Amiyah Collins, Class IV
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
In our own school, many of the students have recently taken the SAT and/or studied for the test. For clarification, the SAT is a three-hour standardized test that is taken with the purpose of showcasing your knowledge for college/university admission officers to go over. The weight your SAT score holds in your admission may vary based on which college is viewing the score you got. Although this sounds like a straightforward concept, the history of this exam is very messy. Many people have criticized the SAT and standardized tests for their racist roots, and have argued that there are still remnants of that bias to this day. Through learning about its history, and thinking about your own and others' experiences, the connection between the past and present becomes more clear.
The Emergence of College Application Testing
The foundation concept of the SAT originated over 100 years ago, specifically in the early 1900s. Applicants would go to the college and take a test that covered “English, French, German, Latin, history, Greek, mathematics, physics, and chemistry.” Most of the people that took the test were graduates from private schools. About half a decade later, the 1Q test was created in 1905 by Alfred Binet, according to Pbs.org, with the goal of “measuring one’s intelligence” and identifying “slow learners”.
Developing the SAT
Carl C. Brigham, a man who administered IQ tests to the army alongside Robert Yerkes (a Harvard professor), released his book A Study of American Intelligence. In this book, he stated his opinion that American education was decreasing and “will proceed with an accelerating rate as the racial mixture becomes more and more extensive”. He also made it clear in his book that he believed in the supremacy of “the Nordic race group”. Soon after the book was released, he was hired by the College Board to develop the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), as they wanted to separate the people immigrating to America from the white Americans. During the time of the SAT’s development, an outdated and offensive concept named “eugenics” rose and quickly fell. Eugenics is the idea of selective reproduction to produce “desired” hereditary characteristics and traits. After this idea was revoked, the “Aptitude” in SAT was replaced with “Assessment” as the word aptitude implies hereditary ability.
Widespread Use
In 1934, Pbs.org writes that James Conant (the president of Harvard at the time), Henry Chauncey, and Wilbur Bender’s method of choosing students for their scholarship program was by using the SAT. After a year, taking the SAT became required, and by the end of the decade, all the Ivy League schools used it. For the following years, up until the present, minor changes and adjustments were made to the test.
Connections to the Present Time
In current times, you can still see a statistical difference in SAT admissions throughout different groups. An example of this is from an admission study done by Mark Kantrowitz, where he looks at SAT scores based on household income, gender identity, and ethnicity. His findings conclude that “Students with family income of $100,000 or more are more than twice as likely as students with family income under $50,000 to have combined SAT test scores of 1400 to 1600”. When it came to ethnicity, white people who took the test were “three times more likely” than African American students and “twice as likely” as Hispanic and Latino students to get scores of 1400-1600. The colleges that take these scores have a below-average quantity of African American, Hispanic, and Latino students. Male identifying students are 42% more likely to score 1400-1600 points on the SAT, and students with higher family incomes tend to score higher. Specifically, incomes of $100,000+ are twice as likely to score in the 1400-1600 range than their peers. Many studies have been conducted to show the difference in scores between high-income students and low-income students.
Conclusion
Even though the SAT was created nearly 100 years ago, the negative ideologies that created it still have an impact on some of the people who take it. The hold that the past has on the SAT is unfair to the minority and low-income people who score lower on the test even though they worked just as hard. The SAT helps many people get into good colleges, and we can appreciate that even while pointing out its flaws. Hopefully, in the future, a system will be generated where entry into good colleges is more available to all people who put in the work.
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