The SAT: New and "Improved"

Article- The SAT: New and “Improved”
By: Michelle Jones

Seventeen year old, Maurice Thompson, an African American student at a inner city high school, looks down at the questions on the math portion of his new and improved SAT booklet and thinks to himself, “ I have never seen problems like this before now, in my life.” Though he had been all the way through pre-calculus in his high school courses and was doing really well, the equations he encountered on the new SAT were harder than he had imagined. Maurice is a good student, but happens to be of a low income bracket and attends a high school in Vallejo, California that is located in a low income neighborhood. He says that after talking with friends in his same situation he discovered they all had the same experience. The question is, is this the case for all lower income students?

The new and “improved” SAT exam will raise the bar for students encouraging them to do well study hard, but according to an article found in Chronicle of Higher Education on July 5, 2002, “Opponents of the test… predict that existing gaps between scores of white and African American students will remain and that the new exam will be no less coachable than the present one.” In areas containing lower income students this gap only widens and makes it harder for these students to make it to college. According to another article found also in The Chronicle for Higher Education on October 10, 2003, after looking a studies conducted by Jay Rosner, executive director of the Princeton Review Foundation, it was found that there is a difference in the scores of whites versus those of other cultures which lead to less minority students being accepted to elite colleges before their entire situation was looked at. These lower SAT scores can be attributed to a number of factors mainly surrounding racial bias and lack of consideration of the environment the minority students come from. Students from lower income areas tend to not be as exposed to the proper preparation for the SAT let alone the new version and the majority of the time this is not something they cannot control.

Another aspect of the new and “improved” SAT is the price. Along with the highest score moving from 1600 to 2400 the price has had a major increase. According to the first article found in The Chronicle for Higher Education from July of 2002 by Eric Hoover, titled “College Board Approves Major Changes for the SAT” the price will jump from $25 to as much as $38. This is a 50% increase in price and though it may not seem like a lot to some people it may have a huge effect on the number of lower income students who decide to take the test. This will have a large impact on the number of qualified students entering college.

While the College Board is steady making profits off of the new test it is only hurting these children in the lower income setting. Robert Stanley, an African American students who attends the same lower income high school as Maurice, says, “ I will probably have to go to a community college and then maybe I will be able to go to a big university…I don’t know, because I didn’t do well on the SAT.” After asking why he didn’t do so well he answered, “ The reading and essay part was o.k. but the math part was hard because I had never learned a lot of those things in my class.” This coming directly from the source shows the lack of preparation these students are exposed to. In comparison with Nicole R. a white female from a more affluent high school located in a small, more affluent area just outside of Vallejo, California, who says, “ I remembered a lot of those type of math questions from my classes junior year, and the essay part was really easy”, Robert and Maurice will be taking their SATs over again trying to score as well as Nicole did on her first try.