Testing, testing

Does tutoring give affluent kids an advantage on standardized tests?

April 16, 2009

Nu Magazine - April 16, 2009

In my little private school bubble, the juniors at school have three main topics of conversation:

(1) college visits
(2) junior prom dates, and
(3) ACTs and SATs.

All of this talk can become quite annoying (although I myself will admit to taking part in it), but there is one huge fact I learned while listening to my friends and peers — that a huge number of juniors at my school has had some type of tutoring for the SAT or ACT, and sometimes for both.

Every weekend, eleventh graders at my school work their social lives and homework schedules around tutors for these standardized tests.

Juniors are constantly seen doing homework, often not for school, but for an ACT verbal tutorial that evening. Suddenly, completing homework for these tutors becomes equally, if not more important, than school-assigned work.

As expected, many kids score incredibly high on these tests. Some kids even go around complaining about a low “720” (out of 800) in the SAT math — which is crazy, because it’s excellent.

I wonder how well many of my classmates would’ve done if not for three different Princeton Review books and weekly tutoring?

I am certainly not one to talk. I myself am one of the biggest sell-outs in terms of tutors.

Three nights a week, I have tutoring for the SAT. I spend 3.5 hours per week with tutors and another 2.5 hours per week completing their homework. An extra 6 hours of work a week, on top of six academic courses at school? Yeah, it’s pretty terrible — and totally crazy.

The other night I asked my mom how much all of the tutoring was costing my father and her. Her response, “You don’t want to know.”

Yes, I do not really want to know how much money my parents are paying for me to get a high score. It makes me think, “What happens to the millions of teens whose parents can’t pay for tutors and review books?”

They can’t be taught the methods and tricks of these tests. They don’t get to practice; they take the SATs or ACTs cold.

It is a sad and awful fact, but kids whose families have money have a huge advantage over those who don’t. The ACTs and SATs are no longer a “universal test,” but a test that caters to the wealthy.

Hopefully one day there will be a way to “level out the playing field,” and give a national test that every teen has the opportunity to do well on.

Until then, however, the SAT and ACT will remain biased and unfair.

Elana Widmann, 17, attends Newark Academy and is a member of Nu’s teen board.