Posted on 03/06/2014 7:08:04 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The College Board announced Wednesday that it is overhauling the SAT, dropping the timed essay and focusing less on fancy vocabulary in order to level the playing field a bit for high school students from a wider range of families. The organization's own data show that wealthier Americans, from more educated families, tend to do far better on the best. As do white and Asian Americans, and those students who had the opportunity to take the PSAT in high school before taking the SAT. Almost certainly, these four findings have common origins in that the SAT benefits families who can provide their kids with a better education and more test prep. But here are four charts that show how the SAT advantages specific demographics.
The first chart shows that SAT scores are highly correlated with income. Students from families earning more than $200,000 a year average a combined score of 1,714, while students from families earning under $20,000 a year average a combined score of 1,326. The writing test has the widest score gap, perhaps explaining why College Board officials are dropping the essay.
The second chart shows that students from educated families do better. A student with a parent with a graduate degree, for example, on average scores 300 points higher on their SATs compared to a student with a parent with only a high school degree. No doubt this is the same dynamic reflected in the income graph, given that there are high returns to college education. But it also dispels the notion that students in America have good opportunities to advance regardless of the family they're born to.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Exactly.
How low can you go?
Heaven forbid we have high expectations. Excellence used to be desired...
The Bell Curve is, of course, a curve, but I suspect that if you pinned the 100 point where it was just a few years ago distribution would be no where near symmetrical, the body count on the left side seems to be increasing.
The Professional Minorities can’t stand it that white racism has dwindled to near zero in recent years. They have to publish silly articles like this to try to bait Whitey into resuming racist attitudes - and in turn keep the government cash flowing their way.
Needless to say, there is a lot of animus and envy directed to those selected for the program by those who weren’t, and much of that is predicated on class envy. While some time back there was a scandal involving the greasing of palms to get certain people’s sons selected as KATUSAs, as a general rule, one of the biggest criterion is English fluency and proficiency. By and large, those conscripts with parents who emphasized, and could afford quality English classes tended to be selected for the program.
Nothing arcane or mysterious about it….
I haven’t read the article yet but did hear on the radio and what bothered me was that they are deciding to get rid of certain vocabulary words, claiming that they “aren’t used in the business world” or some such. One of the words was”phlegmatic”. Now I admit that I seldom use this word but Ive known it all my adult life. As the cowboy at the end of The Big Leibowski said, I’m kind of glad that these words, many of which are Latinate, or rooted in other dead languages, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, etc., are “out there.” He was talking about the Dude and his progeny, , but that’s the way I feel about words.
I see this as another chipping away at the concept of a well-rounded liberal education that is supposed to create a well-rounded person, and I might add, a happier person. Taluhlah Bankhead once declared that if you can shoot craps and know your Bible and Shakespeare, that’s a liberal education. At the rate were going, they won’t even be able to shoot craps.
Few people nowadays even know who Tallulah Bankhead was.
Some ethnicities faced evolutionary pressures causing them to become more intelligent or perish
If that was pre 1992 you qualify for Mensa
Successful people passing on success driven habits to their offspring?
You don’t say...
How about an Obamabook program ?
Learning to read comes first. You’d be shocked at how badly this is taught in inner city schools.
I like the comments at the WaPo article. The vast majority are from people who see through the stupidity of the WaPo writer.
The authors explored the data and concluded that the most important key to intelligence was to have intelligent parents.
There is no doubt that IQ is mostly genetic.
Here's a theory why the IQ disparity seems to be getting wider:
In the old days the son of the richest guy in town would enter the family business directly after high school, marry the prettiest girl in town and go on to have low to average IQ kids. In this example, the middling IQ of the rich son averaged with the lower IQ of the pretty girl resulted in a low to average IQ of the offspring.
Similarly, the son of the high IQ doctor in town would attend male-only college and then marry one of the low to average IQ rich daughters in town. The high IQ of the doctor and the average IQ of the rich girl resulted in average IQ of the offspring.
Now with coeducational opportunities for women. The rich son with average IQ is likely to meet a wife with a similar or higher IQ. Likewise the doctor son will likely marry another medical student also with a similar or higher IQ. As a result of this opening up of educational and professional opportunities for women, there is less IQ balancing because there is less intermarriage between high IQ and low IQ resulting in the smart getting smarter (and the dumb getting dumber) All due to the women's movement! ha, ha, ha!
Well, dang, you’re probably right. Next they won’t know who The Dude is.
I think thackney hit the nail on the head in the post right before yours. Some are implying (not necessarily you, Blood of Tyrants) that genetics plays a part, and in some cases I think it does, but I think the upbringing has a far more concrete impact.
Right. The Scholastic APTITUDE Test does not measure the character of a boy or girl. Generally, they choose. These statistics do not predict the outcome for any individual anecdotal situation.
However, there is a quite different mindset to the very rich accustomed to a guided pathway to rulership.
Life is not fair.
So?
Wow, never has the institutional racism inherent in our education system been clearer....not.
This is a perfect example if they wanted to make an updated version of one of my favorite books - “How To Lie with Statistics” by Darrell Huff (copyright 1954).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.