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In reply to the discussion: University of California Will End Use of SAT and ACT in Admissions [View all]Ford_Prefect
(7,828 posts)Thus anyone scoring well on them must therefore be a well-read bigot, which I was taught is an oxymoron. The argument seems to ignore HOW the testing results have been interpreted and applied, and by whom.
If the tests were differently constructed would they disadvantage those from middle-class suburban backgrounds who happen to also have math ability?
I happen to have been a child who read almost everything I could get hold of and who was sensitive to how east coast american English sounded in the later 1960's. I have always been adept at math. My first exposure to geometry was not a success in that I could see what the answer was but cold not always recall how I knew it.
When I took the SAT my scores were not outstanding. I was better than average, but in that time low 1200-ish was an ordinary score among my friends. I had the curious experience of one friend scoring 800 on the math and just below it on the verbal section. I was not surprised in that he was clearly a bright and accomplished student. If there had been an SAT-prep system in that time and I were able to use it I have no doubt my scores would have been closer to his. I was not the serious student nor academically skilled to say the least. The only time I sat the test I was not aware how much depended on it. I also had an un-diagnosed learning disability. It appears I also had an un-diagnosed testing ability.
That the SAT and ACT tests have apparent cultural bias does not eliminate the need for a transportable method of evaluating what students have learned and can perform.
That the American Conservative movement has attacked and repeatedly de-funded public education should make clear that the processes of evaluating and validating that education were, and are measuring something they wanted to see less of. That does not explain the biases in education nor in our formal culture which have lead to a system where the well-off can buy their children's future and those not so well-heeled can only hope their children will have one.