SAT: Measuring Intelligence or Wealth

By: Gregory Rogers

 

The Scholastic Assessment Test is one of the most widely used, if not the most widely used standardized test for college admissions. The SAT takes 3 hours and 45 minutes to complete, and is meant to measure students reasoning and problem solving skills in Mathematics, Writing, and Critical Reading. The test will be scored on a scale of 600 to 2400, of course the higher scores mean one’s reasoning skills are superior to others.

 

However there is much debate to whether or not the SAT is an accurate measure of one’s academic potential. The 2009 score report shows a positive correlation between income and test scores, with students from families with incomes of 200,000 and over averaging scores of about 1702 as compared to students coming from a lower income family of about 20,000 average a score around 1321. What does this mean exactly? To put it simply the test is swayed towards those of higher income levels, because the test references situations students from lower income levels wouldn’t be able to relate to the same way a student from a higher income level would, i.e. critical reading stories about lacrosse tournaments, math questions asking about installing a new entertainment center, writing to a prompt about success.

 

Of course the SAT would be swayed towards people of higher incomes, as the test was first administered by Harvard in the 1930s to determine scholarship awards, and then many Ivy League schools adopted it as a scholarship test very soon after. So a test originally designed for wealthier students would logically yield greater results for wealthier students. Is this because of the student’s actual intelligence, or because of the ability to afford private tutors, take prep classes, and attend private schooling?

 

Starting from the beginning, in 1905 Alfred Binet alongside Theodore Simon invented the first practical test to measure someone’s Intelligence Quotient. The test was then popularized in America by Lewis Terman and Robert Yerkes, and during WWI the APA aided the U.S. government in Psychological Examination of officers, where Robert Yerkes who was president of the APA at the time (1917) teamed with fellow Psychologist Carl Brigham to create the Army Alpha and Beta Intelligence tests.

 

This all seems fine and dandy, however, Terman and Yerkes were also both Executive Psychologists of the American Eugenics Society, a society dedicated to the “bettering” of the human race by inhibiting those deemed “inferior” from propagating. The IQ tests administered were not done to reform education, but instead to sort out the lower IQs from the higher ones. Much like how the SAT helps colleges determine who they should admit and award scholarships based off whether they think the admittee will grow up to discover cold fusion or a miracle cure.

 

How does this explain the SAT being swayed though? Carl Brigham took the Alpha and Beta IQ tests, reformed them a little, and created the Scholastic Aptitude Test. In addition to that, Carl Brigham himself was also a key individual in the Eugenics movement with the publication of his work A Study of American Intelligence, where he links genetics of race to intelligence, and claims the mixing of races “pollutes” the gene pool and specifically makes a claim that blacks are the most “inferior” of the races. That doesn’t mean that a test designed by a racist will always be racist, but it doesn’t mean it was created with equality in mind.

 

Bringing it back forward, that was a long time ago, things are different now. However racism is not an acceptable institution of any society, and while Jim Crow and Interment are over, that level of oppression only shrunk, as assumptions based off of race are still made, even by the SAT. in 1980, the SAT started the “strivers” project, where if a student scored 200 points over the expected score for their race, physical sex, and income level then they would be given a “striver” status on their score. The project was made to help improve the chance of minorities getting into a higher standard school, like Harvard. While it seems like a good idea, this made the assumption that without the “Strivers” status the student wouldn’t have been able to get admitted on their own. So, the Strivers Project was terminated in 1993 after Federal courts heard from the ACLU and NAACP, and decided that only age, race, and zip code were proper determinants for whether a student would have been able to receive the “strivers” status.

 

To put it simply, the SAT has changed with the years gone by but it’s essence has remained the same. A sorting tool that keeps the people who have held the power keep their power. Those people being wealthy, white males.

 

The SAT wasn’t supposed to be used as a sorting tool. James Contant, the president of Harvard University, asked his subordinate Henry Chauncey who presented him with the SAT, “Are you sure this is a pure aptitude test, pure intelligence? That is what I want to measure, because that is the way I think we can give poor boys the best chance and take away the advantage of the rich boys.” James Conant was progressive in a way, as he supported Harvard students of lower class families. He did away with athletic scholarships, and opened scholarships for underprivileged students. The way to eliminate social classes is through higher education. White protestant males, probably descendants of the original colonial settlers held the power, and Conant wanted to dethrone them.

 

In the early days of the SAT, there was this idea of Meritocracy, a word made of Latin and Greek meaning “Ruled by the best.” It sounds childish, but power in a meritocracy is awarded to those who are capable, not those who have potential. Scholarships are awarded by schools who think the student will use the knowledge and skills gained in their years of college to change the world. However, that system is a fraud because there is no obligation for public service with a scholarship. People have their own goals, and nowadays it’s to do something creative to make money, not to make life on earth easier for humanity. In short, intelligence and aptitude do not equate with being a well rounded and compassionate individual.

 

Meritocracy creates less opportunity for minorities, women, and lower income families. Bakke is constantly overturned, universities are just filling quotas, numbers are attached to students applications and minorities are just part of a statistic.

 

Not that the statistics are accurate. Because colleges put so much emphasis on awarding those with high SAT scores, multiple companies and schools have set up preparation materials that aid students in essentially cheating the test. You can't actually change a person's intelligence quotient, but you can teach a student how to answer the SAT questions the way the College Board wants you to?

 

So this raises the question of whether the SAT can still be an accurate determinant for college enrollment? In Carl Brigham's later years in life he reformed his ways and renounced his work A Study of American Intelligence , as well as the SAT as a proper tool for college admittance.

 

When it comes down to it there is no proper way to measure someone's academic potential, because in theory anyone could make perfect scores it they tried hard enough, like on the SAT. But what about the dropouts, the G.E.D.s , the students who constantly were on the brink of flunking all four years of high school? It is very much possible for those who hit rough patches to completely turn it around and make their way to the top of the Dean's list then onto the cover of Forbes if they really put their mind to it.