Your Private College Counselor Can Help When Tests Are Biased

How do I ace a test, the SAT, or any standardized test? How can they expect me to know everything? What if I don’t have the skills or the advantages?

They, whether a teacher, professor, ETS (Educational Testing Service), or the College Board, absolutely do not expect you to know everything that could potentially arise on an exam. In fact, that is precisely what they don’t want.

However, an increasingly globalized international climate has advanced educational accessibility for students with disabilities. Additionally, educators and public schools are painfully aware of the educational inequities among subgroups and have enacted policies in the United states to lessen the Achievement Gap, the persistent disparity in educational opportunities due to ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, etc. Many public schools and districts have pursued feasible and affordable reforms, which include picking students up at their homes, extending campus hours to accommodate economically disadvantaged students so they have a place to study and use computers, or facilitating after school peer tutoring.

Nevertheless, there is so much more to do. According to Marina Bolotinikova, author of Harvard Magazine’s article, “FAS’s Inequality in America Initiative,” educational imbalances continue to exist even now in 2017 at even some of the most elite universities, including Harvard itself.

We have people who are looking at inequality across race, gender, and class, but also thinking about the different domains of inequality–education, health, the labor market. We have all this on campus, but they’re not always in conversation…The idea here is to pursue a strategy that’s focused on greater collaboration, some new investment, and more dialogue.

On the other hand, prior to Harvard’s initiative, 21st century educators have supported progress along many avenues to “even the playing field” with the advent of student chromebooks, better cheap wifi, enhancing school libraries with used or donated books, and offering online courses and school approved websites. To be sure, students around the globe and across the country are better equipped “to know” and learn more than in previous eras. And yet, educational inequality persists. Not all students have access to private tutors, good schools, educated parents and technology in the home.

So, how do students with less, born and raised in neighborhoods that are so violent, sometimes they avoid school to avoid getting jumped? How do food insecure, homeless, and/or minority youth do well enough on tests to “pass go” and level up? How do young girls who are prescribed as homemakers, not college students,  transcend barriers? What about the SAT, a test so daunting, even students with every resource at their disposal struggle to hit their target score?

In many cases, the best source for success is you, the high school student.

So, let’s ask some fundamental questions and brainstorm some real-word solutions.

What can I do to build skills in reading comprehension and math?

1. Read more outside of school assignments. Read a variety of materials: newspapers, novels, graphic novels, biographies.

• Most library cards are free
• Schools often have materials on hand in their libraries
• Print out online publications at school; it’s cost free to you.
• Visit the College Board for free test taking tips and practice tests

2. Annotate what you read.

• Underline main ideas
• Circle and define new vocabulary in the margins, on a separate sheet of paper or make your own quizlet online
• Stop every paragraph or two and ask, “What did I just read?”

3. Explore purplemath or mathisfun, websites that will help you review and clarify:

• Exponents
• Arithmetic (PEMDAS)
• Algebra
• Coordinate Plane Geometry
• Geometry
• Basic Trig

What strategies can I use on multiple choice tests and college entrance exams?

1. Process of Elimination

• For each answer choice, ask, “Is it wrong?” If it’s not wrong, do not cross it out. Keep it. The choice may not be great, but it may be the least wrong.
• Underline the word or words that make an answer choice wrong; then, cross it out.
• The answer that’s not wrong is the correct answer

2. Annotate all test questions, whether math or English.

• Hunt for the most specific words and underline them.
• Ignore everything else- it wastes your time to read words you don’t need.
• In the following example, inferred, both, and agree are your key words:

It can be inferred from both passages that the authors would most likely agree that

3. Don’t do anything you don’t have to do on a multiple choice test.

• Less is more
• Keep it simple
• Let your answer choices guide you, particularly in math
  • Sometimes solving half the problem is all that is required.

4. Set up a Khan Academy account online and practice for free.

The world of educational opportunity remains a far cry from egalitarian or “equal,” but there are resources available to students of every circumstance. If your school or home doesn’t have what you need, perhaps a bus pass and the public library will. Combined with determination, hard work and basic resources, every student can succeed if you have the desire.