January 23, 2005 at 12:00 am #38534
Sam
Member
The concerns regarding tests are not only with immigrants but with minorities in general. Granted, not everyone who is a minority will score lower on these tests – but they are more likely to for any number of reasons already mentioned (e.g., language at home, access to materials). I’m not familiar with the SAT and ACT norms (how they actually create the different critera for grades on these particular exams) but if the population they base these norms on do not sample across people from different ethnic groups (in a manner representative of the population), then the norms probably are not going to be representative for minorities (whose scores may be higher or lower).