<p>Class</a> Struggle - New evidence that SAT hurts blacks</p>
<p>NPR's Brian Lehrer show is having a rather interesting discussion of why many inner city kids are doing worse on the SAT than their suburban counterparts. They get the easy questions wrong, not those with "school language".</p>
<p>There is no hard questions on SAT/ACT. There is material that is forgotten from middle school. If one prepares, one will do just fine. I do not mean that you need to take a prep. class. Self-prep. is OK. That old material needs to be re-freshed and that is the main reason to prepare. That might explain why some kids get “easy” questions wrong.</p>
<p>No, you didn’t read the article (or perhaps this came out more in the radio interview). The thought was that language that was used only at school the kids understood. Language that could be misunderstood, because the words have alternative meanings on the street, tripped them up. The study analyzed what sort of questions kids were getting wrong and it really was quite counter-intuitive. I think prep classes help to remind kids that bad doesn’t mean good, for example.</p>
<p>The analysis described matches students by their command of academic English, which differs greatly from everyday spoken English. It stands to reason that students whose spoken dialect is more distinct from that of Standard American could have greater difficulty with those questions that rely on standard spoken English vocabulary than they do with questions that rely on academic English. </p>
<p>Wouldn’t it be fun to see a question by question analysis of SAT exam scores for native speakers of other varieties of English? I am going to have to get a copy of the original paper.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link!</p>