Will The SAT Overhaul Help Achieve Equity?
The College Board, the organization behind the SAT, acknowledges that historically its tests have been biased in favor of the children of wealthy, well educated elites – those who live in the best zip codes, are surrounded by books, go to the best regarded schools (both public and private), enjoy summer enrichment programs, and can avail themselves of as much tutoring and SAT test-prep coaching as they need. That’s why, early last month, College Board president David Coleman announced that the SAT would undergo significant changes, with the aim of making it more fair and equitable for disadvantaged students.
Among the key changes, which are expected to take effect in 2016, are: the democratization of access to test-prep courses (by trying to make them less necessary and entering into an agreement with the Khan Academy to offer free, online practice problems*); ensuring that every exam include a reading passage from one of the nation’s “founding documents,” such as the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights, or from one of the important discussions of such texts, such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail”; and replacing “arcane ‘SAT words’ (‘depreciatory,’ ‘membranous’),” with words that are more “commonly used in college courses, such as ‘synthesis’ and ‘empirical.’” (See here.)
Will this help? Well, maybe, but the SAT’s long held — but always elusive — mission to help identify and reward merit, rather than just privilege, will only be met insofar as its creators can be sure that all students have had an equal opportunity to learn these particular vocabulary words and have read these particular “founding documents” and texts. That is, it comes down to a question of curriculum.
Curriculum and Equity
The connection between curriculum and equity first occurred to me when I was eight years old (though obviously not in those exact terms). For some reason, my school decided that all third graders needed to have an IQ test. I was sick that day, so one school holiday I found myself filling in bubbles alone in a classroom with Mrs. Beagles, the Shanker Blog » Will the SAT Overhaul Help Achieve Equity?: