The
Power of Privilege by Joseph Soares, 2007, Excerpts
There is strong evidence that the verbal section
of the SAT, which Yale has valued above the math section and subject tests, was
the most biased part of the SAT. Family background, race, and gender do
translate into vocabulary differences. Skewed question selection certainly
contributes to the test score disparities between black and whites. [Jay Rosner,
“On White Preferences,” Nation, 14 Apr 2003]
Sometimes those biases were there by
intentional design, as in the 1930s; other times those biases were there
because of unexamined assumptions about vocabulary and logic. The elite private
sector has been able to benefit from the disguise of social-class selection by
the seemingly neutral device of standardization aptitude tests. At best, elite
private colleges have been merely complicit in the misrecognition of social
class as academic merit. Selective college admissions throughout the twentieth
century appear to have been a case of inequality by design.
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