The SAT Isn’t What’s Unfair
Atlantic | Kathryn Paige Harden
As SAT/ACT test requirements for college admissions are rapidly becoming optional or obsolete an effort to eliminate bias and increase diversity, Harden argues, “The SAT doesn’t create inequalities in these academic skills. It reveals them. Throwing the measurement away doesn’t remedy underlying injustices in children’s academic opportunities, any more than throwing a thermometer away changes the weather.”
Harden makes the case that inequalities resulting in lower test scores are determined early on, and by factors that are overlooked and not addressed when the focus shifts to blaming standardized tests.
She also argues that personal essays, teacher recommendations, course grades and course rigor—all factors on which admissions are based without ACT/SAT scores—are highly correlated with income, and more so than standardized test scores.
Harden also points to data showing how low income students and minorities actually benefit from the tests—”Studies suggest that the best policy might actually be to facilitate more high-school students taking the SAT, not abandon it entirely. Standardized testing, inequitable as it might be, is more equitable than any other criterion.”