SAT Scores and Diversity

The Baltimore Sun article "SAT scores vary across Baltimore region" brought to mind our last week's discussion of differences in diversity across Baltimore County schools and our observations of the schools' test scores. While we did not focus on college entrance examinations, we paid attention to the differences in the schools' levels of diversity. We also reflected on the communities' accesses to resources and socioeconomic levels.

Unfortunately, I was unsurprised to see in this article that Baltimore City ranked the lowest out of the reported results in this article; furthermore, Baltimore City scored significantly lower than the Maryland average. This article provided a cursory preview of the score results as spread across different racial groups, with Asian students earning the highest scores on average and Black and Hispanic students earning the lowest scores on average. This pattern is the same as we observed when reviewing elementary and secondary scores during class.

I think that this article adds to our discussion of integration and diverse school environments. If Black students and Hispanic students do not have access to the same resources as White students for assessment testing, most likely access to SAT preparation resources also is not equitably distributed to students. While this brings to mind many issues, such as teaching to the test, school quality, redlining, etc., I hope that these rankings draw attention to the barriers impacting students as they enter tertiary education.

One thing which concerns me with these kinds of results is how Asian ethnic groups are treated as monolithic. Typically, when Asian-American experiences are discussed in racial conversations, East Asian American narratives dominate the discussions. I believe that we might see a different picture, in particular we might discover groups which are being marginalized and forgotten, if we re-evaluated through the results with this consideration in mind.

References

Richman, T. (2017, September 30). SAT scores vary across Baltimore region. Baltimore Sun. Retrieved from http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/bs-md-sun-investigates-sat-scores-20170929-story.html