Impact of SAT optional admissions

3puppies
Fri, 19 Jan 2018 18:57:33 +0000

One of the issues that was raised was that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds faced a challenge when they simply cannot afford the testing fees - let alone fees for multiple attempts at taking the test. So the do-gooders extrapolated to say they didn’t need to look at test scores, to remove that hurdle. What they failed to recognize is that there are so many other hurdles these kids face, that affect how they do in high school. The standardized test scores are generally correlated with income, but there are of course exceptions.

When some states started offering and paying for the SAT for all HS kids, they narrow-mindedly expected underprivileged kids to miraculously start doing better than they had done in school. But it doesn’t work that way.

The net they are using had too many big holes in it, so they’re not catching many more fish.