The ACT Prince and the Pauper

In a previous blogpost, I talked about how ACT companies see areas like the NorthShore as a perfect place to market because we're all "crazy" due to the pressure and competition at New Trier. But where does this pressure come from?

These tests make people nervous because there is only one outcome. If your test score are good, you are considered smart. If your test scores are bad...are you really stupid? Or are you just a bad test taker? Could you be having a bad day? Colleges don't care. If you looked at a 22 and a 30 you would be able to tell which is better, but what about if you looked at each kid? Would you be able to really say which one deserves a college education? Probably not, because there are so many other factors.  

When I went to my aunt and uncle's house in Delavan, Wisconsin over Thanksgiving it got me thinking, is this really fair? So many of these scores are achieved with the help of tutors, a service that isn't available to people in lower-income neighborhoods such as Delavan. Only a handful of my cousins have attended college and most of them would be grateful for a 25 on the ACT. This is a score that I would not be satisfied with getting. But with the tutoring sessions that I have, could my cousins get a higher score?

This makes me question whether or not ACT tutors should be allowed. Or, is the ACT even a fair way to assess a student on their abilities? One student in Winnetka is seeing a tutor every Sunday who, for an hour, helps said student review everything that they have learned over the past 3 years, and teaches them tips and tricks that are guaranteed to improve their score. Another student in a lower-income neighborhood has never had access to a tutor and takes the test once, thrilled with a score 4 points lower than something that would be acceptable for the student from Winnetka.

The student from Winnetka gets into a better school than the student from the lower-income neighborhood and ends up with a higher-paying job post college. Is this fair? If the student's preparation for the ACT were switched, would the scores stay the same? I think that a student's resources and abilities based on the amount of money they have affects the way they score on these tests, making it hard to really trust them.

I think this says something about American ideals. We are working so hard to achieve this high test score, for what? How is our success measured? It seems to me that the main goal is money, so keep your eye on the prize and keep spending money and maybe you'll raise kids that have as much determination to earn enough money to spend on their kids to do the same thing. What's the point?