FairTest has been posting SAT score tables on its website which show that poor and minority students do worse on the exam than white, wealthier students, and the College Board isn't happy about it. It's a matter of debate as to whether this is an indictment of the tests (as FairTest maintains) or of our educational system (as I maintain), but, interestingly, that's not really the point of the latest controversy:
The nonprofit College Board, which owns the SAT college entrance exam, has demanded that its chief critic remove from its Web site data showing that minority and poor students scored lower than white and upper-class kids. The letter to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, also called FairTest, claims the Cambridge-based nonprofit organization violated copyright law by posting the scores without permission.
"Unfortunately, your misuse overtly bypasses our ownership and significantly impacts the perceptions of students, parents, and educators regarding the services we provide," stated the letter, signed by College Board legal affairs assistant director Tasheem Lomax-Plaxico.
FairTest, which opposes an overreliance on standardized tests, posted the Oct. 27 letter on its Web site along with its refusal to comply with the College Board's demand. FairTest argues that the data is widely available in the public domain and therefore not subject to copyright protection.
Needless to say, this gives FairTest the opportunity to get up on their soapbox about how CB don't want any negative information about their test to be released, but the public is already quite aware of test score gaps.
Critics long have attacked the tests as unfair, chiefly because white students tend to do better than other groups. Many reasons are offered -- family income and education, school quality, courses taken, access to tutors and test-prep courses.
If they've "long attacked the test as unfair," it's hard to believe that CB is really trying to "hide" something from us now. This sounds like one for the lawyers to sort out. It's interesting, though, that the AP doesn't see fit to point out that three of the six "unfair" reasons above - courses taken, access to tutors and test-prep courses - are directly related to the amount of effort a student is willing to put into their education. Saying it's "unfair" for a student who takes more difficult courses, spends extra hours with tutors, and prepares for the SAT, to receive a higher score is ludicrous.
If anything, the list of reasons above suggests a great deal of validity evidence for inferences made with the SAT, because we'd expect those with more money, better schools, harder courses, and more preparation to do better. It's not the score gap that is seen as unfair so much as the disparate opportunities that lead to it.
Posted by kswygert at December 6, 2004 12:25 PM