sagging toward the basket to swarm big men. It has had the opposite effect. As three-point shooting has improved and the value of the three-point shot increased, many offenses have dispensed with placing a player close to the basket, spreading the floor and forcing the big man to come out from the basket. Now, a big man who cannot defend on the perimeter is of limited value, if not a liability.
Apart from the three-point line, however, these changes to the game have been around the edges. However, there is one change, going to the heart of the game, that has been a topic of discussion for almost a century – the 12-foot basket.
The current height of the basket is believed by most to be more a matter of serendipity than calculation. When James Naismith nailed the first peach basket in a Springfield gym, the height was 10 feet, and it has never changed. However, as one proponent of the change remarked, the average height for men when basketball was invented was 5-foot-six; the average height of an NBA player is now 6-foot-7.
A number of well-known coaches have favored raising the rim. One of the legends of basketball, Phog Allen of Kansas University, was one of the first. In 1932, he was quoted as saying: “In the early 1930s, I foresaw that the influx into the game of more and more big men would ultimately make a travesty of basketball.” Other famous coaches who favored the switch include Ray Meyer of DePaul, and Henry Iba of Oklahoma State. Even NBA Hall of Famer Earl Monroe approved.
Proponents of raising the basket cite two consequences that would make the game more enjoyable. First, it would lessen the influence of big men. In exhibition games using a higher basket, including one organized by Sports Illustrated in 1967, big men were forced to play further from the rim, lessening their effectiveness. For one, missed shots rebounded further away from the rim, allowing smaller players to snare more loose balls. Also, the height of the basket changed the arc of the shot. Big men, used to shooting sideways or even down, were forced to shoot almost straight up. As one participant in the 1967 exhibition said: “The closer you are to the basket, the harder it is to shoot a jump shot, because then you have to go almost straight up with the ball.”
The influence of big men was reduced on the defensive end as well. Because the arc of a shot at a 12-foot basket is much higher, there are few blocked shots, and fouling becomes less frequent.
According to proponents of the change, the 12-foot basket would also require players to rely less on their athleticism, and more on their skill and mastery of the game’s fundamentals. There would be less one-on-one play, and more team passing. After another exhibition in 2007, Tom Newell, the son of legendary coach, Pete Newell, described the effect of the change on the game: “The spacing was fantastic actually. Players passed to the post, cut to the basket and, when they went one-on-one on read/react plays, their jump hooks and turnarounds were the best percentage shots.”
According to Newell, around the time of the 2007 exhibition, there was momentum in basketball circles to change the rules. According to a former NCAA administrator, “It had a great deal of favorability. Then, just before we were going to take a vote, someone asked, ‘Well, what about the women?” Disparate impact reared its ugly head again.
The 12-Foot Basket’s Impact
It is not unreasonable to believe that, if the NBA were to raise the rim to 12 feet, that it would create opportunities for more white players. The NBA waiver wire is filled with extremely skilled white college superstars who were simply not athletic enough to make it in the NBA.
However, for most athletes, black or white, the thought of changing the rules to accommodate a less athletic player would likely be anathema. Competitive sports is about becoming the best that one can be, to meet the highest standard, not a lower one. Per MacDonald, lowering standards would diminish the sport as well as its athletes. It is for this reason that it is unlikely that the 10-foot rim will be changed.
It is said that the virtue of sports is that they teach us values in life. It is unfortunate that the values of sport are not more widely applied.