<p><a href=“http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/17/CMGSFQ1TV01.DTL[/url]”>http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/17/CMGSFQ1TV01.DTL</a></p>
<p>“The SAT has been called racist, classist and sexist. Some educators say it doesn’t predict how anyone will do in college, let alone the real world. And, as one mother learned, it can also block kids with learning disabilities from ever achieving their goals.”</p>
<p>I agree if you have to take it though i can tell you from personal expierence that getting a personal tutor has helped my scores improve and that also taking the act really helped me. for example on the sat this year i got into about the 70-60 present tile not so good but when i took the act i recieved a 26-86% tile i have found that the act test more on knowledge based information. Also there are some colleges that will not make the LD or ADHD student take the exam because they know that this is a difficult task even with the extended time. So check out all of your options.</p>
<p>The fact that having a tutor improved your scores is absolute case in point that its classist – so many people can’t afford tutors or classes!!</p>
<p>There is no way I would have gotten a good score on that test if I hadn’t gone to barnes and noble and read books about how to study for the test. Poor people can’t always go to barnes and noble, and the college board claims that you can’t study for the test because it tests your innate knowledge. Lies.</p>
<p>Yeah, it’s total and complete BS. </p>
<p>I mean, most people who do score high also get good grades, and so they use that correlation to mean that getting good grades prepares you for the test…just stupid.</p>
<p>All I know is that my little brother’s ability to function in school is severely challenged by ADHD and I am very worried for him taking the SAT</p>
<p>Try to get accomodations. Read books. Take classes. That’s all I can say, unfortnately. :(</p>
<p>How in the world is the SAT racist or sexist? What proof is there of this?? Besides the numbers showing that minorities (except for Asians and Eastern Europeans, because obviously those aren’t minorities) score lower… which doesn’t mean that the test is racist? </p>
<p>Practically every SAT test has passages about women, native americans, blacks, or latinos. Those are the topics of choice for collegeboard test writers. If anything, the SAT must be biased towards minorities, who are reading subject matter closer to home than caucasians.</p>
<p>The SAT is classist only in the sense that everything in life is classist. Can we call public education classist because those who excel in school tend to be rich enough to afford tutors and tend to be from social classes where parents can provide guidance? Can we call orchestra auditions classist because those from lower classes cannot afford good private lessons or the money to drive there? There is no way to write any standardized test that is not classist. Any test can be prepared for to some extent, and those from higher classes will always have more access to preparation resources. That is not a flaw with the SAT, and it is not a flaw with the concept of standardized testing. The purpose of standardized testing is to evaluate the strength of all college applicants on the same scale, because a 4.0 GPA from one school is not the same as a 4.0 GPA as another.</p>
<p>BTW. I go to an inner city urban school. There are ample opportunities for SAT prep for those underprivileged minority students with little parent support or other resource. There are free prep classes held at night and during lunch. There are SAT and ACT prep books FREE to borrow from the resource center. Announcements about these free opportunities are made almost every day on the announcements. Many teachers I know would be more than willing to help mentor or tutor a student who needs SAT/ACT prep by staying after school with that student to go through material - at no cost to the student. I suspect many high schools have at least a smaller-scale version of these options for underprivileged and minority students.</p>
<p>There is almost no reason for an underprivileged student to find a way to prepare for the SAT. And no, the SAT is not racist or sexist. (To be honest, I’ve never even heard the allegation that the SAT is sexist, although I have heard the allegation that it’s racist, just as I’ve heard the allegation that nearly EVERYTHING seems to be racist these days… oh boy)</p>
<p>My daughter goes to a special high school for kids with learning difficulties (ADHD, auditory processing problems, etc.) and they recommend the ACT over the SAT because they have found that their students tend to do better on it. She is taking it today, in fact. She, and most of the kids at her school, qualify for extra time so they are taking half the test today and half next Saturday.</p>
<p>Sexist, huh? How does that work?</p>
<p>Sexist: Boys tend to score higher on the test than girls. Are boys inherently smarter than girls, or does the SAT cater to a kind of intelligence boys have (boy sand girls brains are different)? The latter is true. Not only have studies shown that it is not true that boys are smarter than girls, which has been thought to be true throughout most of history, now 53% of college students are in fact women. So basically, the SAT, which claims to be a measure of intelligence and a predictor of college success is a measure of a CERTAIN (and perhaps unimportant, or at least not the most important) kind of intelligence, and no predictor at all. </p>
<p>Racist: Same as above, but that white people score better than minorities. This simply cannot be reflective of the intelligence of the populace. Black people are just stupid? I don’t think so. </p>
<p>The presence of passages about minorities doesn’t make it not racist in the least. It’s the questions that determine whether or not it is racist, not the content. </p>
<p>Classist: Yes, society itself is classist. But does this blanket designation mean that the SAT too is not classist? Of course not. It has been shown that tutors and specialized preperation has a significant, disproportionate affect on the boosting of SAT scores (as opposed to say AP tests). Since such resources take both time and money that socioeconomically disadvantaged people may not have, it too is classist. I’m glad that your school had those resources. Many, many do not. My school didn’t even have heat (and it’s cold), and it wasn’t in a socioeconomically disadvantaged community. There is definitely ways for standardized tests not to be classist - or as classist. You design them such that it is not tricks and tutoring that leads to success. This can be done. If we went to the moon, we can make a decent SAT. </p>
<p>And yes, orchestra lessons like that are classist too. </p>
<p>Unfair to those with undiagnosed learning disabilities: Many LD people get accomodations. But what if you don’t know you have an LD, have a recently developed medical problem that causes the symptoms of LD, or don’t know what is available to you? I started taking several medications my junior year that severely effect my cognitive abilities, memory, concentration, focus, and the speed with which I can solve problems. But I didn’t apply for accomodations for the SAT because I had no idea they existed. No one told me – and how was I supposed to know to ask? It wasn’t until I got to college and was told by a good counselor that I could get accomodations that I got my double time, single room, and extensions, and oh what a difference it makes! I wonder just how much better I could have done on the SAT if I had those accomodations, as I continually ran out of time and struggled.</p>
<p>Also, girls tend to be better behaved and thus statistically get higher grades in both high school and college. If the SAT truly reflected how well students preform, than women would preform better, not worse. Part of the problem was that women aren’t as good at analogies, and analogies have been removed from the SAT recently. Last time I checked women score about equally now, or at least better than they used to. Still, the scores aren’t reflective of performance. </p>
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I grew up in the opposite kind of place you did: upper middle class, white, too many tennis courts. I was forced to take one of those SAT prep classes. I don’t think I learned anything except some stuff about pac man. (The teacher liked to talk about pac man.) The class was expensive too. The books can be useful though. Anyway, if rich kids are better prepared for tests, that is a flaw with the SAT because the SAT is treated as an intelligence test. You’re admitting that it’s really a test of who has the better resources. Is that really a good way to judge college applicants? Should people who score well on a test that judges you by your parents income really be taken seriously?</p>
<p><a href=“except%20for%20Asians%20and%20Eastern%20Europeans,%20because%20obviously%20those%20aren’t%20minorities”>quote</a>
[/quote]
Uhh… do you live in chinatown or something?</p>
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That’s because when women complain, they’re told they’re opinionated.</p>
<p>What do you mean by “everything?” I’d like to know.</p>
<p>^^^ it’s also more socially acceptable, “cool,” to do well in school as a girl than as a boy.</p>
<p>Well, we could all argue and talk about how wrong it is and everything, but at the end of the day, we all still have to take it!</p>
<p>we could also argue about how wrong segregation is but at the end of the day still have to drink out of different water fountains…</p>
<p>…or do something about it</p>
<p>People in California don’t have to take the SAT.</p>
<p>Poor people tend to do worse at school… it’s classist! Minorities tend to do worse at school… it’s racist, too!</p>
<p>For someone who spends as much time complaining about the SAT as you do, ClaySoul, you missed the very important potential confounding issue with your analysis: maybe poor people and minorities do worse on the SAT, because, on average, they do worse at the underlying skills it tests? And no, those skills aren’t everything to a college education, but they do play a role, and it is non-negligible.</p>
<p>It’s not like every group you guys mentioned are all on an entirely equal footing before the SAT and it just totally screws them up - that’s just not realistic or accurate. The SAT is like everything else in the world - if you have the money and environment, you will be more successful in general, and the SAT reflects that. I would be worried if it didn’t - even IQ testing, the most unpreparable test I can think of, shows strong correlation with socioeconomic status. That’s just the way life works.</p>
<p>1of42, people justify the existence of the SAT by saying we need a test that tests every equally, regardless of the school they went to. Obviously it’s easier to get an A if you’re from a public school in Kentucky than it is if you’re from some competitive Massachusetts private school. Since people can’t be judged solely by their grades, we all have to take the SAT. We are told that this is because the SAT is the same for everyone. As we all know, that is not actually true.</p>
<p>“The SAT is like everything else in the world - if you have the money and environment, you will be more successful in general, and the SAT reflects that.” </p>
<p>This is a self fulfilling prophecy. If you give people with money a better education, they will do better in life, and then people like you use that fact as evidence that the upper class should get into better colleges. Because that’s just the way life works, right? Not because of any kind of bias.</p>
<p>Some people claim that more prestigious colleges do not give you an advantage. People who have little chance of getting into colleges like that are often told this. I know I was told this because I was a special needs student, and I was discouraged from aiming any higher than the lamest community colleges. The problem is, it’s just not true. A disproportionate amount of the world’s richest and/or most influential people are people who went to Ivy League schools. People need to take the factors that get them admitted into those schools more seriously. They’re forced to do a test which was purposefully created to screen out black kids.</p>
<p>If you have a learning disability and do poorly on the SAT, your life is not over. You guys make it sound as if people don’t take into account circumstances and backgrounds of people. Some colleges don’t even require it and I’m not just talking about community colleges. The test is not the most accurate measurement of intelligence and college success, but in order for it to take into account every difference between students across the spectrums, there would be way too many tests. It’s as fair as possible for there being primarily just one type.</p>
<p>I did well on the SAT and I got into my first choice college. I brought up the learning disability because nobody EXPECTED me to do well on the SAT or to get into any non-community college. Teachers argued that a community college was just as good, and while some community colleges actually are good, the ones they tried to make me apply to where not good. I still resent being made to feel that I can’t do things, and then told that the things I’m not supposed to be able to do don’t matter anyway. It’s all lies.</p>
<p>Every college has some foreign kids and at least a dozen black kids, but is this really representative of everyone who has the potential to succeed that college? In a fair world it wouldn’t be surprising to go to Brown and learn that one of your classmates is from a small rural village in China.</p>
<p>It is possible to make the SAT less biased. They did that recently when they removed analogies. There is still some bias left though.</p>