To be completely fair, I think at least some portions of the SAT are distinctly more difficult without a strong reading background.

You can definitely cram for the grammar / math portions, but the reading comprehension sort of just requires a lot of reading experience. There isn't a rote set of things you can memorize to get a high score, which could arguably be seen as good or bad.

Maybe more practically, we should consider: Do lower income students read less on average? And if so, is the difference greater than their ability to gain access to tutoring services / prep books which can be used for the crammable portions of the exam?

Succeeding in college also requires a strong reading background. The point of the test is to predict college success, not "be fair" (an inherently subjective statement)

This theory would make sense if the hardest questions showed the most racial disparity, but it's actually the easiest questions that do, according to the papers cited by jedberg.

Here is the main study from 2003: https://meridian.allenpress.com/her/article-abstract/73/1/1/...

That 2003 study was done at Harvard.

Here is a writeup of someone who replicated it with more recent test scores: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/21/new-evidence-...

"The SAT has been shown to be both culturally and statistically biased against . . . Asian Americans."

Well, I'll be damned. Huh.

From the second article:

> The 2003 study and this year's found no DIF issues in the mathematics section.

The earlier claim about math word problems being culturally biased seems unsupported by the citations.

But will the claim be withdrawn? Hmm, let's find out...

Here is a simple example from an old SAT (1970s):

Runner is to Marathon as XXXXXXXX is to Regatta

If you grew up on the coast in a wealthy family, you have a much higher chance of knowing what a Regatta is and that it involves boat races.

Come on, man. Your opinions about the SAT are based on a single infamous SAT question (of unknown provenance) from many decades ago?

There are no questions like that any more. You really think the people designing the highest-profile standardized test in the country are oblivious to this kind of problem these days? There's a ton of cultural and racial bias screening and filtering that goes into producing these questions now, both manual and statistical. You can look at some sample questions yourself.

Is there a more up-to-date example? The SAT hasn't even had an analogy section at all since 2005.

Being from Cincinnati, I had to laugh at that particular example a little bit, because there's an annual charity "Rubber Duck Regatta" where you pay to sponsor a rubber duck and they dump them all in the river and give a prize to whoever has theirs finish first. When I was a kid, they ran TV ads for it blasting the name out loud about every six seconds, so most students who didn't know the word otherwise would have figured it out. I'm sure there would be statistical analysts looking at the scores for that question by region and scratching their heads.

Yes, only wealthy people know what a sailboat is and have a large vocabulary.

It doesn't say only wealthy people will know what it is, it says they are much more likely to know what it is because they are much more likely to have experienced it first hand.

It would be hard to deny that generally sailboat racing is done by wealthy people.

That doesn’t follow. Poor people are aware of many things they don’t do. You’re wanting to lower standards to help people who don’t need that kind of help to expiate you own status guilt. Poor people may also not have cars. Or have ever flown on a plane or owned an iPhone. But they aren’t necessarily stupid and will probably know what these things are and if they happen to be then they should go to elite colleges.

That is dependent on where you're from, you could be from a poor family and know exactly what a regatta is.

The yearly regatta has always been like the Olympics of Newfoundland

OTOH, You could be wealthy but from Montana. You probably have never witnessed a regatta in your life. You and your wealthy friends will probably be able to answer every question related to a ski holiday however.

Biased against cultures that don't value competence / excellence in mathematics.