Biased SATs?

I have a question that's been in the news a few weeks ago. The NCAA ruled that SATs were culturally biased, and sought to lower the standards for athletes.

This is not the first time I've heard about culturally biased SATs, but I've failed to find one example of such a question. I've looked in magazine articles and the internet and all they say is "yes, it's biased".

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"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument" - William McAdoo

Oh, the question:

Does anyone know of any examples of culturally biases questions?

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"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument" - William McAdoo

I can't remember if this was from the SATs - probably not, as it seems geared to a younger age group - but I do remember reading about one question that was pulled from some standardized test after numerous complaints about cultural bias.

Q. You go to the store for a loaf of bread, and the store is out of bread. What do you do?

The "correct" answer is "go to another store." But many inner city children responded "go home" - which is what they actually WOULD do, but they were marked wrong for it.

IIRC many of the complaints about cultural bias had to do with specific words that the upper classes would simply have far more occasion to use than poor children. "Regatta" is the only one of these words that comes to mind at the moment, but I'm sure there are others.

Well, the culturally biased standardized tests are basically just an excuse to get undereducated kids into colleges for athletic or quota reasons. This is one of the big arguements for the need o teach and accept ebonics as a language, all in all quite ridiculous. You may recall that over half the test is math, verbal reasoning, and science that are totally objective culturally. The only topic of argument is the reading comprehension. They used to use fictional works and period pieces for reading that could use dated and culture specific terms. Now today this practice is practically banished and the bias is very small, they use scientific journal entries, non-fiction pieces and news clippings. These articles should be totaly objective. The only arguement is that the schools and parents of undereducated kids simply do not teach the level of curiculum that gives them a chance. Good schools have calculus, and high level vocabulary, where poor schools simply don't teach those skills. Is this cultural bias? I don't think so. The schools aren't keeping up and in my opinion this shouldn't be compensated for, but rather fixed. So when I hear about kids and worse school faculty bitching about bias, I imediately think the school is just looking for any excuse to explain why they aren't doing their job well. Now I know the reasons for the shortcomings are vast, but the solution isn't to lower the standards for colleges, but rather to raise them in the schools.

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The facts expressed here belong to everybody, the opinions to me. The distinction is
yours to draw...

Omniscient; BAG

Here is an example of a biased question:
grain is to silo as car is to ___
(it goes something like that)
the answer is like garage? I think.
But someone who grew up in an urban environment would not necessarily know what a silo is, since it really would not be part of any curriculum.

That grain/silo argument is ludicrous. I grew up miles from any silo and I know what it is because i read occasionally. The SAT isnt a test for "personal experience" knowledge (i.e. knowing what a silo is because you've seen one). Its a test of book knowledge. Silo is a perfectly standard vocabulary word just as much as "overpass" (biased to the ruralites) or "pitchfork" (biased to urbanites) I even know what "regatta" means and I've never been on more than a rowboat and I certainly have no affiliation with the regatta crowd. If you've ever taken any standardized test you'll notice that as the words get harder, you get words that NO-ONE uses in everyday speech. They are words you only might know from reading or education. I dont gripe if i get those wrong, I never complained that no-one in my home ever said "rococo" or "coterie". Its just part of education. If you carry this argument forward then it would be unfair to test kids on american history because they never saw Abraham Lincoln or the civil war. Obviously if the test included "gefilte fish" it might be a problem but it clearly isnt that bad, and i think that if someone taking the SAT doesnt know what a silo is he/she deserves a low grade.

What are the chances of getting some comments from a black person, or someone from another minority culture, who went to public schools in a big city. I'd like to hear their thoughts.

I taught classes on taking GRE's and other graduate exams at schools on the east coast. When teaching at Coppin State (a predominantly black school) I found that the students were significantly less prepared than other schools. A professor explained to me that the school accepts students with good grades from the city high schools but sometimes found that students in the top 10% of their highschool class were reading at a 3rd grade level. The university offered many remedial classes and I think does a great job of turning out a credible batch of graduates. This is not an easy task for the faculty. This was the hardest working faculty that I have witnessed. Students have to work extra-hard too.

Many of these students are the first generation of college students in their families. I ask help from my father on difficult problems even now that I am a professional. He should charge my company a consulting fee. He helped me through line integration in Calc III. Do I have an unfair cultural advantage?

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If men had wings,
and bore black feathers,
few of them would be clever enough to be crows.

- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher

how can we have culturaly biased questions when the test are, by default designed to rank people within the predominant (anglo) culture?

I don't hear anybody complaining that the SAT is not available in Yiddish or Vietnamese versions.

Please define "anglo culture".

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"I think it would be a great idea" Mohandas Ghandi's answer when asked what he thought of Western civilization

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What are the chances of getting some comments from a black person, or someone from another minority culture, who went to public schools in a big city. I'd like to hear their thoughts.
***********

The reason I asked the question is because it kind of sounds like a cop-out. I just wanted some examples before I took "cultural bias" at face value.

My wife is Filipina and emigrated from there when she was 12. Obviously, not being from here and having English as a second language, this should've put her at a distinct disadvantage.

She got a 1420 on her SAT.

The EEOC, the government agency that enforces Affirmative Action cases, claims that in tests for employment, a test is culturally biased if it can be shown that one race consistently performs better at it than another. In SATs, for instance, the average score among white Americans is significantly higher than the average score among African Americans. Therefore, according to the EEOC, the test is biased by definition. A number of companies have been successfully sued for using SATs for employment requirements.

-Quadell

Almost all tests are biased in one fashion or another. It takes some work to decide just how.

How about psychology tests like the MMPT? A question might be 'Do people look at you when you are in a restaurant?.' A deaf person signing in a restuarant gets a lot of that, so they would answer 'yes' thus bringing up their 'paranoia' score.

I don't know if the SATs are culturally biased or not, but I do know that among many foreign students from e.g. India and other places, getting less than a perfect 1600 is considered a failure. Since Indian (etc) culture is quite different from US culture, it would seem possible to do well and still be from a different culture.

I teach the verbal section of SAT classes, and I am extremely hard pressed to think of a question that could be considered culturally biased.

The SAT I is basically a logic and vocabulary test. To say that someone doesn't know the vocabulary and therefore the test is biased is to imply that everyone is exactly as qualified for every endevor everywhere. The purpose of the SAT I is to rank kids in their knowledge and reasoning skills coming into college. If we are going to make excuses for everyone that doesn't know as much as someone else, we might as well do away with the scoring or admission process entirely.

Now, I'm probably even more aware of the problem of inner city schools that most of the people on this board, having taught in them. The parents never finished high school themselves, or dropped out of El Salvadoran elementary school, and don't speak any English, etc. But recognizing the reasons behind a problem and making excuses are two different things.

There seems to be an attitude in America that if everyone is not considered to be exactly the same, there is something wrong. What should be true is that everyone is given the same opportunity to make it as far as they can. That's where the responsibility of the schools comes. They need to be giving those kids the opportunity to learn. But what are the universities supposed to do? I applaud the one that was whipping into shape those third grade reading levels, but that's not ever going to be the norm, although it's possibly a model for fixing a lot of the problem.

This is going to sound funny, but I feel that the biggest problem is cultures being biased against the SAT. That is, the parents take no interest in their child's education (the fourth grader I had that couldn't read a word), they give no support to the teacher concerning things like discipline ("It's a school problem. It's your problem, teacher"), and the guys in the neighborhood constantly tease any guy that would actually behave himself in class and be interested in the work. There is a great amount of social pressure to *not* do well in school.

Yes, the SAT I is designed to test a student's worldliness, if you want to put it that way. So I see no problem with testing urban kids on silos. And believe me, no one in the Asian families that we often work with would even think to make that kind of excuse. They would just learn it.

Immigrating from Germany (knowing only the English words "Mommy", "Daddy", "I love you", and "Jail") when I was ten, raised by a single mother with two other children, living in low-income housing and even being on food stamps (only one month), I still got a 1550 on my SAT.

I think the SAT Dave only measures what a person has learned in school. Deaf [Or other special] students learn a lot less because they can't hear [assuming they don't get an interpreter, which they often don't] in school. Naturally they get lower scores on the test but that does not effect their
worldliness.

It should be called the white severely able body person's test of what they learned in school.

The argument for the silo question is that most white people (even if you grew up MILES away). Why would any inner city youth know?? Would he read the farmer's almanac? Or would he be naturally interested in farming?? I don't think you can assume that ANY child would know what a silo is. You can assume that more rural children than urban would. Ask a child from a farm what it means to tag something. He would say it means to hit. An urban child would say it means to spray paint it. Many SAT questions can be answered from personal experience, and the argument is that rural youths have an edge because they can answer more questions as a result of their life experiences. Lower income youths are also less likely to travel, and (from personal experience) attend grade schools with poorer computer and library facilities. The SAT is not designed to test how much you have learned, it is supposed to predict your proficiency in acquiring a higher education.
If it was to test what you know, it should test for foreign language, science, physical education, history, etc. (more like the ACT)

OK, coming down off my high horse a bit, I will admit that the SAT I (and not SAT II, there is a distinct difference) is supposed to be a logic and mental ability test, and that it is not entirely what it claims to be. If it were I would have a much harder time coaching better scores. The verbal portion relies very heavily on the vocabulary. I can help teach vocabulary. I cannot teach entire patterns of thinking from the start. So obviously it is somewhat a knowledge test.

I also realize the effects of this discrepancy in what is said and what is done. When I taught in Compton, CA (home of such societal stars as NWA, etc), I had two fourth graders tested for the gifted program. They did not make it, even the one that would sometimes have the work done before I got through making sure all the kids understood the directions.

Being trapped in a rat hole neighborhood like that, there was no way they were going to get the chance to use their abilities to the full, if all they were going to be tested on amounted to their current knowledge base, and not *their ability to learn.* That's what's really important. Treyvon, part scourge of the classroom from boredom, part star student, had far and away the best ability to learn in the room. But not enough knowledge to make it "gifted."

Prattling on, what really sucked in that school was the enforcement of an idea that had spread throughout the state, which was that "tracking," or assigning classes based on ability, was racist and counterproductive.

Almost nothing could have been less productive than the system that was in use. If we had taken the whole grade and divided it up into ability classes, we could have made some progress, but no, I had pre-K ability through 5th grade ability, and was expected to teach 6 grade levels at once, to kids whose families many times regarded school as a place to take the kids off their hands and feed them.

Whewww...
Sorry for the rant.

I do appreciate the problem. But if anyone has any better ideas for say, Stanford, to use, let's have them. Or should they admit everyone, regardless of their knowledge base, and have half the entering class flunk?

There are many reasons why kids don't do well on these, and some of them just aren't fair at all. They're getting the shaft, no two ways about it. But as a university president, with a budget that is only covering giving a good education to the ones that are arriving with the ability to graduate, what do you propose to do different?

The problem seems to be with the schools, and dare I say it (you bet I dare, after meeting some of the parents I have), the parents.

Thanks for listening. We welcome relplies.

I didn't want this thread to be an argument of the merits of cultural bias. I wanted some examples of questions that were considered culturally biased. Frankly, questions about silos and regatta have left me unimpressed. Words like silo and barn are fairly common and can be found in many picture books, even if you've never seen one in real life.

Most of the postings I've seen deal with economic bias, where poor people in cities (regardless of race) would have less access to computers, travelling, quality education, etc. Poor people in rural areas would also have that disadvantage, as would immigrants. That they score less on SATs may reflect those disadvantages, but that's hardly a call for cultural bias.

While the ruling that college athletes must have at least a 700 may seem unfair, anyone who cannot get 1/3 of the questions right does not belong in a college classroom, regardless how well they dribble or run. It's unfair to those athletes, of whom less than 3% make the pros.

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"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument" - William McAdoo

HubZilla writes, "...college athletes ... regardless how well they dribble or run."

I've met some college athletes, and they definately do dribble. Mostly during meals and while talking :-)

But on a more serious note, I think the SATs are OK - they test what you've learned, and how well you've retained what you've learned - but that's only so useful. I did pretty well on them way back when, but I was thinking the other day that if I retook them "cold" now, I doubt I'd do nearly as well. Yet I arguably know more now than I did when I took them! But the type of things I know has changed. I've forgotten a lot of "middle level" knowledge that I haven't used since high school, like a lot of chemistry topics, say, but I've gained both shallow, broad level knowledge, and very deep but narrow knowledge in various technical areas. The SATs, IMHO, measure the "mid level" knowledge more than anything. They don't measure the broad stuff, such as how much you know about the world's major cultures, nor the deep stuff, such as numerical modeling of hypersonic flow around airfoils.

Someday just for grins I may have a go at re-taking the SAT and see what happens. Rumor also has it they've gotten easier over the years.

k0myers (won't say just how many years it has been :-)

Roksez writes:
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The argument for the silo question is that most white people (even if you grew up MILES away). Why would any inner city youth know?? Would he read the farmer's almanac? Or would he be naturally interested in farming?? I don't think you can assume that ANY child would know what a silo is. You can assume that more rural children than urban would. Ask a child from a farm what it means to tag something. He would say it means to hit. An urban child would say it means to spray paint it. Many SAT questions can be answered from personal experience, and the argument is that rural youths have an edge because they can answer more questions as a result of their life experiences. Lower income youths are also less likely to travel, and (from personal experience) attend grade schools with poorer computer and library facilities.
_____________________________________________

Buddy, I am white and i have no inclination whatsoever to read a farmers almanac or to go out and hoe the corn patch. Knowing what a silo is comes from reading books like "Burton the field mouse" and "James builds a barn" or other such books which children read at some point in their lives. (the titles are fictional, the point remains) I have as much connection to a silo as a black inner city youth. If we really are going to take this argument seriously then it would be unfair to include words like "sidewalk" or "subway". Both things which a little-travelled rural youth has never seen and has no use for. But any rational person knows that if you've received an education of any merit whatsoever you would know what these things are. Again, I make my point, would it be unfair to test kids on American history because they werent there when it happened?
And you claim rural kids have an edge....They do? Are the majority of the words on the SAT related to rural life? Would you consider "regatta" a word which a farm kid from nebraska would have more access to than an inner-city kid?? There is no question that many kids are denied a good education for various reasons, and perhaps more should be focused on bringing equity to the situation, but lets not make believe that if a test shows someone to have a poor education that the test is biased.

Besides for this, it's biased towards the upper class inherently.
The nature of the test is such that you can pay thousands of dollars for prep courses that will significantly improve your score...I have even heard of people having personal daily SAT tutors from when they were 13, resulting in a score of very nearly 1600.

Now, you can't tell me that a low-income kid is going to have that opportunity...



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Love,
Pippy

And now, for something completely different.

Besides for this, it's biased towards the upper class inherently.
The nature of the test is such that you can pay thousands of dollars for prep courses that will significantly improve your score...I have even heard of people having personal daily SAT tutors from when they were 13, resulting in a score of very nearly 1600.

Now, you can't tell me that a low-income kid is going to have that opportunity...



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Love,
Pippy

And now, for something completely different.

Can we get a list of specific biased questions, and the reasons they are biased? We've only seen two examples here, and only one of them, "regatta" is a word that (from other reading) I know actually appeared on the SATs. I think the person who said "silo" was just giving an example of a type of word that could be biased.

Can we get some idea of what percentage of the questions on any one test are thought to be biased? How much does this affect a score?
If there are one or two "biased" vocabulary words on the test, and a student misses both, how many points difference does that translate into? Probably not much, so the amount of such bias on any test is highly relevant.

Also, the tests are clearly measuring general knowledge to some degree, but so what? It is the GENERAL knowledge that one needs in college! College is taught in colloquial American English, isn't it? Take an extreme example - a kid fresh off the boat from... Iceland may not do too well; he does not speak English AT ALL, say, so the test is as culturally biased against him as can possibly be. He gets a zero. It certainly doesn't measure his ability to learn, but then again it DOES reflect how well prepared he is to enter an American university: not at all, until he learns the common language of our culture.

Here's an SAT question for you, biased in favor of the rural kids.

BODKIN : BREAST :: CAP : _________
a)FOOT
b)ASS
c)LYCANTHROPE
d)ELEEMOSYNARY
e)HAT

"The argument for the silo question is that most white people (even if you grew up MILES
away). Why would any inner city youth know?? Would he read the farmer's almanac?"

Most city people know what a "silo" is, and most rural people know what a "subway" is, even if they have never left their hometown. That's because there's a little invention called "television". Even before that, there were two inventions known as "radio" and "motion pictures."

In other words, since the 1920s and the advent of the big movie studios and the nationwide radio networks, there has been a common culture in the U.S.. The same movies, music, and television shows are available in the inner city, the suburbs, and the farming village.

My focus in college was on 20th Century history, and one of the big trends in this century has been the creation of a common culture. Before movies and radio, the farm dweller had only the vaguest notions of city life, while the city dweller had only the vaguest notions of life on the farm. After the 1920s, the farm boy fresh to the city would have some idea how to dress and act there from seeing movies. Not a totally accurate idea by any means, but at least a passable one, useful in a "rule of thumb" sort of way.

In other words, I don't buy "silo" or "regatta" as some sort of sinister shibboleth to weed out the "white severely able-bodied people" (as someone put it) from everyone else.

Hi all. I am a white, middle class, jewish urban dweller who grew up in NYC

the *only* vocab question I got wrong on my SAT had to do with the definition of "Winnow" which, as I learned later has to do with separating the "wheat from the chaff". I definately regarded this question as rurally biased at the time. I'm sorry but I had read more books than anyone else I knew at the time (everything from the Uberclassics to the complete works of Robert Heinlein) and had never come across this word.

I happened to know what chaff is because I had an obsession with horses and British publications describe chaff as something appropriate to feed a horse (never saw it recommended in a US publication).

In sum, I agree that *some* words on the SAT are probably be biased -- to someone. On the other hand, biased questions didn't come between me a a very high score...just me and a perfect score.

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"probably be biased"

it appears that my language skills have degraded somewhat since H.S. -- sorry.
-Rmariamp

Rmariamp: probably the primary source for separating "wheat from chaff" is not direct agricultural knowledge, but the Bible, where this symbolizes separating the good from the evil. That would give this question a distinct Christian bias.

Jens: Non-Christian agrarian cultures had to separate the wheat from the chaff too. Seperating wheat from chaff may infer Christianity in your experience, but it's not a culturally specific topic.

The Bible does use the word "winnow", but only in Isaiah and Jerremiah. And those books are a definite part of Jewish culture too.

Words in the Bible shouldn't be excluded unless they're not used in other contexts. An Alta-Vista search on "Winnow produces the following general subjects:
- Gourmet wild rice
- Efficient web searching
- Machine language algorithms
- A church in England
- A UFO info site
- An opportunity to buy a Native American agricultural tray

I'm sorry, I don't see a bias.

-Quadell

Quadell, you are correct if you are using the King James version. Both the New International Version and the Revised Standard Version have "winnow" in the New Testament: Matthew 3:12 (actually winnowing").

But I have not personally read the Bible straight through (though I have read Matthew and Genesis and a few others); I did not get MY knowledge of winnowing and chaff from reading the bible. I certainly did not learn it from gourmet rice or UFO sites.

This just happens to be (in my experience) one of the most frequently used images by preachers in their sermons. For a church-going Christian, "winnow" and "chaff" are common, familiar words. For your web search, "winnow" seems to be rather esoteric.

I maintain that a CHURCH-GOING (or Bible scholar) Christian gets a bit of an advantage on that particular word (maybe a Muslim, too, my Alta Vista search on "winnow*" brought up some Koran references also) over some other groups.

Note that I am not condemning the SAT tests on the basis of that one question.

CENSURE : REPREHENSIBLE ::
(A) prize : valuable
(B) provide : supportive
(C) applaud : enthusiastic
(D) inquire : informed
(E) continue : initial

would probably favor those who paid close attention to the Monica Lewinski scandal.

You should be able to find SOME bias in just about every question. As long as these same biases are not repeated (if the next question were one where I had picked up the vocabulary by reading Slaughterhouse Five, and the next one came from the Odyssey I would feel far more comfortable than if the next two questions were also words seen primarily in the Bible and a few other very obscure places) that bias should cancel rather than carry through to blight the entire test.

I am not going to be impressed by people who can find one or two questions that might suggest a bias. I'd have to see what percentage of questions on a test had those questions relative to how big the testing gaps are.

Here's some historical and research based info on biased testing for education and the workplace:

1st let’s look at what’s been said so far:

Omniscient states: "You may recall that over half the test is math, verbal reasoning, and science that are totally objective culturally. The only topic of argument is the reading comprehension."
--incorrect, in fact math is 1st and verbal reasoning is 2nd with regards to discriminating among racial boundaries

smegmum V states "how can we have culturaly biased questions when the test are, by default designed to rank people within the predominant (anglo) culture?"
--incorrect, the SAT, the ACT, the GRE and its disciplinary-focused alternative forms are designed to compare the test taker with a percentile standard of performance based on historical norms of stratified samples from historical test takers. In plain English, the test taker is compared to the "normal scores" of people (taken from specific racial, gender, ethnic, socioeconomic, ...categories) who have taken the test in the past. There is no ‘covert’ ranking of scores, you get a score and the colleges and institutions who use the score rank the candidates, not Educational Testing Services (ETS) or any other company or governmental agency.

quadell states: "The EEOC, the government agency that enforces Affirmative Action cases, claims that in tests for employment, a test is culturally biased if it can be shown that one race consistently performs better at it than another. In SATs, for instance, the average score among white Americans is significantly higher than the average score among African Americans. Therefore, according to the EEOC, the test is biased by definition. A number of companies have been successfully sued for using SATs for employment requirements."
--this whole statement is incorrect. The EEOC doesn’t enforce AA cases, they do not claim discrimination based on consistent racial performance, the EEOC has not and will never address the use of the SAT or any standardized test, they focus on labor not education, and no company has ever been sued for using the SAT for employment requirements, I just looked it up. Furthermore, I have been in the employment selection and assessment business for over ten years and I have never heard of any company using the SAT for selection, and I doubt that any have for many reasons that I will not expand on at this point. However, quadell, your post is the closest thing I have read to remotely explaining culturally biased testing, by indirectly mentioning adverse impact with regards to testing.

Handy states: "Almost all tests are biased in one fashion or another. It takes some work to decide just how.
How about psychology tests like the MMPT? A question might be 'Do people look at you when you are in a restaurant?.' A deaf person signing in a restuarant gets a lot of that, so they would answer 'yes' thus bringing up their 'paranoia' score.
--Handy you are getting there, ALL good tests are biased. That’s what they are designed to do. Some are biased against less intelligent people, some are biased against psychopaths, bad drivers, alcoholics, ...if a test doesn’t bias against something or some group of people than its a piece of shit.

I could go on, but for the sake of getting to the friggin’ point, here’s the deal. The SAT is culturally biased, the ACT is culturally biased, the GRE is culturally biased, any general g-loaded intelligence test is culturally biased, virtually any math test you have ever seen is culturally biased. That’s not my opinion, that’s fact. Why? It is because that historically, minorities (more specifically blacks) score on the average one standard deviation (remember stats class?) lower than whites on the above mentioned tests. Why? No one knows 100% of the reasons, but anyone who is breathing can see some of the factors, shitty school conditions, worse pay for teachers=worse teachers, poor role modeling,...etc. Are the tests culturally biased because of the types of questions they ask (i.e, the wheat example, the silo example) probably not, ETS about ten years ago attempted to remove all the "rural/urban, white/black questions" out of the test and the gap between scores has not significantly changed, so logic tells you nope, its not the questions it’s the subject matter. What I have read regarding the NCAA matter, is nothing that everybody involved with testing hasn’t known for years, I’m not sure why the NCAA decided to act now when this has been very common knowledge for many, many years, but then again, I have heard from contacts that the NCAA is managed by dipshits, so who knows?



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The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it.
George Bernard Shaw

this whole statement is incorrect. The EEOC doesn’t enforce AA cases, they do not claim discrimination based on consistent racial performance, the EEOC has not and will never address the use of the SAT or any
standardized test, they focus on labor not education, and no company has ever been sued for using the SAT for employment requirements, I just looked it up.

I wouldn't say that Quadell's statment is "incorrect" but rather that parts of it may not be applicable. The EEOC does not "enforce" AA cases per se- that is for the courts to do. However, "The mission of the EEOC, as set forth in its strategic plan, is to promote equal opportunity in employment through administrative and judicial enforcement of the federal civil rights laws and through education and technical assistance." The EEOC's def'n of "cultural bias" doesn't apply to SATs being used for college admissions. However, I don't see how you can say that the EEOC will NEVER address the use of standarized testing for employment reasons.

I think that Quadell was simply trying to provide a definition for "cutural bias" as there are people who assume it means "is there anything inherent in the question that it would make it easier/harder for a certain culture to properly answer?" versus those who think that it means "if people from certain cultures do worse on this question (as an aggregate) then it is culturally biased". You won't make any headway on this subject til y'all agree on the def'n of CB.

"Take an extreme example - a kid fresh off the boat from...
Iceland may not do too well; he does not speak English AT ALL, say, so the test is as
culturally biased against him as can possibly be. He gets a zero. It certainly doesn't
measure his ability to learn, but then again it DOES reflect how well prepared he is to
enter an American university: not at all, until he learns the common language of our
culture."

====================

This seems to me to be the entire point. What is the purpose of the SAT? Who commissioned its writing? The College Board did. Its stated purpose is for colleges to discriminate between applicants for admission. They want to know who currently has the skills to make headway at their college, not why they don't.

It's not the colleges' intent or in their ability to control or speculate on what's going on before they get ahold of these kids. That's just not their job.

When the kids arrive at college, they will be expected to participate in literate discussions and read things written at a 12th grade + reading level. Can they? That's all the colleges want to know. And they're not about to throw something out of the curriculum because it mentions silos, and you're from the heart of Manhatten. You're just expected to either know or find out. Tough. They're not in the business of compassion in that manner or remdiation.

After having come off hard nosed, you may notice my previous posts. I'm not saying there's not a problem in the education system as it concerns minorities in America, I just don't think it's the colleges' problem.

Mojo says:

"there are people who assume it means 'is there anything inherent in the question that it would make it easier/harder for a certain culture to properly answer?' versus those who think that it means 'if people from certain cultures do worse on this question (as an aggregate) then it is culturally biased.'"

____________________________________________

I agree this needs to be defined. Does anyone know which definition the NCAA used?

If I were personally accused of being biased using the second definition, I would have to admit guilt. Maybe I have, but thought I was being accused of the first definition (I have some guilt there as well, I suppose, but I eliminate when I spot it. I am not as naive as used to be, and do not profess to have completely eliminated any trace of racism in myself - but I try.). I generally have positive feelings toward people who are "well read." I give "well read" people more respect. I have a few friends who are not "well read" but they had to work harder to gain my friendship. I don't think this makes me racist. Elitist, perhaps. I think that colleges should be elitist in this sense but not racist. If this makes them culturally biased, then so be it.

------------------
If men had wings,
and bore black feathers,
few of them would be clever enough to be crows.

- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher

Mojo, I never said the "EEOC will NEVER address the use of standarized testing for employment reasons."

I said "EEOC has not and will never address the use of the SAT or any standardized test, they focus on labor not education"

I know this because the EEOC is one of my clients, and as long as they fall under a Congressional 'commission' and not a governmental 'department' their boundries are very clear and set in stone (that and the fact that they have about 1/100th the headcount needed to properly do their current job). That being said, I have seen the Department of Labor grow in the past 7 to 8 years into a much larger, farther reaching entity than I ever expected, so they might step into the workplace testing arena with a larger presence, but that's really up to them and the budget dollars Congress gives them.


------------------
The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it.
George Bernard Shaw

...the EEOC has not and will never address the use of the SAT or any standardized test...

You are correct- You did not use those words, I added the "for employment reasons" part myself. What I was trying to state (and din't do a good job of) was that if a company used standarized testing as criteria for employment this would start to fall under EEOC juridiction. I do not know of any specific company that does this- I was being petty over your use of the word "never" and it really didn't have anything to do with the original post.

I still believe that Quadell was simply trying to furnish a working def'n of "cultural bias", without which we can't decide if a test is culturally biased. Only Q knows that for sure though.

*grumble grumble*

Now you're gonna make me go and look it up, Jahender. I'm leaving town from work today, but on Monday I'll try to make it back with a cite.

Until then, I'll just say there have been cases where companies used SAT scores, high school diplomas, and other similar criteria for employment, and were forced to discontinue this practice by the EEOC. That's why companies don't use the SAT anymore.

I'd also like to offer the following opinion.
Imagine that a company makes hiring decisions based on a test performance, and this test measures only the ability to add and subtract. Imagine further that applicants of one culture performs better on this test on average than applicants of another culture (leading to a culturally imbalanced workforce). I maintain that this is not the fault of the company in question, and that the company should not have to suffer from accusations of "culture bias" or "racism" in their hiring practices.

Am I alone in this opinion?

Your Quadell

quadell: I agree with reservations.

If the company has reason to believe that adding and subtracting are in some way correllated with job performance, they are free from any charge of racism in my book.

If the company studied the races carefully to find some measure that had a racial correlation (which turned out to be adding and subtracting), and then used that measure, despite the fact they were hiring people to gather litter, they are racist.

In either case, I support freedom of association, so they should be legally permitted to discriminate against anyone they don't like. And potential employees and customers should keep that in mind (i.e., if they were truly heinous I would prefer not to shop or work there).

I'm a little surprised no one has commented on this in a while.

The idea of calling a test racially biased because a certain race scores lower on an average seems nonsensical to me. I really want to know if this is the definition being used.

I worked as a bartender on a boat for a couple of years. Part of my job was to carry kegs of beer up stairs on a moving vessel. We had one female bartender and, on some small cruises, when she worked alone she had to do without draft beer resulting in an occasional complaint. The captain and deck hands were not allowed to carry the kegs because the laws on alcohol and boating. Does this mean that their policy of not hiring any more bartenders who cannot carry a keg a sexist policy?

How about racist? So far, they have no black bartenders, all blacks who have applied failed the keg test, though they did have one a long time ago before the test was instituted. He could carry a keg in an emergency but the rest of us would usually cover for him.

------------------
If men had wings,
and bore black feathers,
few of them would be clever enough to be crows.

- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher

You must have had some pretty wimpy black dudes applying.

I am a fairly well-educated person, from a blue-collar white neighborhood in New York City. I went to an Ivy League college, in large measure because my SAT scores were very high. Other students from my high school, students who had better grades than I did, did not get into this same college, because their SATs were not as high as mine. To me, THAT is a far more serious issue than alleged racial bias.

I think almost everyone will agree that, all other things being equal, a student's grades are a MUCH better predictor of how he/she will do in college than the SATs. Unfortunately, high schools in the USA are NOT equal! A student with straight A's at some lousy city high school may be a far poorer student that a kid with a B- average at a far more demanding school.

So, since grades given by different high schools can't really be validly compared, colleges need some OTHER measure. That's where the SAT's come in. Now, the SATs could save themselves a LOT of trouble if they changed their name. The "A" stands for aptitude, after all, and NOBODY believes it's an aptitude test. It's a vocabulary and math test- nothing more and nothing less. And, in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with that. To succeed in college, you DO need a degree of reading/spelling/grammar and math skills.

Should the SATs be treated as gospel? Of course not. A hard-working guy with a 1200 on his SATs may do much better at Harvard than a slacker with a 1600 score. For that matter, a college dropout (Bill Gates, Michael Dell) may do much better in the business world than a guy who graduates summa cum laude from Harvard! The SATs aren't everything, but they aren't nothing. MOST people fall into the middle of the pack- a guy who scored 1000 one day might well have scored 900 or 1100 on a different day, even without coaching. And that swing is crucial! An 1100 will get you into almost any quality college, while a 900 makes you a borderline candidate at best. So, fair-to-middling scorers on the SAT have valid reasons to gripe. BUT... if you're at either end of the spectrum, facts are facts. If you score a 1600, you are mighty bright. And if you can't score even a 700... you're a mighty dim bulb. Maybe your school system failed you, maybe you're just a moron, but whatever the reason.... you do NOT belong in college.

However, if you want to talk about stupid. pointless, worthless tests... look at the LSAT and the GMAT. These tests are of no value whatever, and I say that even though I scored extremely well on the GMAT! My ex-wife was a business major in college, and worked many years as a financial analyst and bond trader. I, on the other hand, had no background in business- I was a liberal arts major. On a whim, I took the GMAT and got a 720, which would get me into almost any good business school. She took the test, and did miserably. Never mind cultural bias- the "logic" questions on the GMAT are absurd, fit for a Mensa book of puzzles, but worthless as a way of judging whether you're qualified to be a high-level business executive or financial wizard. The idea that I'm better qualified to succeed in business school than my ex-wife (a woman who THRIVED in the REAL business world) is insane, and for that reason, I have no respect for that test.

Astorian: Studies have been conducted that show that SAT scores are a better predictor of college performance than high school grades.

Yes, all tests are biased. You could designed a test in which only athletes would do well. How fast can you run a mile or what is your best distance in the running broad jump?

Astorian writes:

> An 1100 will get you into almost any
> quality college, while a 900 makes you a
> borderline candidate at best.

No, an 1100 would be considered rather mediocre at most top colleges (and a 900 would be considered hopeless for admission). That score might get you in if you were a top athlete or if you had almost straight A's at a good school (so that the admissions people could argue that you were a good student who had a bad day when you took the SAT test). It's not even true that a score of 1400 would guarantee your admission to a top college.

Wendell Wagner

Headless Cow states that the SATs are a better predictor of college success than high chool grades. That MAY be true if you're measuring the success/failure rates of ALL students taking the test in a given year. As I stated earlier, America's high schools vary widely in quality, and it's hard to judge whether straight A's at one high school are really better than straight B's at another. There are high schools, after all, where you get an A for little more than showing up and not committing any felonies. There are also schools like the Bronx School of Science, where a truly gifted student may have a C+ average.

Given this disparity, the SAT may be a better predictor of college success than high school grades for the student population as a whole. But I GUARANTEE that, within the Bronx School of Science, the kids with high grades and mediocre SATs will far surpass the kids with low grades and high SATs.

As I stated earlier, I did quite well on the SAT- I got a 1480 overall (780 verbal, 700 math). This was far higher than many classmates with better grades achieved. I don't criticize the SAT because I myself was wronged by it in any way. Quite the contrary! The SAT been berry berry good to me! It got me into an Ivy League college, when my grades wouldn't have. I question its merits precisely because I KNOW there were better students than yours truly who had to settle for lesser colleges because their SATs weren't as good as mine. That strikes me as unfair, though I admit, I don't know of a perfect alternative.

One last thing: I never claimed that 110 is an outstanding score on the SAT. It certainly wouldn't get you into any of the elite colleges (unless you had something else going for you... like a good jump shot, or a wealthy alumnus in your family). But it WOULD get you into almost any quality college. It would get you into the University of Texas, for instance. Not exactly MIT, I admit, but a quality institution nonetheless.

Aha! Now we're headed for GD. 'Change the college curriculum' you say? To me that sounds like the first step towards altering the society itself. I agree that society could use some changing but we would have to be very careful how we change it.

The colleges will reflect SOME culture and also influence future culture. In the past, the students, faculty, and alumni have argued it out. History has shown that none of these groups is all powerful but all have varying influence.

Now, to exclude a group from this part of society, an historically powerful force in societal change, is a terrible thing. However, the current situation does not exclude. It does make it more difficult for a person from a culture other than the dominant one. I think this is inevitable. People who want to maintain their minority culture give their children a mixed blessing. The children must learn the rules of the dominant society as well as their own. This can be confusing and frustrating but those who perservere often outperform the single culture types.

I think that these problems will always exist in a multicultural environment. And, life will always be easier for the dominant culture. But, easier does not mean better. Those that embrace the additional challenges can work toward positive changes.



------------------
If men had wings,
and bore black feathers,
few of them would be clever enough to be crows.

- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher

I did a term paper on this in college for a Secondary Education degree. Im not bragging, but I just want to let you know I actually studied this subjectat depth a few years back.

I found that it's NOT the SATs that are biased . . IT'S THE COLLEGES. See, SATs only measure HOW WELL a high school graduate will suceed in college based on the COURSE MATERIAL they must master in college, NOT how intelligent the test taker is. Only an IQ type test can measure basic intelligence.

If you want to make SATs fair to minoritoies, you need to change college curriculum first. If you change the SATs without changing the curriculum, the SAT is NOT a proper measurement of future college prformance.



------------------
http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/parliament/1685/

To Spot Bias in SAT Questions,
The Test Maker Tests the Test
By AMY DOCKSER MARCUS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


August 4, 1999
PRINCETON, N.J. -- The question won't ever appear on an SAT test, but the answer is critical to the college-entrance exam's future: Is the SAT fair?

Educational Testing Service, which makes up the SAT, has worked for years to get rid of bias. Yet on average, black and Hispanic students continue to score below whites on the test, and women still lag behind men.

Now there's more concern than ever. In June, the U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights began circulating draft legal guidelines outlining what it considers bias. As a result, colleges using the SAT may face legal action because of the disparate scores.

"We're not saying throw out the SAT, but there are inherent biases in the test," says Dennis M. Walcott, president of the New York Urban League.

"Score disparities exist, but the bias isn't in the SAT," responds Paul A. Ramsey, vice president of ETS.

The test maker argues that a variety of factors explain why whites and men continue to perform better on the SAT than other groups. It notes, for example, that better schools and higher parental income have an impact on test scores and that women still don't take as much advanced math and science as men. Critics counter that the test itself is the culprit, containing language and cultural nuances to which minority kids are less exposed.

ETS says all of its tests are checked for fairness by company reviewers and outside committees appointed by ETS and the College Board, the SAT's sponsor. Reading passages featuring women and minorities have been added to make the test more balanced, and certain topics -- sports and the military, for example -- are avoided.

The company also tests some questions each year on a section of the SAT that doesn't count toward the total score and evaluates how students of various races and sexes fare in answering them. If one group answers a question significantly better than other groups do, the question is banished from future tests.

Wiped Out
Below are questions that were tried out on students who took the SAT exams in 1998. All of the questions were shown to be biased and will not appear on future SAT exams.

Verbal


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DUNE: SAND:

a. beach: ocean
b. drift: snow
c. wave: tide
d. rainbow: color
e. fault: earthquake
Correct Answer: B
Results: 23% more whites than African-Americans and 26% more whites than Hispanics answered the question correctly.
Hypothesis: Regional variations. High proportions of African-Americans and Hispanics live in the south and southwest areas of the country, where there is less familiarity with terms associated with extreme winter weather.


Because Barbara McClintock's identification of 'jumping' genes represented a turning point in genetics, it is considered a ____ event.

a. formulaic
b. tenuous
c. landmark
d. universal
e. surreal
Correct Answer: C
Results: 9% more men than women answered this question correctly.
Hypothesis: Although the question is about a woman scientist, the science terms may have made women more uncomfortable than men.


The actor's bearing on stage seemed ____; her movements were natural and her technique ____.

a. unremitting ... blase
b. fluid ... tentative
c. unstudied ... uncontrived
d. eclectic ... uniform
e. grandiose ... controlled
Correct Answer: C
Results: 9% more women than men answered this question correctly. 8% more African-Americans than whites answered this question correctly.
Hypothesis: Women and African-Americans tend to do better on questions dealing with the humanities or the arts.

Math


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For all positive numbers a and b, [a + b] is defined by [a + b] - (a + b)(ab). If [2a + 2b]-k[a + b], what is the value of k?
Correct Answer: 8
Results: 4% more females answered this question correctly than men.
Hypothesis: Females tend to do relatively better than males on questions, like the one above, that are from the curriculum or textbooks.


If 80 percent of X is equal to 20 percent of Y, then Y is equal to what percent of X?

a. 16%
b. 25%
c. 40%
d. 250%
e. 400%
Correct Answer: E
Results: 12% more men than women answered this question correctly.
Hypothesis: Females tend to do worse than men on questions involving percentages, particularly nonrounded number percentages or percentages over 100.


If the square root of 2x is an integer, which of the following must also be an integer?

a. square root of x
b. x
c. 4x
d. x-squared
e. 2x-squared
Correct Answer: C
Results: 7% more African-Americans than whites answered this question correctly.
Hypothesis: African-Americans tend to do better on problems that come from the standard math curriculum and don't involve applied math.


At North Industries, 1,200 employees are in the health plan and half of all company employees are in the savings plan. Of all the company savings plan members, 800 are in the health plan and 250 are not in the health plan. How many employees of North Industries are not in the health plan?
Correct Answer: 900
Results: 16% more whites than Asian-Americans answered this question correctly.
Hypothesis: Asian-Americans tend to do worse on word problems applied to real life situations than whites of the same ability.

[]
* O X =
+

The figure above is made up of 6 squares and can be folded along the dotted lines to form a cube. When the cube is formed, which of the following symbols will be on the face of the cube that is opposite the face with the symbol?

a. *
b. []
c. +
d. O
e. =
Correct Answer: E
Results: 6% more whites than African Americans answered this question correctly.
Hypothesis: African-Americans tend to do worse on problems that involve figures than whites do.

Source: Educational Testing Service

Copyright © 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Wow, if those questions are biased I wonder how you can possibly write an unbiased question. I do see how the drift:snow question could be called biased, but the rest all appear fine to me as long as there is a balance of questions. If you have one applied math problem for every 'curicular' question, doesn't that make the test fair?

------------------
If men had wings,
and bore black feathers,
few of them would be clever enough to be crows.

- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher

Wow! What a fantastic post! Thanks, Dmitiri.

So this leads up to a question. Am I sexist against women if I ask my students questions about a woman scientist? Does the fact that women are more often intimidated by scientific terms mean that to avoid sexism, I should actively avoid using scientific terms?

I say no. And I don't think the SAT should have to avoid using scientific terms for that reason either.

Your Quadell

[Cardinal]

Wow, "drift and snow" are considered to be biased terminology? I really don't see it, especially since it is very likely to come up in some sort of reading in college, whereas "regattas" is admittedly less likely.

So I have another point to throw out, and someone can attack it:

In any random distribution, there is by definition going to be some clumping in the distribution of whatever - correct answers, or cancer cases, etc.

Deciding that clumps and high points in the distribution shows a cause is the kind of thinking that lead to the theory that power transformers on power poles were giving people leukemia.

OF COURSE someone is doing better on percentages! If that weren't true, we would suspect everyone of having collaborated on the answers.

My cop friend once told me that when investigating a collision or crime, if the stories include all the same details and don't slightly contradict each other, you should immediately suspect the witnesses of having agreed on what to say beforehand.

OK, now feel free to discuss and fillet.

[John Bredin]

"DUNE: SAND:
a. beach: ocean
b. drift: snow
c. wave: tide
d. rainbow: color
e. fault: earthquake
Correct Answer: B
Results: 23% more whites than African-Americans and 26% more whites than Hispanics answered the question correctly.

Hypothesis: Regional variations. High proportions of African-Americans and Hispanics live in the south and southwest areas of the country, where there is less familiarity with terms associated with extreme winter weather."

I'm not buying. There are lots of blacks and Hispanics in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, etc.), and they, like anyone else living in those cities, are VERY familiar with extreme winter weather. (^:

[gene]

The bottom line is: the verbal SAT tests reading and word comprehension. If you don't read, you will not do well on it. The math portion tests reasoning and basic familiarity with algebra, geometry, and trigonometry. Therefore, if you don't take these subjects, you won't do well on it. This has nothing to do with race, culture, or background-it has EVERYTHING to do with hard work and a serious attitude toward learning. If one accepts that "ebonics" is a real language, then we must accept that such people will get low scores on the verbal SAT. I believe that when the SATs wer first instituted, a score of 500 on each was considered average-now the average is below 350.
Clearly something is wrong with our current educational system.

[Wendell Wagner]

John Bredin writes:

> There are lots of blacks and Hispanics in
> Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Boston,
> etc.

You have fallen for one of the commonest misconceptions about American blacks and Hispanics. People who've watched too many bad TV shows get the idea that the vast majority of American blacks live in the inner cities of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boswash (i.e., the large cities from Boston to Washington, D.C.), plus a smaller number of blacks living in the suburbs of these cities. This isn't true. About 55% of African-Americans live in the Southeast. When we add in those who live in the Southwest (including Southern California), it's clear that a substantial majority of American blacks live in regions where it rarely snows.

Similarly, watching too much bad TV has probably convinced you that most Hispanics live in inner-city neighborhoods in these same cities and a smaller number live in the suburbs of these cities. Again, this isn't the case. Texas, California, and Florida alone account for about two-thirds of all Hispanics. By an even larger margin then, most Hispanics live in regions where it rarely snows.

I'm not arguing that all blacks and Hispanics live in regions where it rarely snows or that all non-Hispanic whites live in regions where it frequently snows. I'm just saying that a much larger percentage of blacks and Hispanics have never seen a snow drift in real life than non-Hispanic whites.

gene writes:

> I believe that when the SATs wer first
> instituted, a score of 500 on each was
> considered average-now the average is
> below 350.

This also isn't true. When the SAT tests were introduced in 1941, the averages for the students that took them at the time were set (by definition) at 500 for the verbal and math scores. About 10,000 students took the tests at that time. This was only those who were applying to the 30 or so most selective colleges in the U.S.

Over the next 40-some years, the number of colleges that required the SAT increased to the point that now nearly all colleges in the U.S. require the SAT (the only exceptions are Midwestern state universities and a few Midwestern private colleges which instead use the ACT) and the number of students that take the SAT each year increased to about 1,500,000.

What this means then is that while only the top 1% or 2% of American high school graduates took the SAT tests in 1941, now around 40% or 50% of them take the SAT. Instead of recalibrating the scores each year so that the average score would remain 500 in verbal and math, it was decided (until about five years ago) to calibrate the test so that students of the same level as took the test in 1941 would continue to score 500 on the math and verbal. The average score on the math and verbal unsurprisingly slowly dropped to about 425 (NOT 350) by 1980 and has actually increased a little since then. About five years ago it was decided to quit calibrating the scores according to the level of the 1941 students at the selective colleges. Since then the average scores are set by definition at 500 on each of the verbal and math tests.

The fact that the average score on the SAT tests was 500 on the verbal and math in 1941 and about 425 in the ‘80’s and the early ‘90’s means nothing. All that this says is that the average college applicant today (when four or five times as large a proportion of people go to college) scores about 75 points lower than the average applicant to a highly selective college in 1941 does.

Incidentally, the average student at those highly selective colleges today scores quite a bit higher than the average student at highly selective colleges in 1941. Those selective colleges were not so consistently selective back then as they are today. They had a lot of first-rate students, of course, but they also accepted a lot of rich kids with marginal grades and scores. It wasn’t until just World War II that these colleges began accepting substantial amounts of people from middle-class to poor backgrounds and began rejecting rich kids whose only recommendation was that their parents went to the same college.

[Cardinal]

Gene - "I believe that when the SATs were first instituted, a
score of 500 on each was considered average-now the average is below 350.
Clearly something is wrong with our current educational system."
================================

Wendell is indeed correct. My full time job is helping run a tutoring/SAT school, and the tests are now slaved to a 1000 point average, per test, period.

As someone who gets an 800 on every verbal section, (not that it's so impressive at the age of 30) I can tell you that there has been a noticable creep up in the level of difficulty even in the past five years. I assume that's because they have noticed that they are having to curve it more and more, so to avoid having a situation where only an absolute perfect score gets 800, they have increased the difficulty.

Now, isn't anyone going to attack or support my statistical clumping theory?

[StrTrkr777]

I'm just saying that a much larger percentage of blacks and Hispanics have never seen a snow drift in real life than non-Hispanic whites.


I have lived all my life in middle Georgia. I have never seen a snow drift, but I read and I watch TV, etc. I knew the answer to the question. It takes mental reasoning.

A dune is made from sand.
So,
a. beach: ocean, a beach is not made of ocean so rule this one out.
b. drift: snow
c. wave: tide, a wave is not made of tide, rule it out.
d. rainbow: color, a rainbow is not made of color, so rule it out.
e. fault: earthquake, a fault is not made of earthquake, so rule it out.

By process of elimination, I can easily figure out, if I do not already know, that drift:snow is the correct answer.

People who go to college should be able to think, not regurgitate facts, but actually think. The SAT helps to measure the ability to think. It is not biased, the people are.

Jeffery

[DianneCar]

I can't count but I can talk a little bit (780 on the old 800 pt verbal test). The only question that I remember that struck me as biased at the time was something like "Tenis is to court as lacrosse is to {blank}."
For what it's worth...

[Captain Clueless]

A dune is made from sand.
So,
a. beach: ocean, a beach is not made of ocean so rule this one out.
b. drift: snow
c. wave: tide, a wave is not made of tide, rule it out.
d. rainbow: color, a rainbow is not made of color, so rule it out.
e. fault: earthquake, a fault is not made of earthquake, so rule it out.


Given your reasonable first statement, it follows that the correct answer is D. Of course a rainbow is made of color! A rainbow is a spectrum of light; colors are segments of that spectrum.

On the other hand, the most common use of "drift" is as a verb! A leaf can drift in the breeze, so maybe snow, which also flows through the sky, also drifts along. Given this perspective, "type of movement: snow" is as wrong as "fault: earthquake".

If you already know the noun "drift," then you know that settling sand forms dunes as settling snow forms drifts. If you hadn't commonly used "drift" as a noun, then you would follow the quoted logic and choose D.

[Danny]

Dimitri's post showing the ETS Testing the Test indicates to me that the ETS is taking the responsible, scientific approach to eliminating any possible bias in the SAT. There need not be any reason why one group or another does better or worse on any given test, just that statistically it happens. By eliminating specific questions regarding a particular subject (not eliminating the subject - percentage calculations, for instance), it eliminates any possibility that the way the question was posed could possibly create any kind of bias. For any given subject, there can be a thousand ways of formulating questions. ETS need only use the ones that does not have any statistical biases. Of course, I am assuming that they are using valid sampling methods to model the population as a whole when testing the test.

[NeedAHobby]

Dimitri's post showing the ETS Testing the Test indicates to me that the ETS is taking the responsible, scientific approach to eliminating any possible bias in the SAT. There need not be any reason why one group or another does better or worse on any given test, just that statistically it happens.
- Danny

I'm curious what their underlying technique is. It seems reasonable to simply look at the number of correct answers by each designated group (race, gender, etc.) and single out the questions with widely varying distributions. I think it would be...ummm...better? interesting?...if they instead added questions which adjusted the bias. The technique to do this would be extremely difficult, but I think it would make a fairer test.

For instance, the concept of "dune is to sand as drift is to snow" would have a similar corrolary in the south with perhaps "grits is to corn...", or sticking to meteorology, "Beaufort is to hurricane..." Questions in this section are designed to test reading level, those who are "well-read" should excel over those who simply have regional or cultural knowledge.

------------------
Hey, aren't you supposed to be at work?

[Danny]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...if they instead added questions which adjusted the bias [by group]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- NeedAHobby

The idea is to ELIMINATE bias down to each individual question, so that the overall test become unbiased. By deliberately biasing by group so that the "average" result of the whole is statistically unbiased is really to exacerbate the situation. It will also call for everyone who wishes a 1600 to have to perhaps live and study every single biased culture that exists. While this would be commendable as an educational goal, it is social engineering in the ultimate. It is calling for separate and individual tests by social groups, which really defeats the purpose of a "national" standard by which everyone can live by.

[Cardinal]

For instance, the concept of "dune is to sand as drift is to snow" would have a similar
corrolary in the south with perhaps "grits is to corn...", or sticking to meteorology,
"Beaufort is to hurricane..."
==========================

This is not the method that ETS uses, and for good reason. I think we all (Americans, I mean)would have a bit to complain about if the test to get into Oxford was full of qustions about blood pudding, rugby, and British parlimentary government.

I sure don't want questions about grits affecting my chances to get into college, and lived in southeast Georgia for two years. I still don't know what they really are.

As a sort of aside, if you have a relative or friend that is trying to study for the SAT, I *highly* recommend that they buy the book "Ten Real SATs." All the other books out there have questions that would never be used on a real test. Yes, all of them. My day-to-day job is teaching kids the SAT, and I can state catagorically that I have yet to find a book by another company that does not contain questions with arguable answers, or even worse, like the Gruber's book I was looking at yesterday, questions about things like baseball.

Run:baseball::

The answer is supposed to be goal:soccer.

You explain to some bright Taiwanese girl why she can't get into American college because she doesn't know that a point in baseball is called a run. Absolutely a terrible question. They should be ashamed to have it in their book. It just goes to show you that there's no incentive to get something right like being sued for racial or cultural bias, and none of these book writers ever are.

[Danny]

Dave Swaney writes:

"You explain to some bright Taiwanese girl why she can't get into American college because she doesn't know that a point in baseball is called a run."

Actually, the Taiwanese, from Little League on, is quite keen on Baseball! They had many times been world champions over American teams!

[NeedAHobby]

The idea is to ELIMINATE bias down to each individual question, so that the overall test become unbiased. By deliberately biasing by group so that the "average" result of the whole is statistically unbiased is really to exacerbate the situation.
- Danny

Hmmm...I'm wrestling with the concept of "better for the test" and "better for society." Obviously the SATs are not the be-all end-all of society, but I think it's important to be well-rounded (in the sense of being open minded) when entering college.

I guess it all depends on the college. Perhaps a cultural awareness test could be created to see how diverse someone's mindset is. The SATs can strive to be unbiased (albeit using English, an inherently human-biased language--i.e when did "female dog" slip from definition #1 to #2 for the word bitch, at least in common usage?).

Of course, this all sounds like it would be accomplished better in the vein of the Purity Test--sort of unofficial and dynamic. Sounds like a plan...something else to put on the great list. :)

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Hey, aren't you supposed to be at work?