{"id":27807,"date":"2020-01-27T13:11:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-27T18:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=27807"},"modified":"2020-01-27T13:18:13","modified_gmt":"2020-01-27T18:18:13","slug":"the-classism-of-college-sats-racist-genesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/campus-life\/2020\/01\/27\/the-classism-of-college-sats-racist-genesis\/","title":{"rendered":"The Classism of College: SAT’s Racist Genesis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Scholastic Aptitude Test, better known as the SAT, was first hypothesized by a World War I psychologist named Carl Brigham, with the intent of measuring intelligence. Yet his initial findings, published in 1923, \u201cA Study of American Intelligence\u201d had some pretty dated results that may still leave a nasty mark on today\u2019s education system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the breakdown into nationalities of descent, the study concluded that white people of English, Scottish or Dutch descent to be at the top, while recent immigrants from Poland, Italy and African Americans were at the bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his book, \u201cThe Racist Origins of the SAT,\u201d historian and author Gil Troy calls Brigham a \u201cPilgrim-pedigreed, eugenics-blinded bigot,\u201d pointing out the problems with his testing, namely that they were biased towards English speakers and how some test-takers weren\u2019t allowed access to adequate education. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite this, the SAT is still the norm for most college bound high school students, a problem that is further exacerbated on the family median income ladder by the boutique SAT test-prep market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Companies like Kaplan, Princeton Review and Prepscholar offer test-prep for prospective college students but at a hefty price, with some of the cheapest being several hundreds of dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo of Carl C. Brigham’s book “A Study Of American Intelligence”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This becomes problematic when you look at SAT scores in comparison to family income, wherein students whose families make $20,000 annually score an average of 890 and students whose parents make over $200,000 score an average of 1150, this according to College Board, a non-profit out of New York that works on expanding access to higher education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It was drummed into us that the key to getting the career of our dreams was getting into college,\u201d said Max Castleman, Bowling Green State University graduate, who grew up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood outside of Boston, Massachusetts. \u201cAnd the only way to get into the college we wanted was to get good SAT scores. The easiest way to do that was to pay for an expensive tutoring program, since our weirdly focused standardized test-based education had not adequately prepared us for the challenges of the test.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“While I was in public school, in the wake of the \u2018No Child Left Behind Act,\u2019 standardized testing took on a new level of importance, and so much time was spent training us for these specific questions on these specific tests that establishing a \u2018general knowledge\u2019 of topics like mathematics and history was de-emphasized,\u201d added Castleman, noting the emphasis for testing, rather than learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBy the time we took the SAT the information we had was so specific that a good portion of the test went over many of our heads. Coming from a wealthy school district, many of my peers were able to use expensive prep programs, and the school chipped in by offering optional seminars of its own. Those who could not afford these programs, myself included, were at a huge disadvantage when taking the test, and I can imagine that this issue was greatly exacerbated for those who spoke English as a second language.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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