Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Hugh Gladwin's avatar

Wonderful updating of SAT-test history I have followed and lived with effects of all my life. I am sort of the exception that proves the rule of what you wrote:

70 years ago I was very lucky having academic parents who read to and with me and I became a very fast gestalt reader before starting kindergarten.* Later in school I could look at a page from a SAT-type test as a whole and immediately sense the two or three mostly likely correct answers without reading them word by word. That increased the odds of doing well under time pressure even when I was guessing on many items. I hope to comment more after I read your article carefully, but for now I just want to say that I think performance on those kind of tests is very determined by social class. Many other things come in of course, but having parents who are teachers gives an advantage beyond what wealth level provides. The most dramatic to me demonstration of this is Shirley Brice Heath's work summarized in this article:

What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School

Author(s): Shirley Brice Heath

Source: Language in Society, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Apr., 1982), pp. 49-76

Published by: Cambridge University Press

You are probably familiar with her work but I rarely see it referenced anywhere.

* needless to say 40 years were to go by before I had any idea I was ADD/autistic.

Expand full comment

No posts