Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion I disagree - SAT discussion

As the parents of gifted children we are continually bombarded with accusations of privilege and elitism.

Evidence that the SAT test is not a pure barometer of home SES is entirely worthy of discussion. What am I missing here?

Nothing that I can see.

I agree (with you, I mean).

Moderation helps keep an online forum from degrading into a place where people trade insults, which is great. At the same time, when threads are deleted/locked for no apparent reason or because they were maybe too controversial for the tastes of one or a few people, we start having problems.

We went through this late last year. IMO, overenthusiastic moderation has a way of being, well, immoderate, and squelching discussion.

With regard to the SATs is anyone really saying that high scores are a solely a product of SES? DYS uses (early talent search) SAT scores as one of their qualifiers which would seem to undermine any claim that all the SAT measures is SES.

Nobody on this forum is saying this but you have to been been living with headhunters in Borneo for the past five years or so not to have seen that drivel in the popular press insinuating that high SAT scores reflect parents ability to coach and prep. Look at the frenzy over SAT prep when the 'boost' from prep classes is statistically negligible.

Personally, I want the SAT to return to its roots and basically be a test of educability - make it harder if there are too many perfect scores.

Anyone interested in prep for SAT will find materials, freely available to all, on the college board website: https://sat.collegeboard.org/practice
1) Question of the Day
2) Sample Practice Questions
3) Practice Test and Tutorials from Khan Academy

A Study Guide (book and DVD) and official online course are available for purchase.

Many libraries have copies of Study Guides from prior years.

Used bookstores are an economical source of official study materials.

The Davidson Twitter feed links to a post at the Gifted Exchange blog, The Student Affluence Test?, about the same Charles Murray essay Why the SAT isn’t a ‘student affluence test’ as the locked thread I started. The essay can be discussed in the comments section there.