In my issue brief, I plan to discuss the ongoing issues in the standardized testing system concerning socioeconomic status. These tests, such as the SAT and ACT, have long served as one of the primary measures for assessing a student’s preparedness and readiness to move on to college. What many of these tests fail to address is the inequalities in students’ personal lives and the knowledge they have built as a result of their surrounding environments. For example, a student raised in a wealthy family is likely to be surrounded by a more educated environment and thus will build a wealth of knowledge spanning a variety of topics because of their experiences. On the other hand, a student raised in poverty is much less likely to be in an environment to pick up knowledge in such a breadth of topics. There have long been arguments as to completely get rid of standardized tests or to alter school curriculums to better prepare students for them. There have been numerous policy discussions and deliberations as to how to solve or investigate ongoing standardized testing measures. One of the primary arguments of those against standardized testing is that scores mirror family socioeconomic status. While that is true, tests can be revamped with policy to better assess students on a more level playing field. The cause at hand stems from the randomness of topics presented on exams each year. Due to randomized topics, teachers try to build “test-taking skills” among students by presenting them with numerous random passages to try to teach to the test. This does little to better prepare students that may have little knowledge of a topic that appears on a test as opposed to a student with familiarity with a topic that appears in a passage or question. This issue brief aims to provide a solution as an intervention to ongoing policy discussion about standardized testing inequalities.

This issue is inadvertently caused due to the way the tests are structured and how they have long been administered in the higher education environment. College previously was the pathway for the wealthiest in society and in the current environment, a college degree is becoming more essential for many jobs across the country as well as a path to a living wage. As the wealth gap has widened, those left in poverty are at an increasing disadvantage in society such as with standardized testing. Students in poverty-stricken environments simply do not build the same knowledge as those in wealthy environments and schools. This leads to poorer scores on standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT, if they can afford to take them in the first place. The unawareness of the changing education environment has created the issue where students are hindered by flawed tests that prevent them from pursuing quality higher education due to income. This greater focus on test preparedness, as opposed to content, has taken away from the greater importance of learning in schools.

In terms of policy instruments to craft a solution to these issues, I intend to center around system change. The main problem is not with standardized tests as a whole, but with how they are constructed in a way that favors some populations and leaves others behind. Through system changes to the organizations that create and administer these tests, the test content can be altered to be released ahead of time to allow teachers to deliver content based on these known topics to students to prepare them for these exams, in place of needless repetition based on “test skills.” The College Board and ACT organization could also provide preparatory material about the topics expected to be on the exam to help in preparing students that are not able to receive prep in school or that cannot afford a tutor outside of school. These system changes would help level the playing field to administer a fairer test that could better assess students from all socioeconomic statuses.