Standardized Testing: Another way to discriminate against the poor

[andyandy]

And if it were true that there's nothing to astrology or homeopathy, there'd be no employed astrologers or homeopaths.

Are you arguing that there is no causal link between tutoring for tests and test scores?

Really?

 

[WildCat]

You could additionally

3) move away from standardised test - they are after all a pretty crappy way of testing subject/area specific ability.

And what do you suggest in the place of standardized tests? You have a better alternative in mind?

 

[Ziggurat]

You're flat-out wrong. Tutoring can dramatically improve test scores.

For some students.

It certainly helps widen the gap between rich and poor.

Is there any evidence that there is a significant aggregate effect of tutoring on the test scores of the rich? Is there any evidence that there is a significant aggregate effect on college admissions rates? Because none has been presented.

Why exactly are you advocating the status quo here?

I'm not. What I'm saying is that tutoring isn't the real problem, and it's not even really exacerbating the real problem.

In other countries? They already do a lot to have things equalized.

Really? The child of immigrants living in the banlieues of Paris has similar opportunities to the child of a government minister?

No, I don't think so.

 

[Disraeli Ears]

I've never really understood this stuff...

We took practice SATs in high school prior to the real thing.

There were also tutoring sessions available through the school for free.

There were also practice books available in the library.

Is that uncommon?

It's probably common in large high schools with many resources (and the richer the school, the better). But for smaller schools, I don't think it is. I went to the smaller of the two high schools in my city in Texas and we didn't have practice SATs (except for the PSATs - done once in 10th grade) and we didn't have tutoring sessions. Actually, my high school administration was terrible about preparing us for college, a fact that I lament even now. I hope it's gotten better in the past 18 years.

 

[excaza]

And if it were true that there's nothing to astrology or homeopathy, there'd be no employed astrologers or homeopaths.

It does not follow from this argument that there is no relation between tutoring for the test and standardized test scores. The whole point of a standardized test is to measure students against some established standard. That very definition allows for score improvement based on essentially memorizing the standard, which is exactly what these tutors and other training materials allow you to do. It's not woo, and it's fundamentally very simple.

ETA: This is speaking in a very general sense, and I'm not implying that a tutor will significantly increase your score automatically. If your kid is a trout, then he's probably not going to gain much from a tutor, no matter how well you're paying.

 

[Ziggurat]

If that were true, my wife would be out of a job. Tutoring substantially changes their test grades. She gets a bonus when a pupil of hers improves their test score significantly, and she's gotten lots of bonuses.

I didn't contest that tutoring can change one individual's score. But that wasn't what I was claiming, so you haven't actually contradicted me.

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

Is there any evidence that there is a significant aggregate effect on college admissions rates? Because none has been presented.

Well, not all standardized tests are for college admission. AP tests aren't about getting admitted to college (for those taken senior year, the testing would come at the end of senior year right before summer, way past the point of having made arrangements for college starting in the fall), it's about getting college credit for courses.

However, I am highly suspicious that SAT scores don't count for as much as they seem, based on my personal experience.

I applied to 6 colleges. I was accepted into 5 of them by the time I got a notification from the 6th that they had never received my SAT scores. I followed up on this and found that due to an error, my SAT scores had not been sent to ANY of the schools I applied to, yet 5 of them (and these were pretty high ranked universities) accepted me without having ever received them.

 

[Rolfe]

Does it really cost a lot to prepare for the tests?

I remember when I was about ten or eleven, my mother bought copies of past test papers and gave them to me to do as a "game". I don't think they were expensive. She roped in a school friend who was 18 months older and in the class above me, to make it more of a "game". That friend did extremely well in her test, and my mother always believed that was partly due to her little strategy. When my turn came, I aced it. And we really had very little money in these days.

Rolfe.

 

[jayh]

There is a saying that every metric distorts the item being measured.

Standardized tests are the natural outcome of those who believe in meritocracy. If schools and students are to be judged on 'merit', and achievement, how do you measure merit? Either the tests are standardized (as in scientific tests) or they are not and therefore subjective.

Problem is, neither option is good. People's position may change depending on what's in the test. If the test asks a lot about evolution, for example, it will get a different group of advocates than if it is not science oriented.

While it is important that everyone have study materials available to them, and this can easily be affordable, there is only so much that this will do. Motivated, bright students will take the opportunity, other students will not. Perhaps that is the real thing that the test is measuring: what kind of a student are you?

 

[themusicteacher]

While it may cost, tutoring, if it is desired, should be provided to everyone regardless of cost. Nobody is advocating that the wealthy shouldn't be able to purchase extra help for their kids but of what benefit is it to keep the poor from these services. We all benefit when the poor are lifted out of poverty. While we should expect them to earn it through hard work, if the playing field starts out un-level, how is that providing equal opportunity? If the service is available but at a price which only some can afford, that is not equal opportunity. This is is why free market principals should not be applied to education - it creates artificial and institutional barriers to achievement. One might argue that everyone should not have access to flat-screen TV's regardless of income but we're not talking about flat-screen TV's. As much as we can, we should be providing for the needs of ALL students. If, after that has been established, students still fail, then there must be something else going on that cannot be controlled for but at least we gave them true equal opportunity as far as we could control it (at the school level).

 

[Earthborn]

If that were true, my wife would be out of a job. Tutoring substantially changes their test grades. She gets a bonus when a pupil of hers improves their test score significantly, and she's gotten lots of bonuses.

So, she is doing well. If she feels the same way about fairness, the solution is quite simple. For every rich kid she tutors she should tutor a poor kid for free. Heck, she could make that a marketing strategy to make even more money: "Let me tutor your child, support the education of a poor child!" Some rich people are quite sensitive to deals like that.

Am I being ridiculous, unrealistic, or am I a believer in the American Dream of fairness for all?

Was "The American Dream" ever about fairness at all?

 

[Ziggurat]

Nobody is advocating that the wealthy shouldn't be able to purchase extra help for their kids but of what benefit is it to keep the poor from these services.

Nobody is keeping the poor from these services. If your question is why we don't provide them for free, well, the answer is that it's NOT free. Somebody has to pay for it. Are the costs worth the benefit? If you provide tutoring to someone who isn't motivated to really take advantage of it, or who doesn't have the prerequisite skills, or who would flunk out of college even if they got in, then you're just pouring money down the drain. I'm not trying to suggest that all poor people are like that. Hell, some rich people are like that. But as it stands now, if parents of such a rich kid pay for tutoring, it's their money down the drain. If you use taxpayer money to do that with poor kids, it's my money down the drain. That's the reason not to do what you suggest: because it's too much money for too little benefit.

This is is why free market principals should not be applied to education - it creates artificial and institutional barriers to achievement.

We don't apply free market principles to primary education. But that's also precisely where we're having the most problems. Now, I understand and even agree with the principle that we should provide some level of universal education regardless of economic means, although incorporating some market mechanisms may help improve the currently unsatisfactory results that our non-market system is producing. But I don't see why that should extend past high school. Beyond that, the cost is really NOT justified for a lot of people. Not everyone is cut out for a college education, including a lot of people who still go to college and even graduate. So I don't see why help with standardized testing should fall under that universal access either.

Hell, it's not even a requirement for higher education. You can go to community college without ever taking the SAT, and you can move from a community college to a lot of schools without an SAT score either.

 

[Drachasor]

For some students.

The vast majority in my experience.

Is there any evidence that there is a significant aggregate effect of tutoring on the test scores of the rich? Is there any evidence that there is a significant aggregate effect on college admissions rates? Because none has been presented.

There have only been fairly superficial studies so far and in many cases without much in the way of controls. They don't seem to even analyze the difference between people that take such courses and study a lot verses those that take such courses and don't study at all (which one would expect would reduce the apparent average effectiveness of a course).

That said, they do show that there's a small increase in scores in an aggregate way among people who get prep. It seems like computer-based prep can duplicate this effect.

Still really good studies would be nice to have.

I'm not. What I'm saying is that tutoring isn't the real problem, and it's not even really exacerbating the real problem.

I agree that in all the problems with our current educational system, tutoring for college prep courses are small fish. A lot can be done to improve education across the board.

Really? The child of immigrants living in the banlieues of Paris has similar opportunities to the child of a government minister?

No, I don't think so.

I'm saying a lot can be done to minimize those differences. I'd put up Finland as a pretty darn good example. There are others. France isn't that great, I agree, but the USA is not very good either.

 

[Alt+F4]

While it may cost, tutoring, if it is desired, should be provided to everyone regardless of cost. Nobody is advocating that the wealthy shouldn't be able to purchase extra help for their kids but of what benefit is it to keep the poor from these services.

In NYC (largest school system in the US) 8th graders who want to get into one of the cities specialized (elite) public high schools have to take a very difficult standardized test (similiar to the SAT). Admission to these high schools is based on this test, nothing else.

The Dept. of Education established a free (to parents) 16-month tutoring program begining in the 6th grade. As a result:

More than a decade after the city created a special institute to prepare black and Hispanic students for the mind-bendingly difficult test that determines who gets into New York’s three most elite specialized high schools, the percentage of such students has not only failed to rise, it has declined.

So in NYC at least, it's not about not having access to tutoring.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialized_High_Schools_Admissions_Test#Test_preparation

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/e...40e7c591df4b47&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

 

[Alt+F4]

Still really good studies would be nice to have.

Indeed. For example, parents who are willing to spend $300 an hour for SAT tutoring are obviously parents who are interested in their child's education. So are the better test scores the result of the tutoring or the child being raised in a household that values education and/or success?

 

[AvalonXQ]

All you need to do to score well on the SAT is to spend the $20 on a book with a bunch of practice tests in it, and take a full 3-hour practice SAT every week (or month) until the test is a normal activity for you. It's not expensive; it just requires some self-discipline (or discipline by parents).

 

[Ziggurat]

The vast majority in my experience.

The vast majority who actually pay for such tutoring. But that group is a self-selected fraction of the entire population of students.

Imagine if there were some tutoring program which had perfect success: anyone who took it would get a perfect score on the SAT. If only a few people enrolled, it would make almost no difference overall, even if it made a huge difference for the individuals.

I'm saying a lot can be done to minimize those differences. I'd put up Finland as a pretty darn good example. There are others. France isn't that great, I agree, but the USA is not very good either.

Both France and the US have much larger immigrant populations than Finland. This is a very large contributor to inequality. Even if we did everything else just like the Fins, we wouldn't get the same results. Halting immigration would both reduce inequality and raise achievement in the US. But I'm not in favor of doing so, because those statistics don't tell the whole story.

 

[Drachasor]

Both France and the US have much larger immigrant populations than Finland. This is a very large contributor to inequality. Even if we did everything else just like the Fins, we wouldn't get the same results. Halting immigration would both reduce inequality and raise achievement in the US. But I'm not in favor of doing so, because those statistics don't tell the whole story.

France treats their immigrants like crap. The U.S. treats education like crap. So wow, yeah, no surprise about massive disparities in either.

Norway, Russia (of all places), Italy, and Australia are also good. So I don't think there's much reason to think immigration is a massive factor, especially in a country like the USA where we assimilate people pretty quickly.

I mean heck, you act like it is some sort of major factor, but when you examine reality tons and tons and tons of people who are not immigrants are not doing well at all in the USA. Our funding isn't done fairly. Our teachers aren't educated very well. Our standards are poor. Efforts to improve resources dramatically aren't very good. And we tend to let our inner cities rot. But yeah, it must be those dang immigrants messing things up!

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I went to an all-black high school (except for me; long story) in the poor part of town my senior year. No such resources were available to us. We had virtually no resources at all. We couldn't afford a homecoming dance or yearbooks. In those days, it was considered perfectly legitimate to give the lion's share of school money to the white schools and let the black schools get by as best they could. Things are better now. They're still not great.

How old are you? Across the US, the correlatrion (% minority enrollment, $/pupil) is positive. See Digest of Education Statistics, selected characteristics of the nation's top 150 largest school districts (or top 130 largest districts, depending on the year of the Digest you use). Across the US, the correlation (enrollment, $/pupil) is positive in all but three or four States with ten or more districts over 15,000 enrollment (or 20,000, depending). Those large, urban, majority-minority districts (large, urban districts) get more money per pupil than suburban white districts. Kozol's thesis, that (a) property taxes fund schools and consequently (b) majority-minority districts get less money, is false and has been since before Kozol's Savage Inequalities appeared.

The original standardized test, Binet's IQ test, was designed to address income inequality. Binet believed that home environment gave the children of wealthy parents an advantage in other pre-admission screening methods and tried to create an instrument that could identify inate intellectual ability.

 

[Ziggurat]

Norway, Russia (of all places), Italy, and Australia are also good. So I don't think there's much reason to think immigration is a massive factor, especially in a country like the USA where we assimilate people pretty quickly.

Your link is broken. But I'm surprised to see Russia on that list, because I wasn't under the impression that Russia got a lot of immigration. Do you have a source for that?

I mean heck, you act like it is some sort of major factor, but when you examine reality tons and tons and tons of people who are not immigrants are not doing well at all in the USA.

I didn't say it was the only factor, the most important factor, or even the only big factor. But damn straight it's a big factor. They score at the low end. That will both drag down the average and increase the spread. Are you claiming that this is not the case? Are you claiming that their achievement level matches the general population?

Our funding isn't done fairly.

We've been cranking up the funding across the board for decades now, and it hasn't helped. The problem isn't a lack of money.

But yeah, it must be those dang immigrants messing things up!

Way to misinterpret what I said. My whole point was that they weren't "messing things up", precisely because the statistics don't tell the whole story. They are lowering the average test scores and increasing the spread, but that's only a problem if you're fixated on the statistics themselves, and not the reality behind them. I'm not. Why are you?