The SAT is one of the few ways a kid without resources can distinguish himself. If a kid goes to a normal school in the middle of nowhere, that provides no extra curricular activities beyond sports, and does not have the money to take online classes, or pursue expensive camps or private lessons, or travel to competitions, what does he have left but standardized tests?
The worst place to be, in terms of opportunity is in a rural area. Poor kids in NYC have free resources in their back yard that other kids may never get to experience.
As for SAT and SES correlation, like most statistical analyses, breaks down once you get past three standard deviations from the mean.
Note, however that the SD of 110 is pretty huge, giving you an idea of the spread within the normal distribution. Furthermore, you have to consider that ceilings on each section are different. The cr section has a higher ceiling than math and thus, does a better job of discriminating at the top. 800 maths are much more prevalent than 800 reading. The subject tests are even worse. They should really do something about that. When over ten percent of math 2 takers get an 800, it doesn’t really say much about the top.
I believe that the first statement is true for the majority of students, but that TPG’s anecdotal evidence supports the notion that it is not necessarily universal. The example of various groups of immigrants is telling and amply supports TPG point of students overcoming a late start in English. I will, however, introduce a few distinctions as I also think that the path is harder for students who continue to use their first language(s) at home and within their family or friend structure. The vocabulary only goes “that” far and the difficulty with the reading sections is apparent for students who could rote memorize the 5000 words in the silly list but struggle with the comprehension.
A few of my own data points come from my direct extended family. The cousins whose parents continue to favor their mother tongue did find it much harder to excel on the SAT than the ones whose parents completely assimilated and decided that English would be the weapon of choice at their home. Similarly, the ones who spent more time with kids from similar environments (meaning other foreign families) did a lot more poorly than the ones who had a broader set of contacts (meaning English speaking by preference.)
However, English is NOT the sole contributor to the SAT and similar tests. You have to look at the environment and the parental viewpoints. Another family example comes from cousins who are the youngest in the family and have the benefit of having highly educated parents. The kids possess a vocabulary that is a full six grades ahead of what I will assume is the average student. However, since their parents profess to “hate” math and be clueless about it, the kids hardly exhibit the same brilliance for math concepts and already “hate” numbers. How this will translate to the SAT in 2020 remains to be seen! Without a “conversion” by the parents, the chances of scoring really high will drop.
All in all, I believe that the SAT is a product of one’s environment in general, but that individuals with the adequate focus and support can easily overcome a shakier foundation or a lacking educational environment.
Assuming you mean 1 SD instead of 3, the research I have seen suggests the correlation becomes stronger at +1SD. For example, the Hoxby high achieving low income study found the +~1.3SDs (top 10%) test score students were twice as likely to come from top quartile income families as bottom quartile income families.
“Table 2 shows that among high achievers, those who are from higher-
income families do have slightly higher college assessment scores, but
the difference is small. The average low-income high achiever scores at
the 94.1th percentile. The average high-income high achiever scores at the
95.7th percentile.” page 15
Remember that she is only looking at the 90th percentile and above.
The table you are referring to is showing the average SAT score among students who score in the top 10%. It is not showing how many score in the top 10%. Consider a hypothetical example where all but 1 high scoring students are high SES, and 1 kid is low SES. If that 1 low SES kid got a 2400, then the average score of high achieving low SES would be 99.9th percentile, far above the average score of high achieving high SES kids even though nearly all of the high scoring students were high SES. The more relevant metric is what portion of high achieving students come from high and low SES families, and this metric shows a quite notable correlation at +~1 SDs.
Your earlier post said 1 SD. 90th percentile and above is ~1.28 SDs in a normal distribution, so a good example of this range.
If one takes the SAT bonus calculated by Espenshade (after converting to a 2400 point SAT scale) for each ethnic group and adds that to the 2013 SAT score, one can see that the elite universities level the playing field for ethnic groups. In other words even though the elite schools may use the SAT scores to guide individual admission decisions they are fully aware of the ethnic SAT variations and take these variations into account.
“they are fully aware of the ethnic SAT variations and take these variations into account.”
That’s my suspicion as well, though I don’t have insider info. I think they’re largely used within demographic categories, which is IMHO the right way to use them. I’d like to see schools move even further in that direction, especially when it comes to parental education and SES.
Huh? Good thing she has tenure (since she has no critical thinking skills), unless the latter category does not count as ‘race’ or she makes the assumption (?) that all high scoring Asians are upper class.
Re Espenshade: Information about what highly selective colleges did in the 1980s, 1993, and 1997 is not very valuable in describing what they are doing now, or what they were doing any time in the past decade. It was really a different universe, in terms of the number of applicants, their qualifications, the degree of selectivity. For one obvious point, there are far more affluent and/or non-native African-American applicants who score very well on standardized tests. I doubt there is any chance that you could show a 100+ point-per-test advantage for URMs today. Low SES URMs, maybe, for the reasons Hanna says.
Many people who went to Harvard, Yale, or Stanford in the 1980s and 1990s would be marginal candidates now. Admission rates at Yale hovered around 20% during that period, and it had little or no growth in the number of applications received, which bounced around between 10,000 and 12, 000 per year. It was not until 1990s classes that URM enrollments reached 10%, and foreign enrollment didn’t crack 5% until the end of that period.
bluebayou: You are way over-reading Guinier. She makes no such assumption. But do you want to bet that, at the gross level represented by these figures, Asian and Asian-American test scores are not at least somewhat correlated with family income?
At the risk of repeating what has been pointed out repeatedly, the biggest issue is that the SAT is only one part of the puzzle. Something that should have been made abundantly clear from the narrowness of that reaching 'Blum Lawsuit" against Harvard.
The SAT is obviously taken in its appropriate context but so are the multiple elements of the applications. The studies such as the now untimely one by Espenshade have no other option to use blunt force and obfuscate the inherent lack of control for the “other” elements. For instance, the SAT might be given more value and receive a boost but the HS curriculum a lesser value for many lower SES students. More leniency might be given for the lack of Intel participation if one lives far away from the happy train line to the resources (and massive help) at Stony Brook, or the lack of tons of EC for the student who need to work to support the family’s subsistence.
All in all, the focus on the SAT to support notions of discrimination or reverse discrimination is a fool’s errand. It is what it is but does not explain anything on its own. Something that its friends and foes seemingly accept when … it suits that day’s agenda.
I know it’s churlish to point this out, but those figures don’t at all show that the test is “normed” to white, upper-class performance. Maybe it is normed that way, but simply showing that URMs underperform isn’t proof of that.
I can only read what she wrote, jhs, and the statistics that she presents clearly refute her point about race.
There are a LOT of really poor Southeast Asians. How many of those take the SAT/ACT, I have no idea. But then it is the so-called academic that is making the claim, not me. It is her responsibility to support her case with real numbers, or get called out for it. If she wants to claim that the Asian test scorers are correlated with income – which would certainly strengthen her argument – then it her responsibility to find/report the data. But she does not.
It is hard to tell who is over-reading Guinier! Some here seem determined to judge what she presented in that book excerpt mostly by basing it on her qualifications and contributions to our society. Others are looking at what she used to make a point or push her agenda (not saying this in a pejorative way, in this context) and are forced to conclude that she selectively sought anecdotes, people to quote, and research without making much of an effort to read the conclusions. She might not make statements about the reports, but she surely believe that the “data” supports her point.
The problem is that the data that is culled from very generic sources hardly fits the points she raises about … schools such as Harvard. She took the data and ran with it! Sadly enough, she probably could have presented better arguments --the ones you seem to appreciate-- had she stayed away from the flimsy evidence she used or the questionable “experts” she quoted.
Now, going back to some details. I already wrote about the inconsistencies of the income versus scores at the highest ends of the range. Again, just think how one reconciles the SAT scores of Asians and their great presence at a school such as Berkeley as … Pell Grantees! My friend Bluebayou does know that I believe that some of this can be chalked to creative reporting income by using a musical chair principle for family owned businesses, but it does not mean that we can safely assume that a great number of high scorers in California are both Asians and really poor. Again, the number in the average might be shifted downwards by the inclusion of agrarian Asians, but the predominantly Korean, ABC, and Indians are not necessarily among the richest applicants.