I’m sorry, but literally ALL the evidence supports exactly what NavalTradition said.
I’m not going to look at whichever study was quoted, but most of the studies done have been independent and they show a modest increase of about 30 points, on average. That is for each subtest independently, so a lucky second-timer could see (on average) a 100 point or so increase on the total.
It’s comforting to think that white/Asian test scores are mostly the result of prep. There are even “two sides” in a “debate” - some call it “hard work”, their “opponents” call it “gaming”. But both are in agreement that prep is at the core of it. That’s comforting to think, because then the black-white test gap could be closed by a Princeton Review workbook here, a 10-week course there.
It doesn’t matter that this never actually happens. As long as we tell ourselves that it could happen, we can rest easy.
But if prep doesn’t do that much good, if it’s only good for about 100 SAT points, if it only adds 5 ACT points for a kid who scores in the teens, that’s much harder to stomach. It either means that the way to fix it is much more expensive and has to come much earlier, or it means there is no fix (I don’t believe this).
It’s also comforting to think that low scores for a given subgroup are “just” test scores and don’t on reflect real-world academic performance at all. I think that’s naive.
EarlVan A personal anecdote. My kid decided to join the Math Team in high school for fun. The team would forget to notify them of meets and when they were notified they were placed on the C or D squad. After a few weeks of this they just quit. My kid is not Asian. They were more advanced in math in high school than the other students
It seems like a small amount of effort on any team member’s part could make that experience so much better.
Yet, if you look at posters in the test prep forum of this site, it’s common for them to report far larger gains than 100 points. Earlier I linked to an extreme example of a forum member increasing combined score by 790 points. Perhaps the more accurate statement is the “average” test prep involves relatively few hours of prep and is largely ineffective. Short 1-day type test prep courses are also largely ineffective, including expensive ones that promise notable gains. However, students who spend weeks/months studying, spend time learning the concepts behind the mistakes they made on practice tests, and similar methods of effective prep can expect much larger gains than average.
“I’ve watched how teachers, schools, other parents and relatives react to my son’s successes in school and elsewhere and have absolutely no doubts whatsoever that his skin color has influenced the paths he was encouraged to take.”
Interesting that this statement confused only me, also a mother to a young black man.
As mother to an incredibly bright kid, I saw teachers, schools, other parents and relatives react to my son’s successes in school and elsewhere with nothing shy of, “Of course, that’s who you are. That’s awesome - can’t wait until you’re a professor, or invent something to change the world.”
It was his skin color, and the ordinary, everyday, brown afro-ness of it all that made people see him as an exemplar of the community, and not oddity, alien or outlier. Even his doctors responded to him with a sense of affinity, engagement and appreciation for the little bright mind he was.
When faced with the hard options of stepping away from his post-AP Calculus track due to a conflict with other courses, where the options were Discrete, Multivariable or Stats, he chose Stats rather than give up Mandarin. He’d walked away from basketball years prior, and, yes, was asked if he played quite often, but it was always asked as though he must be the near student-athlete triple threat, so to speak, and not in a delimiting fashion.
Or so it felt to us most of the time.
A handful of anecdotes on a internet forum w a skewed sample set of uber ambitious students does not comprise an average.
If you re-read my post, I said essentially the same thing. The point was the average test prep involves relatively few hours of prep and is largely ineffective; but that does not mean that one cannot increase score through effective prep including things like taking several practice exams and learning concepts involved in mistakes, or spending weeks/months studying instead of hours. This difference between “average” prep and effective prep likely explains why so many not-average forum members are getting far beyond “average” results from prep.
I encourage you to broaden your critical thinkings skills and check the details of the 'studies.". The only real studies can be done by the CB, but if you read the details, you’ll see that even they admit some students have rather large score increases. And also look up CB’s definition of “prep”. And also note that CB has a vested interest in ‘proving’ no value in test prep. (Any other finding would essentially kill off their program.)
Adding to @Data10 's post:
My sophomore PSAT score was in the high 150s; my junior PSAT was a 177, so I didn’t make the NMF cutoff in Texas.
Fast-forward six months of on-and-off prep, and I managed a 33 on the ACT.
I disagree that “prep” does not boost scores. Then again, we might have different definitions on prep.
Thanks for the invitation, but I’ve evaluated the nature of the SAT long before this thread on CC.
The tests are different in nature. Not uncommon for students do well on one but not so well on the other.
It’s hard to give an average figure for how much test “prep” or “coaching” increases scores because that entirely depends on your definition of “prep” or “coaching,” and which groups we’re studying. So organizations can manipulate findings to find literally whatever they want to by selecting the right group of students and asking about the right kind of prep. Are we talking about students who are already scoring in the 700s in each section, or students in the 500s who have more room to improve? Are we talking about students prepping on their own every Saturday for two hours over two months or students in a structured intense SAT class taught by a national provider - or, even better, those with private at-home tutoring? Are we talking about students who are struggling to learn English as a second language or students who grew up with two PhD-educated parents? Are we talking about sudens who have to work a fast-food job to help feed their siblings or kids who drive a BMW to their boarding school?
FairTest (who has a vested interest in showing that coaching raises SAT scores a lot) cites an average score gain of 60-75 points on the M section from a 2001 study. College Board (who has a vested interest in showing that coaching hardly matters) says average overall gains are only 15-20 points on verbal or 20-30 points on math. A 1999 study showed only modest increases…but the survey was sponsored by the College Board.
It really depends on how they conduct the study, and few of these non-scholarly sources are actually operationalizing “test prep” and reporting what they mean by that. (FairTest does describe the study’s; it included 30-35 hours of test preparation taught by someone else, with at least one practice test built in.)
There are many theories about this. One of the most prominent is academic disengagement as a protective mechanism. Historically and culturally, African Americans were barred entry from most bastions of higher learning either by law/policy or by reality (financial reasons, undepreparation, etc.) It’s only relatively recently that black students have better opportunities to access good educations.
One theory is that a protective mechanism that all humans engage in is that when something is prohibited to you, you act like you don’t want it to avoid emotional pain. Kind of like sour grapes. So the disparaging of education (allegedly) is a manifestation of that. Another theory is that it’s a simple reflection of what we see. When your entire culture’s higher-educated population is white, then attaining an education and being serious about school does quite literally mean “acting white” - in other words, making changes to yourself to fit in with the mainstream culture, so as not to be threatening or othered.
I’ve reflected on this a lot in my journey through college, grad school, and my current job. One minor example is that my voice sounds completely different among friends than at work/school. It’s an unconscious effort to fit in and sound more “normal” or “professional” (which usually keys into “white”, and specifically “Middle America white”), and one that has been honed over several years of practice and learning through consequences. In fact, I once gave an interview about this. The interviewer asked me to give her an example of the dialect I speak with my friends and family, and I was completely unable to come up with an authentic example in the moment because the switching is so automatic and unconscious for me AND because over time you become so averse to (and fearful of, and vigilant towards) “slipping up” and using the wrong dialect in a professional situation to a white person.
That’s just one example. Another is that when I was a grad student instructor, I had lots of young black female undergrads very anxiously ask me if their naturally textured hair was something to worry about, about my experiences interviewing with natural hair, and whether they should straighten it so they could get jobs. It’s like such a ridiculous thing - this is the way my hair grows out of my head, I shouldn’t have to alter it to get a job - but there’s a perception among some employers that naturally Afro-textured hair (or braids, or locs) are “unprofessional” or “militant”.
To succeed in mostly white environs (which generally get whiter as you go higher) like higher education and top-ranked jobs, there are adjustments to your cultural mannerisms you must make. You have to adopt a value system that’s not really part of your frame of reference growing up, and you have to learn how to move fluidly in that. To a certain extent, that’s true for everyone - true for the rural Midwestern white kid who moves to New York to work Wall Street, too. It’s just…life. But the differences are more profound for minority group members (not just racial). And they are stressful! There’s research on that, too - how stressful and how much mental energy it takes to maintain the image that you are an acceptable in-group member worthy of the job/education/whatever.
And some kids understandably resent that. Or it’s too difficult or stressful for them to do the code switching, so they rebel and push back. Unfortunately, that “pushing back” is often against something that will help the excel socially and economically.
However, I do want to add that there’s a lot of research disputing the ‘acting white’ hypothesis. I’m not saying that some students don’t experience it, but there’s a lot of evidence that this is not as widespread or ubiquitous as people think it is. My middle and high school were 98% black and I was never once accused of “acting white” despite being one of the top students in my class. On the contrary, my achievements were celebrated by peers. Being smart and going to college were very much positive things. A lot of studies of high-achieving black middle and high schoolers actually show that they have pretty high self-esteem and achievement goals, and don’t feel like their blackness is at odds with their intelligence and aptitude. Other studies suggest that black students, on average, are no more alienated from school or achievement than white students and don’t incur any more penalties from peers for high academic achievement than white students do.
Wow. That’s a sensational post, @juillet . Honest, thoughtful, deeply nuanced.
Alternatively, intelligence – or IQ – or whatever you want to call it also matters. The BMW-driver with an average IQ of say, 100, could engage the best tutors available for months and will never be able to score an high 700. The driver’s brain just does not process fast enough. OTOH, the fast-food kid, with a IQ of 130+, could easily clear 700 after self-study, which would help him/her to understand the ‘tricks’ of the questions. (tricks is a euphemism for reasoning)
So, yeah, the 500 threshold kid won’t ever increase much, but the diamond-in-the-rough can really jump from 550-650+ on the M. (Increasing CR is much harder since fast-food kids generally don’t read as much at home.)
"A lot of studies of high-achieving black middle and high schoolers actually show that they have pretty high self-esteem and achievement goals, and don’t feel like their blackness is at odds with their intelligence and aptitude. "
Simply put: so true.
"A lot of studies of high-achieving black middle and high schoolers actually show that they have pretty high self-esteem and achievement goals, and don’t feel like their blackness is at odds with their intelligence and aptitude. "
Not only that, but at least in her circles, D’s friends have been amazingly proud and supportive of her. I can’t recall a single black friend telling her she was “acting white”. Otoh, when she was in a primarily white gifted program, THAT was where her self-esteem took a hit-with white kids telling her she didn’t belong and only got there because she was black (and what 4th-5th grader comes up with that on their own??). Then there were the teachers who assumed that she was not as able as she is because of her skin color. I’ve long suspected that the “acting white” trope is made out to be more than it is because it fits some adults’ neat boxes they assign to kids of color.
A new study shows some interesting results.
The below link also includes a link to the study. Interesting, the number of US Bachelor Degree Recipients has increased by 31% (from 2003 to 2013), and for African American’s it increased by 41%. Yet this increase isn’t keeping pace in the physical sciences and engineering.
https://www.aip.org/sites/default/files/statistics/minorities/africanamer-pse-13.1.pdf is the actual report.
The snapshot table:
Major All African American
Earth Science 5500, +63% 107, +147%
Atmospheric 760, +34% 21, + 75%
Chemistry 14814, +49% 1072, + 40%
Physics 6725, +58% 153, + 1%
Astronomy 413, +33% 5, NA
Oceanography 247, +75% 7, NA
I was going to say that perhaps the trend discussed above is due to AA choosing majors that lead to specific jobs – such as business, perhaps. But seeing that “atmospheric” major has seen a 75% increase among AA shoots down that theory.