Why do minority groups score less on standardized tests?
At some point in your academic career I am sure you have heard the statement that minority groups score less on standardized tests than other groups. This statement, however, makes a broad generalization that they do worse strictly because of the color of their skin. There is no evidence to prove that minority groups do worse on standardized testing just because they are a minority. When minorities do worse, there are many factors that go into it. According to Joshua Aronson in his article “The Threat of Stereotype”, one of the reasons that minorities sometimes do worse is because of the stereotype threat. The stereotype threat can be summed up as if you constantly hear you are worse at something, even if it is because the color of your
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According to Wayne Camara and Amy Schmidt in “Group Differences in Standardized Testing and Social Stratification”, This is a big reason minority groups tend to do worse. The minority students who come from high socio economic households tend to do decently well on standardized testing, however, they are far from being the majority and often aren’t discussed at all when these topics come up. Unfortunately, though, as we have seen there is a still a lag of minority groups compared to other groups even when the household status is the same. This is speculated to be due to the fact that they are often lacking in academic preparation due to inner-city schools and lack of rigorous courses (Camara and Schmidt, 1999). They often come from households with low expectations and family support, which are two incredibly huge factors when it comes to academically succeeding. On a positive note, the SAT gap has declined over the past twenty years and will hopefully keep declining (Camara and Schmidt,