SAT bias?

SAT biased against blacks?

Godless comments:

This article has some pretty sloppy passages, including:

For the high school class of 2002 the average score for a non-Hispanic white student on the 1600-point test was 1060. The average score for a black student was 857, or 203 points lower. (For Asians the average was 1070, and for Hispanics it was slightly over 900.) The gap between blacks and whites on the test is sixteen points greater today than it was in 1992. If minority students are at a disadvantage in taking the SAT, their choice of colleges will be significantly limited…

Asians are minorities too, and they have higher mean scores than whites. Rather than referring to “minorities”, a more precise term would be blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. Here’s another careless bit:

He cited research showing minority students doing better than non-Hispanic whites on harder math items, which he attributed to the fact that those items used more textbook-like language and “more abstract concepts learned strictly in the classroom.” Minority students scored worse on the easier math items, just as they did on easier verbal items, because commoner words were used in those questions.

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