Class and Race Inequality in Standardized Testing
By Anonymous / Fall 2019
The United States once stood at “sixth in the world for its levels of education and health” back in 1990. However, as of last year, the nation’s ranking has dropped by twenty-one places even though America continues to devote around the same amount of effort and funding into their education system. As a first-world nation, we have developed a sense of complacency and superiority that is costing us our most valuable assets: our youths. In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, the collected data illustrates a dim outlook for adolescents in terms of their academic success: students all across the nation report mathematics, reading, and science scores on the International Student Assessment that are several points lower than those of other developed countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and Canada (DeSilver). This drop in quality of education especially hurts and impacts minors from low income and racially diverse communities, which is particularly evident by lower scholastic aptitude test (SAT) scores among individuals with a generational history of racial and class discrimination. With little to no resources to provide additional instruction or guidance, these first generation students undoubtedly feel as if they cannot catch up to their more well off peers because of the immense amount of effort and time they need to spend to achieve the same grades and results.
One of the most urgent problems in the American education system is that the institution of standardized testing was inherently designed to highlight the disparity between the rich and poor by enabling the students from affluent families to stand out academically and quantitatively among the pool of mediocre test scores of impoverished students. For instance, Carl Campbell Brigham, the creator of the SAT, “believed intelligence was genetic” and attributed higher test results with people of Nordic descent while ignoring the outlying reasons why others of non-white ancestry tended to score lower (Au). Although Brigham would later renounce his essentialist beliefs, his principles remain rooted in the interpretation of the SAT and its scores. In selecting future SAT questions, only experimental test questions that were answered correctly by the top scorers of the exam would be considered “valid.” Furthermore, a 2003 study conducted by William Kidder and Jay Rosner found that “trial SAT questions where blacks [and Latinos] got the right answer more often than whites . . . were deemed invalid.” The current process of developing and proctoring the SAT only serves to cater to the idea of essentialism and classism, as top-scoring adolescents often hail from opulent white families that live in communities where their schools would receive more state and local funding as a result of the high property values surrounding it. This institution also illustrates its firm rejection of the very thought of students of color surpassing their white peers in terms of academics through its racist question selection process. Even though public education in America is free for all minors, it is by no means equal. By looking beyond the test scores, we can clearly see that kids are more than just numbers and that it is not possible to quantify their academic success through a test that hundreds of wealthy families invest money into via private tutors, test prep schools, and practice books.
Due to racial discrimination throughout American history, the groups that are most impacted by the inherent inequalities of standardized testing are the low income racial minorities and immigrant families. For example, the mean math scores for African American and Latino — thirty-nine and thirty-three percent of which live in poverty (“Ethnic and Racial Minorities & Socioeconomic Status”)— are respectively 428 and 457 out of 800 points, which, if we were looking at the higher score, would be a fifty-four point difference below the national mean (Reeves and Halikias). Despite the raw evidence to illustrate the consequences of racial and class disparities, proponents of the SAT, argue that “bias in SAT performance due to increased tutoring and resources is negligible” (Au). Such thinking fails to show an understanding of how groups like African-Americans and Latinos have historically been sectioned off to live in ghettos, where they would continually have access to lower quality education as a result of living in impoverished communities their entire lives. A myriad of these injustices and inequalities our society as a whole incurs upon racial minorities and immigrants “explain [the] persistent obstacles to [their] upward mobility and opportunity” (Reeves and Halikias). Since the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy mainly consists of immigrants and racial minorities who started out with little money, many of these poor individuals are forced into turning against each other and competing for jobs and opportunities just so that they can make ends meet. The hours they devote to putting a roof over their family’s heads and food on the table take away from the time they could spend loving their kids or protesting awful working conditions. When humans are atomized in such a manner that we start to think that it is only us against the world, we fall prey to the individualism and market-based competition that left us in that situation in the first place.
The subpar standards of living people of color face are chronic symptoms of our individualistic and capitalistic society that even find its roots and runners spreading in our very own classrooms. For instance, various families nowadays tend to expend countless dollars on any means they can to furnish their children with “qualities necessary to uphold their class domination” (“Robber Barons and Rebels”). For low income families with less leeway and money to spend on resources like SAT preparatory schools and private tutors to even the playing ground, their kids are bound to feel inferior in comparison. As our students buy into the idea of essentialism, they lose the confidence and determination they need to aim high and work hard; eventually they start to think their efforts are futile and go back to maintaining the status quo as “they should be.” While there also exists ways that would empower and allow poor youths to study and take the SAT for free, such “privileges” are limited in number and cannot compare to the copious amount of SAT books and test attempts a wealthier student can afford. No matter the angle, it is no wonder that the white citizens who have been historically favored since the beginning of America are ones who succeed the most financially and academically; it is because they receive less discrimation and more resources to guarantee and perpetuate their socioeconomic status. As this pattern progresses beyond public education, we start to notice that the very same individuals who received help through their parents’ money continue to get rewarded with acceptances to highly ranked universities, as well as connections and opportunities for white collar jobs. Under the impression that their success is through their own efforts, these ignorant individuals will surely perpetuate the cycle through their own children, all while repeating the very lies they grew up hearing.
One of the main obstacles preventing people from addressing this issue is their innate need to categorize. On a societal level, it will be difficult to completely remove the influence of standardized testing from the application process for establishments of higher education as these institutions depend on rankings in order to determine who is worthy of attending their prestigious campuses. Just as Joel Spring stated, “The development of a factory-like . . . schoolroom was not accidental” (“Robber Barons and Rebels”). Without quantitative data such as SAT scores, universities would be limited to using essays, adversities, and extracurriculars as a basis for accepting or rejecting incoming applicants. And much like a machine running on gears, our education system resists any changes that will hinder its cogs from working for even a moment because of the insane pressure capitalism places on schools to produce high-quality graduates for companies to employ. In return for providing the markets with fresh labor, we will see that certain universities possess more prestige than others depending on the types of jobs their alumni have. Our society relies on this educational mass production of students who graduate within four years and at the top of their classes because businesses need workers who are already accustomed to fitting into the molds that are crafted for them without complaining or questioning of a better alternative beyond market-based competition and individualism.
Since standardized tests heavily depend on capitalism and society’s needs to classify and assess our students into market values, emphasis on democracy and intersectionality will help alleviate these issues. By now, we should have understood that gaining and developing knowledge should not be a competition, and it definitely should not be a commodity. As citizens, we need to realize that the nationwide education of our youths comes first, otherwise we are only providing the advocates of classism and racism with pawns to manipulate and persuade to their side. In order to accomplish such a feat, we need to move away from standardized testing and quantitative measures of academic success in our public and private schools. For example, by having students dedicate their time and energy into developing a personal project, teachers can foster in their students a sincere love for school subjects rather than a materialistic one. Furthermore, such a project can show an individual’s understanding of the topics they are learning more so than an exam score ever could. In addition to assignments that showcase a student’s capabilities, schools can also gauge their personality and character through their writing styles and their academic mentors. While some people may judged writing based on the grammar and vocabulary, others will assess essays with an emphasis on the ideas presented throughout the paper. By not using proper grammar and punctuation as a means to deduct points, we take the pressure off of students to write perfectly and allow them more leeway to delve into the topics they are discussing. Universities can instead measure an individual’s abilities through the information provided by their instructors. The behaviors a student demonstrates in class tend to follow them throughout their lives. Having first hand accounts of these traits provide admissions officers and employers a more accurate depiction of a person’s work ethic as an adult. Through an emphasis on essays, teacher recommendations, and personal projects, teens and adolescents are able to reclaim their humanity in a way. They can no longer be just numbers on a file. Instead, they are names, names with faces, families, and stories. Most youths have an interest in learning new topics since young, however, it is the American school system that has taught them otherwise up until now.
In a system that depends on class and race inequality, it is the institutions that support such disparities and generates profits through it that create the largest ruckus. Organizations like CollegeBoard and SAT/ACT prep institution, for instance, will try to promote the benefits of taking the exam, such as the fact that it can make students stand out. When we ignore all the services they have to offer, however, these organizations are reduced to nothing as they had little else other than racial and socioeconomic disparities to fuel their profiteering. On the other hand, the groups of minorities and immigrants who originally suffered under the prior education system would rejoice. The reason being that they feel less stress on themselves to compete against others and focus more on themselves in terms of their education. When more time is devoted to self-improvement, kids are bound to make several important discoveries in themselves and in their environment that will surely benefit our society more. Being nurtured in such a supportive environment, students are also more likely to collaborate together and bring each other up rather than take each other down. As our youths work together in education, we can be sure of a future where racism and classism is no longer prevalent and where our nation will grow stronger overall. America was founded on the principles of equality and freedom. If the country can only guarantee education for all with the caveat that some students will be better educated than others as a result of their geographical locations, parental income, or skin color, then it does not deserve to receive recognition or praise for its education system. The best time to start focusing on the quality of American education was twenty-nine years ago; the next best time would be now.
Works Cited
Au, Wayne. “The Socialist Case Against the SAT.” Jacobin, Bhaskar Sunkara, 2019.
Bendix, Aria. “The US Was Once A Leader for Healthcare and Education - Now It Ranks 27th in the World.” Business Insider, Insider Inc., 27 Sept. 2018.
DeSilver, Drew. “U.S. Academic Achievement Lags That of Many Other Countries.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 15 Feb. 2017.
“Ethnic and Racial Minorities & Socioeconomic Status.” American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, 2019.
Reeves, Richard V., and Dimitrios Halikias. “Race Gaps in SAT Scores Highlight Inequality and Hinder Upward Mobility.” Brookings, The Brookings Institution, 1 Feb. 2017.
“Robber Barons and Rebels.” A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present, by Howard Zinn, HarperCollins, 2003, pp. 253–296.