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Upside of Inequality Oxford Unintended Consequences

AI Summary. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, a nationwide test of elementary and middle school students with no test-prep industry around it, shows racial and economic gaps closely resembling those on the SAT and ACT. Researchers argue this indicates college admissions tests measure underlying learning, making score disparities a symptom rather than a cause of inequality.

David Leonhardt New York Times
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Noting that test scores are predictive of academic and professional outcomes @DLeonhardt argues that standardized tests are the most meritocratic talent identification method. Raj Chetty notes, “The SAT is picking up fundamentals.”

Do college admissions tests measure learning rather than test prep?

Core argument: The NAEP, a nationwide test for elementary and middle school students that students do not take prep classes for, shows racial and economic gaps remarkably similar to those on the SAT and ACT.

The evidence suggests that [the advantages of well-off students] advantages cause a very small part of the gaps. Consider that other measures of learning — like the NAEP, a test that elementary and middle school students take nationwide — show similarly large racial and economic gaps. The federal government describes the NAEP as “the nation’s report card,” while education researchers consider it a rigorous measure of K-12 learning. And even though students do not take NAEP test prep classes, its demographic gaps look remarkably similar to those of the ACT and SAT. This similarity “is another piece of evidence that the SAT is picking up fundamentals,” said Raj Chetty, a Harvard economics professor who conducted the recent Ivy Plus study with Friedman and David Deming. “It strengthens the argument that the disparities in SAT scores are a symptom, not a cause, of inequality in the U.S.,” Chetty said.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. The NAEP, a nationwide test for elementary and middle school students that students do not take prep classes for, shows racial and economic gaps remarkably similar to those on the SAT and ACT.
  2. Raj Chetty, a Harvard economics professor who conducted the Ivy Plus study with Friedman and David Deming, said the NAEP–SAT similarity is another piece of evidence that the SAT is picking up fundamentals.
  3. Chetty said the comparison strengthens the argument that disparities in SAT scores are a symptom, not a cause, of inequality in the United States.

Related Articles:

  • Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges — Children from top-1% families are more than 2x as likely as middle-class students with comparable SAT/ACT scores to attend an Ivy-Plus college, with two-thirds of the gap attributable to higher admissions rates. The authors attribute this advantage to legacy preferences, weight on non-academic credentials, and athlete recruitment.
  • How Ivy League Schools Tilt Your Odds in the Lottery of Life — Research classifying incomes by percentile finds that among top students, 19% of those who attended elite schools reach the richest 1% of the income distribution, versus 12% of those who did not. The authors compare these upper-tail outcomes to lottery tickets: elite schools offer many, most worth nothing, a few a jackpot.
  • Multidimensional Human Capital and the Wage Structure — The wage return to cognitive skills has declined, from about 10% higher hourly wages per standard deviation of test score in the 1980s and early 1990s to 4.5% in the 2000s and early 2010s, while returns to a bachelor's degree rose. Social skill-intensive occupations grew as a share of US jobs, with faster real wage growth.
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