by Robert J.
The SAT is a rite of passage that every high school student
must endure. Even as big name schools like the University of
California contest the necessity of such a test in today’s
college admissions process, students across the country continue
to feel the immense pressure put on by this standardized behemoth.
Fortunately, that pressure goes both ways. This article will
show you how ETS’s insecurities about the fairness of
their test can give you an ironically unfair advantage when
taking it.
Educational Testing Service, the private entity responsible
for the questions on every SAT, has seen firsthand just how
important it is to produce an unbiased examination. For the
past several years, the test makers have consistently faced
criticism from minority groups who claim that questions on the
SAT are geared more toward white test takers. Their evidence:
a consistent gap in scores between white and black students.
In the last five years, gaps as large as 200 points have separated
the average scores of these groups. Additionally, male students
outperform females consistently on both the verbal and math
sections of the test.
Obviously, there is no difference in intelligence between
students of different ethnic groups. So, why the big gap? An
educated analyst would look at this situation and attempt to
isolate what lurking variables could cause these anomalies.
Perhaps socioeconomic factors play a role or more minority students
take the SAT for the first time at a younger age. Unfortunately
for ETS, the general response to these statistics is far more
simplified: it’s the test’s fault.
For our purposes, whether this allegation is true or false
is completely irrelevant. What matters is that its existence
has put an enormous pressure on ETS to make SAT questions as
“equal opportunity” as possible. This is an added
step that ironically compromises their ability to generate completely
unbiased questions. We can now see a window of opportunity for
any student who is willing to analyze a question from the paranoid
test writer’s point of view.
Pick up a recent SAT and flip to the reading comprehension
section. There’s a good chance you’ll start reading
about a non-white character. Even in passages where race would
be irrelevant, characters will tend to have ethnically-identifiable
names (Jose` went to the store, Kysha walked her dog). This
trend is ETS’s response to allegations of racist questions.
It may sound absurd, but the argument does hold some weight.
If you look at older exams, reading passages commonly gave biographies
of people like apple farmers and fictional tales about activities
like horseback riding. These topics were clearly not selected
with an urban audience in mind.
OK, so ETS is making strong efforts to make its questions
appealing to minorities. So what? The beauty of this scenario
is that, no matter what your race or gender, ETS has always
given enough information for you to get all the questions right.
Talented students of all ethnicities were earning perfect scores
long before any of these allegations even existed. In fact,
some allege that these changes were made simply to humor the
advocacy groups who found the old tests to be racist. This is
where your advantage comes in: ETS writers, sincere or not,
have adopted an overwhelming sense of racial sensitivity. They’re
terrified of offending anyone and simultaneously obligated to
write about those groups they have a history of offending.
Every question that makes it onto the SAT is combed over by
dozens of experts, all looking for the slightest flaws and loopholes
that could lead to an unfit question. Among the attributes that
could signal a red flag are correct answers that could be interpreted
as insensitive. The most common are those that reinforce negative
stereotypes about minorities. Bingo! We have another tool for
making sure our answer is the correct one. Don’t get it?
Think about this example, based on an actual SAT question:
Imagine you read a story about a family whose
oldest son, Tyrone, has just returned home from some kind of journey.
He’s 22 years old and is being welcomed back with a huge
dinner and lots of love. The story is told from the point of view
of his younger sister and, despite the happy festivities, you
notice subtle feelings of sadness and fear at work in the writing.
The first question asks you to identify where he’s been.
You’ve narrowed it down to two choices:
Both make perfect sense and you can’t seem to find a
stronger allusion to either in the text. The tension in the
writing could easily be the result of thoughts about a traumatic
war or a questionable past.
Trust me when I say this: As long as you’re taking the
SAT, Tyrone has NEVER been to prison. Lin Cho isn’t known
best for excelling in math. Mary doesn’t live at home
so she can cook her husband dinner. No one’s first name
is Harrison. Answers that suggest common racial or sexual stereotypes,
positive or negative, are never correct. Why? Because there
are people at ETS whose only job is to make sure that such correct
answers never make it onto a real SAT. Forcing a student to
reinforce a stereotype by picking a correct answer would be
a political nightmare that ETS wants no part of. Of course,
it’s harmless to have such answers be incorrect. After
all, these “wrong” stereotypes are only fitting
as wrong answers. Now that you know what to look for, you’ll
spot them a mile away.
You may think that this technique will only help with a few
questions each test. You’re right. This kind of influence
can’t be seen in a math problem and reading passages tend
to focus on science and history, as well as people. However,
there’s no greater feeling than eliminating an answer
because you “saw through” the test writer’s
insecurities. More importantly, the few questions you ace because
of this technique put you a few more points toward your perfect
score.
