The SAT matters

[Trausti]

First, the article points out that better socioeconomic conditions lead to better SAT results.

Paige Harding is considered part of the hereditarian left. That is, she accepts the overwhelming evidence that genetics plays a commanding role in life outcomes, but she doesn’t want to be associated with “bad” people. So she parrots the lefty position that society, or environment, is really to blame. But socioeconomic condition is greatly influenced by your parents, i.e., behavior, intelligence, and cognition are highly heritable. Smart people are usually successful and have smart children. Though, clearly not always. The deft business man who marries his hot secretary risks dull children. Assortative mating matters. Hence, why some rich people try to get their children into selective universities with donations, legacy, or swindle rather than use Junior’s test scores.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Standard tests are the great equalizer; no matter your sex, your race, your religion, or social class. Thankfully, it looks like we’re returning to that understanding.

That statement is flatly contradicted by the linked article.

What you're missing is that ability isn't equally distributed. While chance plays a role the ability to earn is reasonably heritable. Thus the kids of the well-to-do will on average outperform the kids of the poor.

 

[laughing dog]

My observations in no particular order of importance.

First, the SAT was discriminatory. However, the purveyors of the SAT have gone to great lengths to eliminate the discrimination that it used to contain. The degree to which they have been successful is a matter of opinion.

Second, as the article points out, the SAT is not a great equalizer since it cannot equalize for the inherent socioeconomic advantages in life. At best, standardized test are moderators but not equalizers.

Third, the notion that standard tests are "objective" is naive. The fact a test can give a numerical score to the outcome does not make it objective. Multichoice tests may be less subjective in the sense that the assessment is liable to misinterpretation, but that does not make it objective.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I also think that we need to start sooner than college to equalize opportunity (which is very different than equalizing outcomes). The article mentions that only about half the schools in the US offer Calculus. Other AP classes are probably not much different. A student showing academic promise should be able to enroll to a better school in their system to be able to take advantage of those classes. Special high schools like those in New York (that Bill DeBlowjob tried to kill for racial reasons) are also a good idea, as long as kids get to get in based on individual merit and not based on membership in an immutable group.

The problem is a limited ability to actually do this. Consider the high school I went to--we were overcrowded with IIRC 2,400 students in a facility designed for 2,000. Even then both AP Calculus and AP Physics didn't have enough students to make a class, we were in the same class as the regular classes, just with some extra requirements. I didn't take AP History or English so I don't know how they worked. Those are the only AP classes I can remember.

 

[Hermit]

First, the article points out that better socioeconomic conditions lead to better SAT results.

Paige Harding is considered part of the hereditarian left. That is, she accepts the overwhelming evidence that genetics plays a commanding role in life outcomes

The name is Paige Harden. Her field is behavioural genetics. "The field broadly investigates the extent to which genetic and environmental factors influence individual differences, using research designs that allow removal of the confounding of genes and environment." I have not seen any evidence that she accepts the overwhelming evidence that genetics plays a commanding role in life outcomes. From what I read, she sits between two chairs, simultaneously arguing against those who regard genes as irrelevant and against those who regard them as all that matters. This is reflected in an editorial she wrote for the New York Times about four years ago, in which she mentions that "new research has found that college graduation, with all its advantages, is partly the outcome of a genetic lottery" and "success in our educational system is partially a result of genetic luck". The words "partly" and partially" are important. Kathryn Paige Harden puts genetic and environmental factors influencing our behaviour, success and lack thereof on approximately equal footing: "genetic disparity in college completion is as big as the disparity between rich and poor students in America".

...she parrots the lefty position...

My preference is to form my opinions about articles by what is actually written rather than what stance it is allegedly written from. The one linked to in the OP looks clearly expressed, well structured and finely nuanced. It's the sort of result one expects from someone who graduated with a Bachelor of science degree summa cum laude and received the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology.

 

[Bronzeage]

Standard tests are the great equalizer; no matter your sex, your race, your religion, or social class. Thankfully, it looks like we’re returning to that understanding.

Standard tests are like crossword puzzles. If you work enough puzzles created by the same editor, it gets easier and easier. Nobody gets anymore intelligent or knowledgeable by doing crossword puzzles. People tend to get better with practice. It's no different with standard tests. When a person sits down with a test and the structure of the questions is familiar, less time is needed on each question. When the score is part of a competition, those who have access to coaching and practice tests will do better than someone who is seeing it for the first time and have an advantage. it's not a level playing field.

Even the article in the OP references that test prep gives little benefit. It’s a nice thought, but wrong.

I got a 32 composite on the ACT test and a 96% on the Military Aptitude Test, without any practice, so you may be right. I am definitely smarter than anyone else I know.

 

[Rhea]

I got a 32 composite on the ACT test and a 96% on the Military Aptitude Test, without any practice, so you may be right. I am definitely smarter than anyone else I know.

I like your thinking! This means that several posters here acknowledge that I’m significantly smarter and better at life than they are!


(Oh, wait, I don’t believe that this test could possibly ascertain that, because so much more goes into our life capabilities. But delightful to walk around knowing they think it does! Gonna polish up my tiara tonight.)

 

[Toni]

OMG I must be a fucking genius! My family was barely middle class and I graduated 2nd in my class and aced the PSATs and SATs. I had never heard of a prep class, much less taken one.

 

[Elixir]

OMG I must be a fucking genius! My family was barely middle class and I graduated 2nd in my class and aced the PSATs and SATs. I had never heard of a prep class, much less taken one.

Yes, you probably are a genius.
That and $5 gets you a latte.

 

[Bronzeage]

I got a 32 composite on the ACT test and a 96% on the Military Aptitude Test, without any practice, so you may be right. I am definitely smarter than anyone else I know.

I like your thinking! This means that several posters here acknowledge that I’m significantly smarter and better at life than they are!


(Oh, wait, I don’t believe that this test could possibly ascertain that, because so much more goes into our life capabilities. But delightful to walk around knowing they think it does! Gonna polish up my tiara tonight.)

Knowledge is where one finds it. I would never have known that preparing for a test does not help one get a better score, if not for this thread.

A long time ago in a faraway galaxy, I used to work on cars. General Motors came up with a program giving exams to dealership technicians and rewarding the highest scoring. It was a four hour exam of 200 multiple choice questions. The questions were drawn for GM service materials, and training materials. Service materials in those days was all on paper., but training materials were transitioning to VHS tapes.

GM had just come out with a new anti-lock brake system they named ABS6. It was a completely new engineering approach to anti-lock brakes and had nothing in common with previous systems. I hadn't even seen one on a car yet, but I had watched a video which explained it. This was the week before the exam. I was surprised to see a lot of ABS6 questions on the test. It was the entire brake section.

After the exam I walked out into the hall to see a guy in tears. Over the years, he and I had taken many advanced training classes together and knew there were few better than him, if any. He had not see the ABS6 training tape and had no idea what any of the questions were about. Over the past couple years, he an I had scored in the top 100 nationwide, but this time, he didn't make the cut.

 

[steve_bank]

One of the arguments I remember was that word problems were not situations minorities understood or somethimng that.

In China private tutors have been banned in order to ensure equal education.

The forms of the SAT test quetions and problems are known. You can drill a kid with similar problems.

In Japan parents preparing kids for exams is insane, it starts at a young age.

The Moynihan Report circa 1960 looked at poverty and drew wnat was then controversiall conclusions.

One was that black and white school kids performed equally when there were stable families and an income. The second was that welfare was destroying the black family.

There has to be metrics. The liberal solution is if minority can make the bar lower it.

 

[Derec]

In the 1950s.

That was 70 years ago or so. Not exactly relevant to what is going on today.

No.
But I can easily imagine - in fact, unfortunately, don’t have to imagine - people who want to think that has happened.

What reasons do you have for thinking standardized tests have not improved since the 1950s?

was subjected to so many so-called “objective” tests that their presentation elicited responses that became rote.

Over half a century ago.

Want me to repeat a ten-fifteen digit number backwards? Tell you what the next number is in a random looking sequence? Tell you what a thing would look like from the other side? Pick the correct grammatical form?
Great. Just don’t ask me who conquered what, or why, or solve for x, or conjugate this Latin verb, or tell you what comes after calcium in the periodic table.

What is your point here?

I’ve seen some more recent scholastic aptitude tests, and mostly only syntax has changed.

I doubt that very much. In fact, I do not believe it for a second. Or can you back it up with more than your recollections?

It is ridiculous that you imagine a lot of people thinking that.

I do not imagine that. Many people think colleges should get rid of standardized tests and also want colleges to keep so-called "affirmative action".

Your hyperbole aside, I recommend challenging yourself to come up with a few sample questions/problems that are neither formulaic (can’t be “taught to”) nor prone to cultural skew. Might not be as easy as you imagine.

Who said it was easy? But it is definitely doable. Test design is a field in itself, and proposed test questions are even tested as a non-scored part of live tests.

Also I think complaints of "cultural screw" are overblown by opponents of testing.

Personally I like open ended questions that reveal creativity, and don’t have right/wrong “answers”. But those can’t be easily scored by either machines or humans.

There is a difference between scoring and grading. Grading is what happens in class and is more suitable to such open-ended problems. I am by no means suggesting high school grades are meaningless, or that we should only look at SATs.
But SATs provide an important standard baseline of performance between various schools.

ETA: “Aptitude” needs better definition.
Teaching to the test is hard to avoid, or so teachers tell me.

At the same time, testing is necessary.

 

[Derec]

First, the article points out that better socioeconomic conditions lead to better SAT results.

Not really. They point out that better socioeconomic conditions lead to kids being, on average, better prepared for college, which is reflected in better SAT scores.

These students are the beneficiaries of lifelong inequalities in opportunities to learn.
[...]
No one should be surprised that, at age 18, students who have enjoyed a lifetime of material, social, and cultural advantages perform better on tests of academic skills that those advantages facilitate.

I trimmed the quote to reflect the most relevant portions.

Then it explains how MIT arrived at the apparently counterintuitive conclusion that using alternative methods disadvantages applicants from lower socioeconomic levels even more.

Right. For all the criticism of SATs they are less correlated with family socioeconomic status than many other metrics. And to the extent SATs are correlated with SES, it looks like it is mostly a reflection of these kids being truly better academically prepared. I.e. it's signal, not noise.

All of which means that Politesse was wrong to claim that the article "flatly contradicts" what Trausti wrote.

 

[Derec]

But socioeconomic condition is greatly influenced by your parents, i.e., behavior, intelligence, and cognition are highly heritable. Smart people are usually successful and have smart children.

Is it nature or nurture? It is both. Genetics matter. And so does how you raise your kids, which is correlated with how educated the parents are.
This even leads to some lefties to claim that reading to your kids gives them an unfair advantage.

Professor: If You Read To Your Kids, You’re ‘Unfairly Disadvantaging’ Others

 

[steve_bank]

I think the 50s is rekevant.

In the 70s when I was in Hartford Ct Prat And Whitney the aerospce company had to create renedial math course fr high school grads before going into apprenticeship programs. New high school grads did not the basic math skills the retiring workers had. Ariytmetic, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry.

Education started to cahange in the 60s becomming an experimnt in social engineering..

 

[Toni]

OMG I must be a fucking genius! My family was barely middle class and I graduated 2nd in my class and aced the PSATs and SATs. I had never heard of a prep class, much less taken one.

Yes, you probably are a genius.
That and $5 gets you a latte.

Unfortunately, I’m not fond of coffee.

 

[Hermit]

First, the article points out that better socioeconomic conditions lead to better SAT results.

Not really. They point out that better socioeconomic conditions lead to kids being, on average, better prepared for college, which is reflected in better SAT scores.

In other words, better socioeconomic conditions lead to better SAT results. It's what the article mentions several times, including one instance you quoted yourself

These students are the beneficiaries of lifelong inequalities in opportunities to learn.
[...]
No one should be surprised that, at age 18, students who have enjoyed a lifetime of material, social, and cultural advantages perform better on tests of academic skills that those advantages facilitate.

I trimmed the quote to reflect the most relevant portions.

Also,

students from richer families, on average, score higher on the SAT and other standardized tests than students from poorer ones.

Richer students don’t just get better SAT scores.

All of which means that Politesse was wrong to claim that the article "flatly contradicts" what Trausti wrote.

Let's have a look at what Trausti wrote:

Standard tests are the great equalizer; no matter your sex, your race, your religion, or social class. Thankfully, it looks like we’re returning to that understanding.

What? According to the article students with a higher socioeconomic background get better SAT results, which means they are advantaged in terms of admission to institutions of tertiary education. SATs manifestly do not equalise social class. Not even by your convoluted attempt to prove Trausti right and Politesse wrong.

But that was not even the point of the article. Its author, Kathryn Paige Harden, makes that quite clear from the outset when she mentions that MIT has reintroduced SATs. Near the end of the article she explains why:

Dropping any admissions requirement is necessarily a decision to weigh other factors more heavily. If other student characteristics, such as essays, recommendations, and coursework, are more strongly correlated with family income than test scores are, then dropping test scores actually tilts the playing field even more in favor of richer students. This was the situation that MIT found itself in after it suspended its SAT requirement in 2020. And other schools that dropped standardized tests during the pandemic will soon find themselves in the same straits.

In short, while SATs discriminate against students with a lower socioeconomic background, alternative methods of selection discriminate against them even more. Hence MIT's decision to reintroduce SATs.

 

[Elixir]

Who said it was easy? But it is definitely doable

Easy for you to say.
And I don’t care what you think I haven’t seen. If you were not devoid of genuine interest you would simply show how you think tests have “improved”. You won’t even invest in providing - or thinking up a single example problem or question to demonstrate this alleged Great Improvement. Sorry, but it comes across to me as hollow bluster.

 

[Elixir]

OMG I must be a fucking genius! My family was barely middle class and I graduated 2nd in my class and aced the PSATs and SATs. I had never heard of a prep class, much less taken one.

Yes, you probably are a genius.
That and $5 gets you a latte.

Unfortunately, I’m not fond of coffee.

 

[Elixir]

OMG I must be a fucking genius! My family was barely middle class and I graduated 2nd in my class and aced the PSATs and SATs. I had never heard of a prep class, much less taken one.

Yes, you probably are a genius.
That and $5 gets you a latte.

Unfortunately, I’m not fond of coffee.

I bet that’s not the first five bucks the being a genius has saved you!