{"id":28137,"date":"2012-08-29T11:00:05","date_gmt":"2012-08-29T16:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=28137"},"modified":"2013-11-08T03:24:18","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T08:24:18","slug":"the-correlation-between-income-and-sat-scores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/08\/29\/the-correlation-between-income-and-sat-scores\/","title":{"rendered":"The Correlation Between Income and SAT Scores"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is the first day of school at the college where I teach, so I thought it would be a nice time to re-post this oldie-but-goodie on the relationship between income and SAT scores. \u00a0I’m sure all of our students are brilliant, of course, but whether the SAT measures <\/em>intelligence fairly is up for debate.<\/em><\/p>\n

The College Board<\/a> is an education association that, among other things, administers the SAT college entrance examination.\u00a0 A report on the scores from 2009<\/a>, reviewed by the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, included a break down of scores by the household income of the student. Scores correlate strongly and positively with income:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I can think of two explanations for the correlation.<\/p>\n

First, it is certainly true that children with more economic resources, on average, end up better prepared for standardized tests.\u00a0 They tend to have better teachers, more resource-rich educational environments, more educated parents who can help them with school and, sometimes, expensive SAT tutoring.<\/p>\n

Second, the test itself may be biased towards wealthier students.\u00a0 These tests tend to be written and evaluated by privileged individuals who may inadvertently include class-based knowledge, not just knowledge, in the exam (asking questions, for example, that rely on background information about golf instead of basketball).<\/p>\n

In any case, this correlation should give us pause; it calls into question, quite profoundly, the extent to which the SAT is functioning as a fair measure.\u00a0 Perhaps it measures preparedness for college, but whether it measures potential is up for debate.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is the first day of school at the college where I teach, so I thought it would be a nice time to re-post this oldie-but-goodie on the relationship between income and SAT scores. \u00a0I’m sure all of our students are brilliant, of course, but whether the SAT measures intelligence fairly is up for debate. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[209,29,34,2104],"class_list":["post-28137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-class","tag-education","tag-knowledgeintelligence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28137"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58244,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28137\/revisions\/58244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}