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But there is good news. The central contention of my 2003 story was that the SATs shift from an abstract-reasoning test to a test of classroom material like Algebra II would hurt kids from failing schools. I worried that the most vulnerable students would suffer when faced with the new SAT. I was wrong. In fact, the very poorest children those from families earning less than $20,000 a year improved their SAT performance this year. It was a modest improvement just three points but significant given the overall slump in scores. And noncitizen residents and refugees saw their scores rise by an impressive 13 points. It was middle-class and rich kids who account for the much-reported decline.
What explains those wonderfully unpredictable findings? The College Board has no firm answers. But its top researcher, Wayne Camara, suggests a theory that, while self-serving for the College Board, fits the data: the new SAT is less coachable. When designing the new test, the Board banned analogies and quantitative comparisons (flummoxing math questions that asked you to compare two complex quantities). I think those items disadvantaged students who did not have the resources, the motivation, the awareness, to figure out how to approach them, says Camara. By eliminating those, the test becomes much less about strategy. By focusing more on what high schools teach and less on tricky reasoning questions, the SAT became more egalitarian.
Ive never been so happy to be wrong.