Does the SAT Have A Racial Bias?

For years, the SAT has come under attack for having a certain bent. From the Harvard Educational Review to the Princeton Review, the measurement tool has been called a "white preference test."

Last year, Harvard published a study arguing that SAT questions in the verbal section favored white students by using language with which they were more familiar compared to other non-white groups. The study said black students of equal academic aptitude scored lower on the section, Education Week reported.

But FairTest, an organization that focuses on fairness and accuracy in student testing and scoring, doesn't think it's just the questions on the SAT that are the problem. In a recent interview with CNN, Monty Neill, FairTest deputy director, says the issue is that schools rely too heavily on the SAT in admission decisions. He says that one test is not the best predictor of college success.

"In a technical sense, it's probably not a biased test. The problems become in how it gets used in admissions process," he said. "Most colleges will use the SAT as one piece of evidence, but a lot of them will use it to weed out a whole lot of kids who never then get a chance."

The problem is that the process hurts minority kids, who traditionally score lower on the test, he says.

"So what happens is kids of color -- black kids, Hispanic kids -- are going to get left out. They're going to be predicted to not do well."

However, Laurence Bunin, senior vice president of the SAT program at the College Board, tells CNN the SAT is, in fact, an indicator of college success:

"FairTest is mistaken on this point. The research is very clear and there are many, many many studies that say the SAT is absolutely predictive of how well students wil do in college as well as whether they'll stay in college."

The College Board has conducted studies that report that in some cases, SAT scores were even more predictive than high school grade point average.

Bunin says the questions are tested with students of different races and "walks of life" and says that score disparities can be attributed to the achievement gap nationwide.

"The test is a fair test that helps mirror what's going on in this country."

As an alternative to admittance based on SAT scores, FairTest says students have the option of 830 colleges that make the test optional for some or all applicants.

Colleges such as Drew University in New Jersey allow students to submit an essay graded by a teacher rather than submitting an SAT score.

Jonathan Grayer, CEO of Kaplan Educational Centers, tells PBS he thinks the SAT has limitations and biases, but that the test can't be done away with because it's the fairest system there is. Without it, he says, there'd be "a lot more outcry of favoritism."

"If there's something better out there, we should use it. If there's something affordable that we can create, we should all by all means do it. But at the end of the day, that's a very serious proposition, deciding if a child gets in or not, and the SAT helps."

WATCH:

What's your take on the SAT? Weigh in on the poll below.

Quick Poll

Multiple Choice -- The SAT Test is:

A) Fair

B) Biased

C) Irrelevant

D) A Necessary Evil

Share your vote on Facebook so your friends can take this poll

Comments

[brookmo]

10:01 AM on 06/07/2011

The SAT and it's sister exam the ACT are not biased. I am an African American who took both exams when applying for college in the 70's, did well on both. Got into the college of my choice, graduated with honors. Took the MCAT for medical school, did extremely well and attended the medical school of my choice. Passed all thee national board exams and am now a practicing physician/surgeon. Of course, I had an edge - a single parent who stressed education and provided to the best of her ability every opportunity to ensure that I received one. Books were like water in my home and reading was encouraged as was public television, learning about other cultures, etc. SO JUST STOP MAKING EXCUSES!

[Slater Torret]

05:41 AM on 05/28/2011

I knew a guy who worked for Cambridge, where they teach people to prepare for standardized tests. He thought the SAT was biased towards East Coast boarding school elite.

[dennisrs]

07:08 PM on 05/04/2011

How many students after taking the Sat and getting admitted to a school drop out within the first year because of the work load and were unable to keep up?
I am not looking for any racial stats, just how many drop out because of the work, Not money and other problems but just can't handle the work?

[TheWM]

08:48 AM on 05/10/2011

"Not money and other problems but just can't handle the work?"

There's no connection between "money and other problems" and someone's academic performance? Academic performance exists in some sort of bubble, hermetically sealed off from the rest of reality?

[Frog in a pot]

02:56 AM on 05/04/2011

Every kid I know was able to afford to take expensive SAT prep classes.
Hows that fair?

[GhostOfFDR]

08:54 PM on 05/03/2011

Foxxy: (to Clara and Captain Hero) This whole test is racially biased. Question number one: "What S.P.F. lotion would you use if you was gonna spend a day at the polo grounds, fellow Klan member?"

Clara: Oh, you don't need sunblock if you've got your Klan hood on. Everybody knows that, Foxxy. (shows Clara with tan rings around her eyes)

[dennisrs]

07:10 PM on 05/04/2011

ha ha good one wonder how long your comment will last?
my lame jokes get canned in about an hour.

[Conscientious Objector 2]

10:02 PM on 05/01/2011

all of these anti-SAT arguments start with the premise that the statistical distribution of scores must be the same for all races or the test isn't "fair." SAT critics won't allow for the possibility [more accurately, the reality] that the statistical distribution of scores for some races is going to be better than others because those races are better at what the test scores, be it IQ, college preparedness or whatever. that's not an objective analyis and the SAT critics are not objective, they are goal oriented.

btw, the attempt to correllate grades to SAT scores to show that the SAT "underscores" certain applicant groups is also junk analysis. the purpose of the AT dont forget was to provide the means of equating and normalizing grades from different schools since admissions experience was that an A at one school did not translate minto an A at another. so now these critics have come full circle and want to use the grades to normalize tha SAT.

there is only one goal here, and that goal is not accurate testing or fairness. the goal is to increase the admissions prospects of certain groups at the expense of others.

[dennisrs]

07:12 PM on 05/04/2011

Yet Asian do much better in school than most others so is school biased toward Asian and their study habits & learning abilities?

[WorkersUnited]

03:28 PM on 04/29/2011

The SAT is definitely biased... biased against using slang and math deficient students.

The problem is not the SAT. The problem is the education of poorer inner city minorities and poverty. These kids are not being properly prepared to take this test at the relatively tender age of 17.

We must improve the educational system to make it more equitable and efficient. That is really the only solution because the greater problem of wealth inequality cannot be solved any time soon.

[dennisrs]

07:14 PM on 05/04/2011

Another article on HP state that almost 50% of Detroit, MI citizens cannot read or write, WTH!

[Joseph Schmoe]

10:57 AM on 04/29/2011

1. Proving a test is biased does not make the test-takers smarter.
2. Standardized tests are always biased.
3. Stop pointing and look in the mirror to see who to blame for not doing well in school.

[phillybro]

09:30 AM on 04/29/2011

This is yet another poorly written article that, unfortunately, the casual or lazy reader might actually think is balanced.

If two respected, establishment organizations found that the SAT is racially biased, how can the author toss their findings aside in favor of another study, without even comparing methodology, specific findings, funding sources, quality of the researchers, etc.? Note that the author doesn't even state why the "FairTest" (clearly a misnomer) study concluded that there was no bias. We are left primarily with the headlines, which we are entitled to believe was the real objective of the author. Why would the Huffington Post print such deceptive garbage?

If the only thing you knew was that African-American and Hispanic students performed worse on the SAT than White students of comparable GPA, then all arguments about achievement gap would go out the window. And, if a test you can prepare for somehow predicts college performance better than GPA, then that is an indictment of the colleges, not the students. Why are those colleges allowing better prepared students to under-perform?

The same race-baiters who decry affirmative action as allowing admission to the lesser qualified, never seem to feel that way when schools pick Whites with lower GPA's -- just because they scored better on a test. Clearly, the test isn't measuring accumulated academic ability -- that's what GPA's do. It's measuring something that might be correlated with college success - like money, resources, access to those who figured out the con or angle, ....

[dennisrs]

07:15 PM on 05/04/2011

That being said how do you explain that as a group Asian do better than all?

[RyanBrucks]

05:38 PM on 05/12/2011

From my limited understanding of the Japanese school culture (I know you said Asian, but my personal experience is only with Japanese students), the culture is completely opposite of the US school culture. Here, we idolize the class clown and everybody wants to be the new Snooki (generalizations, gotta love em!). In Japan, if you don't do well in school you are considered a nobody. They elevate based on achievement not based on goofyness or "going against the flow".

[inmyhumbleopinion]

09:16 PM on 04/28/2011

Look, the bottom line is, we have a racial gap in performance not because the kids aren't smart enough, but because they haven't had the same advantages as white students. When you are born to a family that has no books in the house, you are already behind before you even start school. There needs to be both a cultural and a social outreach to give these kids as much of a leg up as possible at the pre-school level. It may not eradicate the gap, but it could certainly narrow it.

[dennisrs]

07:28 PM on 05/04/2011

Do you know how many white kids grow up in poverty, single family, non educated parents and relatives your basic dysfunctional white tr-a sh family and they still do OK on these test. How is this explained?
An adult entering at a later age doesn't have to take the stupid test anyway.
So take everybody and their money and fail them out the first year if they cannot handle it, just do away with any test. I am tired of hearing about this over 30 years it has been said these test are bias. OK fine they're biased so do away with them. It is just a money maker for the elites anyway.

[daughterusmc]

07:49 PM on 04/27/2011

here's an idea: if you want to do well on a test, study for it.

[poeticjustice4all]

02:17 AM on 04/28/2011

Oh, that's the answer! Forget about half a century of research from some of the finest minds in the world. daughterusmc has figured it all out for us at HuffPo.

[daughterusmc]

06:54 AM on 04/28/2011

there's research that says studying doesn't work?

[daughterusmc]

06:55 AM on 04/28/2011

p.s. you commenting on the finest minds in the world is like my cat trying to play the flute.

[inapickle]

03:19 PM on 04/27/2011

Many posters here misunderstand the key argument over the verbal portion of the test. It's not about non-standard English vs. standard written English- it's about the specific vocabulary words being tested and to some degree, the subject matter and era of the passages. The test does tend to include a lot of words which have fallen out of usage in the last 100 years and passages which were written long ago or are stylistically similar to 19th century works. Therefore, if you go to a traditional (likely private) school in which you've read a great deal of 19th century prose, you're more likely to recognize those uncommon words and to comprehend passages which include obsolete usages. Many modern public schools, especially with majority struggling student bodies, have dropped Austen, Poe, Hawthorn, etc. off their reading lists and replaced them with modern works which have different vocabulary and are written in a modern style. This is the real difference in how kids test, what they've been studying (and hearing at home). As far as college success, it depends on your major to a degree. If you're a liberal arts major, it makes a real difference if you haven't had any experience with pre-1900 writing as to how much you'll struggle with it when you get to college.

Here's a piece of a passage from an old SAT. I've rarely had a student who could make heads or tails of it. http://www.literaturepage.com/read/greatexpectations-273.html

[inapickle]

03:25 PM on 04/27/2011

A piece of the passage I linked to above. This gives an idea of the kind of vocabulary students are expected to comprehend. This is a particularly difficult passage and the kind that gets the most howls of bias.

Trabb's Boy from Great Expectations- Dickens

Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my progress, I beheld Trabb's boy approaching, lashing himself with an empty blue bag. Deeming that a serene and unconscious contemplation of him would best beseem me, and would be most likely to quell his evil mind, I advanced with that expression of countenance, and was rather congratulating myself on my success, when suddenly the knees of Trabb's boy smote together, his hair uprose, his cap fell off, he trembled violently in every limb, staggered out into the road, and crying to the populace, "Hold me! I'm so frightened!" feigned to be in a paroxysm of terror and contrition, occasioned by the dignity of my appearance. As I passed him, his teeth loudly chattered in his head, and with every mark of extreme humiliation, he prostrated himself in the dust.

[daughterusmc]

08:20 AM on 04/28/2011

this is the kind of vocabulary that educated, well-read people do know. dickens is widely read in schools"a tale of two cities" and "great expectations" usually, and foreign languages help the youth with cognates and so forth. getting into college and being able to do well once one gets there requires one to do more than read USweekly.

[dennisrs]

07:34 PM on 05/04/2011

So the students aren't exposed to this in High School.
Come on these days anyone getting ready to to college knows what to expect on these test.

[gingerred]

02:13 PM on 04/27/2011

These are American kids the speak english. The test are written in english . The kids use the same text books many go to the same schools and sit next to each other in the same class
How can the test be racist? 1+1 =2 in every school , A verb is still a verb in very school, a noun is still a noun how can the test be racist?

[inapickle]

03:45 PM on 04/27/2011

They aren't discussing the math or grammar (called 'writing' on the test) sections. The argument is about the 'verbal' section which is vocabulary and reading comprehension. The test faors those who've read/studied a lot of 19th century English literature or read primary source documents for history dating before 1900. Many schools don't have much of that in their curriculum.

[gingerred]

04:00 PM on 04/27/2011

english Lit. is taught in most schools there are prep books available in school and public libraries. The Dictionary helps too. Words mean the same.

[Alex Bone]

12:57 PM on 04/27/2011

tests are not racially biased. people who make up excuses for why minority kids do bad on them are.

[poeticjustice4all]

02:18 AM on 04/28/2011

Guns don't kill people -- people do!

[SF TKF]

12:26 PM on 04/27/2011

***Last year, Harvard published a study arguing that SAT questions in the verbal section favored white students by using language with which they were more familiar compared to other non-white groups.***

So the argument is that basic familiarly with English is not to be expected of non-white students (other than Asians)?

[poeticjustice4all]

12:30 PM on 04/27/2011

No. That is not the argument.

[acajoe]

12:44 PM on 04/27/2011

If It were about basic familiarity it wouldn't be a test would it?