5 ms·

What are these "clear socioeconomic preferences" of the SAT?

by watty 13y ago

spicyj 13y ago
Here's a striking image from NBC: https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/441295567168081920 https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/441295567168081920
- ars 13y ago
  That's hardly specific to the SAT, that's true in basically every single thing measured. Including health. Lower income people do worse. Or perhaps people who are "worse" have lower income.
  - sarah2079 13y ago
    Yes. And these are problems that need addressing. Especially when the people who are doing worse are not even the ones earning the low income, just those with the bad fortune of having low income parents.
    - wtallis 13y ago
      It's not the College Board's problem to solve. Their goal with the SAT is to offer colleges a predictor of college success. Why should they try to incorporate a form of affirmative action into their test? Why not leave that up to the admissions offices that will have a more complete picture of the applicant's background?
      - matchu 13y ago
        Making test prep materials more accessible doesn't really sound like affirmative action to me. It's not an attempt to counterbalance this particular socioeconomic bias, but rather to remove it.
        wtallis 13y ago
        The socioeconomic correlation isn't a bias - it reflects the reality that a poor childhood leaves you less prepared to do well in college. Erasing that effect without fully erasing the causes of the effect is a cover-up that defeats the purpose of the SAT. Making the test harder to hack by acquiring shallow knowledge (like memorizing "SAT words" without actually being well-read enough to have seen or used them before) is a good thing, because it will make the test a more accurate predictor of the applicant's general level of knowledge. But simply making those test-prep tools more affordable and easier to find will only have the effect of compressing the distribution of scores, making the SAT a less discriminating test in the technical sense and thus a less useful measurement.
        Steko 13y ago
        The fact that there's a natural correlation doesn't mean the SAT's correlation is identical to the natural one. And if it's worse than it should certainly try and change that.
        wtallis 13y ago
        Of course - I never said otherwise. But the changes they're making don't seem to be simply about making the test more accessible and less elitist; they seem to invite ceiling effects, and I don't see how that helps anyone. Rather than making test prep widely available, the College Board should strive to design a test for which the only effective prep is getting a solid well-rounded education, and they should pay no attention to the complaints that some of the questions are too hard for almost anyone to answer.
        matchu 13y ago
        I agree that, if the SAT were ideal, there'd be no way to prepare for it in particular. However, a nationally standardized test must have consistent scores to be useful, and currently the best way to do that is to keep the general format and content consistent. That means that a student can discover and prepare for the test's general format and content in advance, which is definitely advantageous. A truly ideal SAT would have a different format and test wildly different skills every time it's issued in order to defeat the idea of test-specific preparation, but still produce meaningful scores. I'm skeptical that such a test can produce sufficiently consistent scores, though I'm very willing to someday be proven wrong by some clever test developer. That'd be pretty neat. So, until we create an SAT for which test-specific preparation is meaningless, it's important that test prep resources are distributed evenly so that students with good educations won't have artificially lower scores due to unfamiliarity with the SAT's standard format and content. It's an unfortunate but necessary compromise :/
- watty 13y ago
  This image tells me that wealthy kids are better educated. Why is that striking?
  - MisterBastahrd 13y ago
    It isn't striking, but it does help perpetuate the cycle of the rich being rich and the poor being poor. This is one of the reasons why we have affirmative action, and why it continues to be necessary, otherwise we essentially create a walled garden for those who were lucky enough to be born to affluent families.
- baddox 13y ago
  What's the solution from SAT's perspective? Normalize scores with each student's family income? Give easier questions to poorer students?
  - vostrocity 13y ago
    I don't think College Board wants to normalize for background differences; that would be a lazy and hugely treacherous to do. Instead, they are tackling the background differences head on by doling out free test prep. I believe education as a whole is heading toward widespread accessibility of top-quality education for everyone. But for now, Khan Academy is taking a small step to democratize test prep, and it should be enough to make a noticeable difference.
- chubot 13y ago
  This is a horrible graphic. What are the numbers written? Is it a mean, median, etc.? What's time frame? And if there is a single number, why is it a bar? I'd like to see a box plot. Not to mention all the junk in the background. What do the dotted lines even mean? Tufte would have a heart attack.
trentmb 13y ago
Poor people perform poorly.

What are these "clear socioeconomic preferences" of the SAT?

by watty 13y ago

What are these "clear socioeconomic preferences" of the SAT?

Here's a striking image from NBC: https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/441295567168081920 https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/441295567168081920

ars 13y ago
That's hardly specific to the SAT, that's true in basically every single thing measured. Including health. Lower income people do worse. Or perhaps people who are "worse" have lower income.
- sarah2079 13y ago
  Yes. And these are problems that need addressing. Especially when the people who are doing worse are not even the ones earning the low income, just those with the bad fortune of having low income parents.
  - wtallis 13y ago
    It's not the College Board's problem to solve. Their goal with the SAT is to offer colleges a predictor of college success. Why should they try to incorporate a form of affirmative action into their test? Why not leave that up to the admissions offices that will have a more complete picture of the applicant's background?
    - matchu 13y ago
      Making test prep materials more accessible doesn't really sound like affirmative action to me. It's not an attempt to counterbalance this particular socioeconomic bias, but rather to remove it.
      - wtallis 13y ago
        The socioeconomic correlation isn't a bias - it reflects the reality that a poor childhood leaves you less prepared to do well in college. Erasing that effect without fully erasing the causes of the effect is a cover-up that defeats the purpose of the SAT. Making the test harder to hack by acquiring shallow knowledge (like memorizing "SAT words" without actually being well-read enough to have seen or used them before) is a good thing, because it will make the test a more accurate predictor of the applicant's general level of knowledge. But simply making those test-prep tools more affordable and easier to find will only have the effect of compressing the distribution of scores, making the SAT a less discriminating test in the technical sense and thus a less useful measurement.
        Steko 13y ago
        The fact that there's a natural correlation doesn't mean the SAT's correlation is identical to the natural one. And if it's worse than it should certainly try and change that.
        wtallis 13y ago
        Of course - I never said otherwise. But the changes they're making don't seem to be simply about making the test more accessible and less elitist; they seem to invite ceiling effects, and I don't see how that helps anyone. Rather than making test prep widely available, the College Board should strive to design a test for which the only effective prep is getting a solid well-rounded education, and they should pay no attention to the complaints that some of the questions are too hard for almost anyone to answer.
        matchu 13y ago
        I agree that, if the SAT were ideal, there'd be no way to prepare for it in particular. However, a nationally standardized test must have consistent scores to be useful, and currently the best way to do that is to keep the general format and content consistent. That means that a student can discover and prepare for the test's general format and content in advance, which is definitely advantageous. A truly ideal SAT would have a different format and test wildly different skills every time it's issued in order to defeat the idea of test-specific preparation, but still produce meaningful scores. I'm skeptical that such a test can produce sufficiently consistent scores, though I'm very willing to someday be proven wrong by some clever test developer. That'd be pretty neat. So, until we create an SAT for which test-specific preparation is meaningless, it's important that test prep resources are distributed evenly so that students with good educations won't have artificially lower scores due to unfamiliarity with the SAT's standard format and content. It's an unfortunate but necessary compromise :/
watty 13y ago
This image tells me that wealthy kids are better educated. Why is that striking?
- MisterBastahrd 13y ago
  It isn't striking, but it does help perpetuate the cycle of the rich being rich and the poor being poor. This is one of the reasons why we have affirmative action, and why it continues to be necessary, otherwise we essentially create a walled garden for those who were lucky enough to be born to affluent families.
baddox 13y ago
What's the solution from SAT's perspective? Normalize scores with each student's family income? Give easier questions to poorer students?
- vostrocity 13y ago
  I don't think College Board wants to normalize for background differences; that would be a lazy and hugely treacherous to do. Instead, they are tackling the background differences head on by doling out free test prep. I believe education as a whole is heading toward widespread accessibility of top-quality education for everyone. But for now, Khan Academy is taking a small step to democratize test prep, and it should be enough to make a noticeable difference.
chubot 13y ago
This is a horrible graphic. What are the numbers written? Is it a mean, median, etc.? What's time frame? And if there is a single number, why is it a bar? I'd like to see a box plot. Not to mention all the junk in the background. What do the dotted lines even mean? Tufte would have a heart attack.

trentmb 13y ago

Poor people perform poorly.