<p>Thanks Snapple - I just edited my post above to include another link to a newspaper article on the subject. More can be found on google news. It should be interesting to see how this plays out.</p>
<p>SAT I, II and ACT are the best in the imperfect world of academia. With thousands of local school boards setting policies, it would be rather difficult to evaluate students for different parts of the country. Most of the 700 schools listed are low tier or trade schools (ITT !!!)</p>
<p>The data on Fairtest is highly flawed. They ignore data that the poorest Asians score higher on the SAT than the riches Blacks. There is also no way the SAT is Racial Bias given the fact that Asian represent the highest score. I find it funny that people think an exam that test mathematical skills is racial bias. Either you understand it or you don't, it has nothing to do with race.</p>
<p>Regardless of whether or not the presentation of the data is flawed, the college board has no right to copyright facts, as the NYT article says. Anyway, i despise college board, so whatever.</p>
<p>College Board did Fairtest a favor ... this will bring more attention to a rather toothless organization. Fairtest should bury its axe and devote more of its energy to help design its own test. Then, schools and students will be able to support one or the other. But does it really matter? Standardized tests only illustrate the symptoms of the relative sickness of our education system and do not cause the problems. </p>
<p>Another proof that empty barrels do indeed make more noise!</p>
<p>PS As far as the copyright issues, I would gladly bet one dollar that TCB will win this hands-down -and despite the illuminating opinion by the lawyer quoted in the NYT. The "facts" are published by The College Board at their sole discretion, except for contents in the State of New York. Even if the results are considered public domain, the organization and presentation of the data are protected by copyright laws.</p>
<p>Fairtest has never seen a test it liked nor has it ever made an effort to devise one. The College Board, from personal experience, tries very hard to eliminate all traces of racial and gender bias from its tests. But it cannot address all problems. I remember comments from a teacher of gifted students that a student had scored lower on the SAT than his teachers thought he should. He had been stumped by a SAT analogy that involved an escalator; he had grown up in a rural area and had never seen one so could not figure out what the corresponding term was. Test makers could tie themselves in knots trying to anticipate every possible eventuality.</p>
<p>The breakdown by race doesn't interest me at all.... but I have never seen the breakdown by income. Wow! Every $10,000 increment in income produced a higher average SAT score, for both male and female. amazing (to me) that the correlation is so consistent and pronounced over the entire range of income.</p>
<p>the table is here..... (ethnicity at the top, income at the bottom) </p>
<p>Did any of you stop to think that these test scores are more indicative upon how good or bad the schools these test takers attend AS WELL AS the quality of the test takers themselves? </p>
<p>And PLEASE! do not tell me it's a function of insufficient school budgets. My burg spends approx. $11K per H.S. student and we have excellent scores and college acceptance rates. While, in the same state, NJ, just 25 miles away in Newark, the state (not the city mind you) spends almost $15K per H.S. student, and allot more when you factor in the no-shows. A phenomenal amount! Yet their results are less than dismal. </p>
<p>The problem is NOT the level of school funding. To deny this, might make you feel better and win points in feel-good debates, but it also prolongs a generational-spanning tragedy. </p>
<p>The real problem is the dearth of decent jobs for the parents and the resulting lack of optimism for the future. </p>
<p>Marite...you reminded me of one of my S's early attempts at an algebraic problem. Something about a farmer with a bunch of chickens and pigs, between them they had so many feet. I forget how it went exactly, but you had to figure out how many chickens and pigs there were. S just couldn't do it. I started asking him some questions to help him along. "How many feet does a pig have," I asked. "Four," he replied. "How many feet does a chicken have?" Came the response: "Four."</p>
<p>What did a 5-year old born and raised in Manhattan know about farm animals? So I rephrased the question, converting it to subway car doors on the IND vs. those on the IRT. He got the answer in a flash! (For those who've never ventured underground in NYC, the smaller cars on the IRT lines have 3 sets of doors on each side, while the large cars on other lines have 4.)</p>
<p>I read an excerpt from a book once about reading comprehension tests and how the creators of them try SO hard to eliminate references that would confuse kids from different locations or social classes because of lack of exposure - maybe some one who has read it remembers the book title. I don't. But the author's argument was that it's kind of ridiculous to remove references to the ocean or to the mountains or to married or divorced parents or loads of other things... shouldn't we expect students to learn about things outside their own experience? I kind of agree with that author, but I can also understand nycdad's and marite's frustrations.</p>
<p>Marite - how did the teachers know that he had gotten that one question wrong causing a presumably noticable poor score for the student? one question generally doesn't make a huge difference.</p>
<p>I only read this from a teacher of the gifted as an example of the way in which standardized tests sometimes cannot accurately gauge a student's real level of giftedness. I don't know any more than that. I have to say that I've met many college students who, like NYCdad's then-five year old son, had not understanding of rural matters. It does not mean they're stupid, just that they have not been exposed to rural life. Shades of Paris Hilton's and The Simple Life (though I don't think she would know how many doors there are on NYC subway trains, either).
I agree, with you, though, that it is impossible to remove all references to situations that might be offensive or unfamiliar to anyone. It is neither feasible nor desirable. I still cringe when thinking about the amended literary passages used for the Regents exam, like the famous passage from Arnold's Dover Beach where the test-makers decided to change "Love" to "Friend." Ugh.</p>