Aug. 27

The SAT’s Growing Gaps

The average score on the SAT remained steady for the class of 2008 — with the critical reading (502), mathematics (515) and writing (494) scores all unchanged from last year.

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As is typically the case, the College Board said that the results were encouraging. “Student interest and participation in the SAT has grown to historic levels, and our outreach into minority, low-income and other underserved student groups is yielding tremendous results,” said Gaston Caperton, president of the board.

What College Board officials didn’t note, however, was that this year’s overall flat scores are the result of averaging out very different results for different ethnic and racial groups. Asian and white students saw their scores increase this year, by 5 and 4 points, respectively, across the three parts of the SAT. Score averages for minority groups other than Asians were down by 6 to 8 points across the three exams.

When the ACT — the main competition for the SAT, and an alternative that appears to be capturing a larger share of the testing market — reported its scores this month, the results also showed Asian scores increasing at rates greater than those for other groups. But there was much less of a gap between the changes in average scores of other minority students and white students. The gaps among racial groups for both tests are crucial. One reason many colleges have ended requirements that all applicants submit test scores is their discomfort relying on a system that produces such different results based on race and ethnicity and on which scores continue to correlate with wealth.

On all three parts of the SAT, the scores of every income bracket are higher than all of the brackets below. And this year, while College Board officials noted an increase in the proportion of test takers receiving fee waivers, the percentage of SAT takers from the highest income bracket rose while the percentage in the lowest bracket fell.

SAT Scores by Race and Ethnicity, 2008

Group	Critical Reading	1-Year Change, Reading	Math	1-Year Change, Math	Writing	1-Year Change, Writing	Total 1-Year Change
American Indian	485	-2	491	-3	470	-3	-8
Asian American	513	-1	581	+3	516	+3	+5
Black	430	-3	426	-3	424	-1	-7
Mexican American	454	-1	463	-3	447	-3	-7
Puerto Rican	456	-3	453	-1	445	-2	-6
Other Hispanic	455	-4	461	-2	448	-2	-8
White	528	+1	537	+3	518	no change	+4

SAT scores continue a longstanding pattern of following family financial income. Students with family incomes of more than $200,000 had an average math score of 570, while those in the $80,000-$100,000 cohort had an average of 525 and those with family income up to $20,000 had an average of 456.

The College Board waives SAT fees for low-income students, and board officials have noted steady increases in the number of such waivers. But the issue of wealth and SAT success has received increased attention this year because the College Board announced plans to change its policy on students who take the SAT multiple times.

Until now, students had the right to do so, but all scores were reported to colleges, so a student who made an impressive score only after taking the SAT many times and using a test-prep service would be visible for having done so. Under the new policy, the College Board will allow students to submit only one set of scores. Critics have said that this is an advantage to wealthier students in two ways. First, they are the ones who can afford coaching services to improve scores over multiple administrations of the test. Second, the fee waiver is only permitted twice, so poor students effectively have a limit while wealthier students can take the SAT again and again.

In recent years, the College Board’s annual reports have featured data showing an increasing share of the SAT test-taking population in the $100,000+ level of family income. (By contrast, the most recent federal data on household income reports a median for the United States of just over $50,000.) In past years, the $100,000+ category was the highest category, and it grew from 21 to 26 percent from 2005 through 2007. This year, the College Board broke up the category into five, while merging some of the lower income categories.

But comparing last year’s income levels to this year’s reveals that the $100,000+ cohorts combined went to 30 percent from 26 percent last year. Meanwhile, the percentage of test takers reporting family incomes of up to $20,000 fell to 10 percent from 12 percent.

College Board officials said at a briefing that the number of repeat test takers this year was “stable,” but did not provide details at the briefing or in response to multiple inquiries. The policy shift announced this year on multiple administrations of the test is similar to that of the ACT, which has been gaining in recent years in its share of the test-taking market — even as both tests have boasted about generally steady increases in the number of people taking each test.

An analysis prepared by the National Center for Fair and Open Testing — a critic of both tests — found that the total number of students who took the ACT this year was 94 percent of the figure for the SAT. (Some take both and would be counted twice.) In 1986, the SAT had a much healthier lead, with ACT testing totals matching only 73 percent of the SAT total.

Robert Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, attributed the relative decline in the SAT’s market share to an increase in the number of colleges making standardized testing optional and to the growing popularity of the ACT. He noted that the latter test makes the writing exam optional, while it is required on the SAT as part of a revamping of the test. Shaeffer called the revised SAT “a flop,” and pointed in part to the continued correlation between wealth and success. “Because average SAT scores dramatically rise as family income increases, its use in the admissions process gives another leg up to children from wealthy households,” he said.

Laurence Bunin, senior vice president of operations and general manager of the SAT, said at the College Board’s press conference that he wasn’t concerned about the growing use of the ACT. “We don’t view this as a horse race,” he said.

— Scott Jaschik

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Comments

Academic Ability and Affluence

Is it possible that the variations in standardized SAT scores accurately reflect a correlation between academic performance/ability and affluence. Is it possible that this has far less to do with test bias across ethnic/cultural lines; and more to do with the measure of the relative effectiveness of our elementary/secondary school system across socio-economic lines?

Curious, at 9:30 am EDT on August 27, 2008

SATs

And, what is the point? Wealthier families have more resources to invest in education, purchase better educations for their children who score higher on the average. The test works. Period.

Richard, at 9:35 am EDT on August 27, 2008

SAT/ACT

If there were a concern about the meaning of these statistics, there would be some analysis of scores of persons from two parent homes vs. one or no parent homes. The Financial factor is an analog of this same factor.When children are born to children and reared by children, little performance can be expected. Why not face the issue?

R. Alan James, President at Institute Of Theological And Interdisciplinary Studies, at 10:00 am EDT on August 27, 2008

Does not work

How can the test(s) work if all it does is measure socio-economic status, what neighborhood you’re from, whether your family can afford an SAT coaching tutor or not? Those without these kinds of advantages are being unfairly punished.

The purpose of the test is to identify academic potential, but fails to correct for this kind of “gaming the system". This is one reason why colleges are moving away from relying on the test for admissions purposes.

And these problems extend to LSAT and Law School rankings, and further, to the hiring of law graduates — all based on a supposedly meritocratic test.

To make the effects of its misuse worse, realize that institutional rankings and prestige are based on the numbers of applicants that are rejected, and how may students with lower test scores are excluded. Thus, perverse institutional incentives work to exclude more and more students in an effort to make that school more attractive to potential admits.

This makes a mockery of the meritocratic, egalitarian ideology upon which American higher ed is based.

Glen McGhee, FHEAP, at 11:15 am EDT on August 27, 2008

Poverty? Bad Schools? BOTH.

The reasons for the “achievement gap” in standardized testing are many. Poorer people have fewer resources to educated their children at whatever age. And our public schools in poorer areas, generally speaking, have fewer resources to hire great teachers and provide opportunities available to their richer peers across town.

Even when a child is willing and talented, they don’t score as well on these tests, because somewhere along the way, they just didn’t learn the material that appears on the tests.

Case in point: I work with the #1 and #2 ranked students at an urban high school in Denver on a pro bono basis. Impeccable transcripts. Lovely students. Every teacher’s favorite students. Scores on the ACT? Number 1 has a 24 and number 2 has a 23. (Students in the top 10% of their class often score no more than a 14!).

These are SMART kids with great support at home. But through a combination of privations, these two great kids just didn’t get the same educational opportunities (both in an out of the classroom) that most of my paid clients are able to provide for their kids.

Perhaps I can at least help these two very bright kids break out of the cycle.

Don’t look to the SAT or the ACT to be the great levelers in American education. They are perhaps more like Hogwart’s sorting hats. They can point to the inequities, but it is up to us to do something about them.

Mark M, Great College Advice, at 11:55 am EDT on August 27, 2008

The SAT Effectively Measures Skill

The SAT test (like most good tests) measures real math and verbal skill levels. The fact that affluent students tend to have higher scores on the test is not an indicator of some socio-economic bias of the instrument. It is simply a reflection of the reality we all have varying levels of skill, and that affluent students (with more resources) consequently tend to develop their skills more effectively than those of modest means. You can either read, write and do the math, or you can’t. Although we are fortunate enough to live in a society where equality under the law is valued, we are not equal in terms of our abilities. Life isn’t fair.

Get Real!, at 1:15 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

The Best Test that Money Can Buy

The test does not work. Each part of it, including the essay, is extremely coachable. (I have demonstrated how easily coachable the essay is.) Rich people pay thousands of dollars to have their kids coached. Poor people don’t. That is the major cause in the difference in scores. The College Board makes a lot of money. The Test Prep companies make a lot of money, and no real learning takes place.

Les Perelman, Director of Writing Across the Curriculum at MIT, at 1:15 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

Wealth

Academic ability and future economic success are strongly correlated. Whatever cultural and biological factors economically successful parents possess, some of these get passed on to their children. Such children generally do well academically whatever funding their schools have. My children and myself attended schools where a broad spectrum of parental occupations were represented...from doctors to factory workers...and a disproportionate number of the best students had professional parents. There are differences among children with regard to academic abilities and there will never be enough funding to change that.

Bob, at 1:15 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

The SAT does one thing really well: year after year it documents the inequities in our education system.

CB in Chicago, at 1:46 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

SAT statistics

When my son took the test, I refused to provide our family income, and I told him it was no one’s business. At school, his counselor forced him to fill it in with a guess. How accurate can the statistics be if kids are guessing their family income?

Karen, at 1:46 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

Praise for the messenger

Scott Jaschik is the only reporter who is providing people with a story beyond the College Board’s whitewash. Thanks Scott.

Patrick Mattimore, Teacher, at 1:46 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

Shooting the messenger

“One reason many colleges have ended requirements that all applicants submit test scores is their discomfort relying on a system that produces such different results based on race and ethnicity.” The SAT doesn’t produce results “based on race and ethnicity.” Rather, it measures skills(reasoning, vocabulary, math) that are not evenly distributed among ethnic/racial groups. Don’t blame the yardstick for height differences.

Prof. Challenger, at 2:15 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

The College Board is a private corporation. It is not accredited by any agency nor is it answerable to any oversight body. Its advisory board is advisory. They have done a great job selling the American educational system a slickly packaged product that makes things simpler for colleges. The connection to education is not clear. No, it does not measure reading and writing (I can’t answer for math). It measures how well a student can guess what circle to fill in. And Les is right; circle-filling-in skills are highly coachable. I’ve done it too.Even worse is the situation with AP, where the College Board is permitted to sell college credits at the rate of 3/$84. Why do colleges fall for this?

Judith, at 2:25 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

It isn’t just wealth

The level of parental income is an easy measure to “prove” that the wealthy “game the system.” But the reality is that the level of parental education can be even more important than wealth in determining scores. Students who come from a family with at least one parent with a graduate degree have an average Critical Reading score of 553 and a Math score of 565. The only fair solution is for schools and communities to take over the role of educated parent for students who don’t come from educated households. With so many young public school children from poorly educated households, time is running out to minimize the gap in scores before these students enter high school.

Meredith S, at 2:55 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

life is not fair

JFK: “Life is not fair.” It is not possible to level the playing field. Statistics tell us that taller men earn higher salaries than equally intelligent men of short stature. That cannot possibly be “fair,” but it is so.

Yet—who is it who decided what is fair, anyway? FAIR is a kid’s word. I will watch this space, with eagerness, to find out who or what authority was the one who decided what is fair. I cannot discern it myself. After all, my mother only went to the 8th grade. My dad did graduate high school. Grandma went to 2nd grade, but it was all in German (rural Iowa), and Grandpa never went at all. I feel as though I cannot consult my own elders—although consulting the elders would ordinarily be a traditional practice, would it not?

So my Q to whoever reads this is simply this: Who is it who decides what is “fair"? I came from pretty far down the ladder, but managed to come off with a doctorate from a Big Ten university (must have been a miracle—or else my folks just said study, or die). Did I say folks? Yes, there were two of them. They did not go to college, but they believed it it, and insisted on it for their children.

bystander, at 3:30 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

Inputs & Outputs

Well, it has been said that the SAT assesses student skills. Granting that debatable point, it does not assess college potential. It merely puts a number to the teaching and learning process undergone and undertaken to date. To the extent that property tax funds public K-12 schooling in this country, it remains possible that some low-scoring students on the SAT have higher academic potential than their wealthier counterparts with mediocre scores. Some lower and middle class students with mediocre scores could very well have more college potential than their wealthy counterparts with high scores. This is so across race, though we certainly know who lives in our urban ghettos, where property tax revenues are among the lowest.

As we know, local property taxes do not constitute funding for even public 4-year institutions in the same parochial way they do in K-12. Given the proper funding, mission, and personnel, colleges may stand an excellent chance at processing lower SAT student inputs into well-educated, economically productive college graduate outputs.

The test does not “work” in that it does not inform the question admissions officers must ask: “Do we have reason to believe this student will be successful here?”

Wossamotta U., at 4:20 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

Where It All Starts

When five-year-olds start kindergarten, there is already a substantial reading and vocabulary gap among racial and socio-economic groups. Some children already know thousands of words and are familiar with the mechanics of books. Others only know a few hundred words and don’t understand how books work. The more advanced children have adults in their lives who speak to them using varied vocabulary and complex thoughts. The children who come the least prepared may never have been read to and may never have been engaged in meaningful conversation. They may hear words used incorrectly, and having had fewer life experiences, are held back by more limited vocabularies. (Just think of the gaps in vocabulary a child would have who had never seen a beach, either in real life or in a book.) Affluent and professional families do more than pay for SAT coaches. They expose their children to a grand array of words and ideas.

I once tutored a destitute fourteen-year-old who did not know the word blanket, because there weren’t any in his home. He did poorly in school, in part because he had no bed and slept on the sofa, and his mother, after coming in from work at the end of the second shift, would watch tv, keeping him awake. What can a teacher do with such a student? What if she has a dozen such students in her class of thirty-five? How much attention can the higher achieving students hope to get in such a class? What will their SAT scores ultimately be? What will their chances in college be?

The verbal sections of the SAT are highly coachable only for those students who can read and write passably already and who have reasonable vocabularies. The problem is not just the test and not just the public schools. It is so much bigger than that. Who has suggestions for preventing early and insurmountable gaps?

Dr. K, at 4:20 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

Colleges and SAT scores

Another reason some colleges are moving away from the SAT is that it is not, in fact, that good a predictor of college success. High school performance is simply a better predictor.

Faculty Person, at 4:50 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

Where’s the regression?

It’s a real problem that the ETS is posting summary statistics without making any effort to provide a regression analysis. As several commenters have noted, parents’ income and education are highly correlated with SAT performance, and HS GPA is often a better measure of college performance. So focusing on descriptive statistics for race is at best a part of the story, and at worst misleading.

Why can’t the ETS provide results for a regression with SAT as the dependent variable and race, parent income, parent education and HS GPA as the independent variables (predictors)? This wouldn’t be statistically flawless due to multicollinearity issues and omitted variables, but they could provide appropriate caveats, and it would be a lot less misleading than the descriptive statistics.

Jay Weiser, Associate Professor of Law & Real Estate at Baruch College, at 9:15 pm EDT on August 27, 2008

The story the newspapers missed

The story here is that IHE picked up the news that others missed. Look at The NYT or Washington Post and you get a story line that praises the fact that kids managed to maintain the same mean scores on the SAT despite the increase in test takers. College Board reps fall all over themselves with praise implying that the SAT results suggest everyone is doing better. The fact that SAT scores are correlated with family income is not news. That has been known for many years. What IHE reported is that the gap is widening between the haves and have nots. By only reporting the mean score and increase in test takers the other news sources neglected the real news, mislead the public, and printed the boiler plate likely handed to them by the College Board.

Patrick Mattimore, Teacher, at 8:15 am EDT on August 28, 2008

Missing the point

There are many comments on this page which completely miss the point about what this data is showing us. The test is not measuring “scholastic aptitude” as it claims to be, it is measuring how well the student has bee prepared/coached for this test. For anyone to make the comment

“It is simply a reflection of the reality we all have varying levels of skill, and that affluent students (with more resources) consequently tend to develop their skills more effectively than those of modest means. You can either read, write and do the math, or you can’t,” is ignorant at best.

What you are all missing is that the test is showing us that there is a measurable and very real limit to access of higher education and education in general for low income students in this country. These data should serve as an indicator to us 1)this “fair” test of “scholastic aptitude” fails to capture so much about a students capabilities, it is measuring access to resources rather than intellectual capability2)we need to be working on providing better access to education for low income students.

Disbelief, Undgergraduate Admissions Counselro at One of the Ivys, at 9:10 am EDT on August 28, 2008

A few false premises?

It is amazing that people who bill themselves as counselors and admissions directors (at an Ivy, no less) cannot see the forest for the trees. People are not randomly selected for low SES. Many if not most were born mentally disadvantaged. Huge amounts of evidence suggest this, and to ignore it may be politically correct, even career-saving in some environments, but it also stamps you as either dishonest, ignorant, or both. Nobody would deny that having stupid parents is a huge disadvantage, especially if you are stupid yourself. The notion that this can be offset with proper coaching, or (perhaps) sending the child to a good daycare, is fantasy. Read some of the literature.

Many of us were born from parents with an average vertical leap of 16 inches. To suggest that with proper coaching we might be leaping 42 inches “like Mike” is laughable. It is equally laughable that with proper coaching Michael Jordan might be a math professor.

Stubbornly Rational, at 5:00 pm EDT on September 22, 2008

SAT predictive value (or lack thereof)

We’ve been looking at the retention rates of our freshman cohorts for the last 10 years measured against a number of different factors. Every study we have done shows that SAT scores are simply not a predictor of college retention or success. High School GPA is a much better predictor (for us anyway) of a student’s likelihood of completing their degree. So, I would question those who say the test “works"...works for what?

CAW, at 4:20 pm EDT on October 2, 2008

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The SAT’s Growing Gaps

Related stories

Comments

Academic Ability and Affluence

SATs

SAT/ACT

Does not work

Poverty? Bad Schools? BOTH.

The SAT Effectively Measures Skill

The Best Test that Money Can Buy

Wealth

SAT statistics

Praise for the messenger

Shooting the messenger

It isn’t just wealth

life is not fair

Inputs & Outputs

Where It All Starts

Colleges and SAT scores

Where’s the regression?

The story the newspapers missed

Missing the point

A few false premises?

SAT predictive value (or lack thereof)

Jobs Related to The SAT's Growing Gaps

Registrar Corinthian Colleges

Associate Director of Admission Bentley University

Registrar Corinthian Colleges

Associate Vice Chancellor of Enrollment Management Appalachian State University

Admissions Representative Corinthian Colleges

Admission Counselor II — Houston Regional Office — 08-11-21-01-3614 University of Texas, Arlington

Admissions Representative Corinthian Colleges

Executive Director for Enrollment Management Cheyney University of Pennsylvania

Temp Serv Clerk — Temporary Mail/Application Processors Cornell University

University Registrar Michigan State University

Registrar
Corinthian Colleges

Associate Director of Admission
Bentley University

Registrar
Corinthian Colleges

Associate Vice Chancellor of Enrollment Management
Appalachian State University

Admissions Representative
Corinthian Colleges

Admission Counselor II — Houston Regional Office — 08-11-21-01-3614
University of Texas, Arlington

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Cornell University

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Michigan State University