> The thing that correlates highest with SAT score is household income.
This doesn't even come close to being true.
This doesn't even come close to being true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Webb
who was a Marine Officer, Journalist, Novelist and U.S. Senator. This article points out that wealthier people do better on the SAT
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/11/new-study-fin...
and also points out that wealthier people also do better on everything else. Standardized tests get talked about because they're visible, but there are all sorts of things that aren't visible such as many forms of opportunity hoarding (wealthy parents will push harder to get their kids into gifted programs, can afford to get kids out of toxic environments where they get bullied, can put use the carrot and stick on teachers to get boost their kids GPAs) etc. For example there is a low level of awareness that certain sports like Polo or Lacrosse at the Ivy League privilege rich kids because they are more likely to play that sport in school.
Thing is, everybody knows the SATs are important, but there are 100x extracurricular things you can do that wealthy people know about and poor people don't that get only a small amount of criticism because they're invisible.
Here, from a book chapter subtitled "The case for eliminating the SAT and ACT at the University of California":
Table 1.1. Correlation of socioeconomic factors with SAT/ACT scores and High School GPA
+--------------------+---------------+------------------------------------------------+
| | Family Income | Parents' Education | Underrepresented Minority |
+--------------------+---------------+------------------------------------------------+
| SAT/ACT scores | 0.36 | 0.45 | -0.38 |
+--------------------+---------------+------------------------------------------------+
( https://cshe.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/geiser_chapter... )
I also read the page in the PDF you linked that was the source of the table and became more confused, because it very clearly writes out that:
>What this means is that 40% of the variation in students’ SAT/ACT scores is attributable to differences in socioeconomic circumstance.
I think you are either:
1. Misunderstanding correlation coefficients. Correlation coefficients range from -1 to +1, implying a 100% negative or positive correlation. 0.4 and -0.4 are moderately positive and negative correlation values. That table is saying that if you are an underrepresented minority, you are expected to do 40% worse on the SAT/ACT.
2. Quibbling over the "thing that correlates highest with SAT score" claim, because you feel like 0.4 is not high enough of a number. The only factors with higher correlation values than 0.4 in SAT/ACT scores would be stuff like "Was the student currently injured?" or "Did the student make it to the testing center?"
This is separate from the main point, but "underrepresented" minorities are defined by their lower performance on the SAT, so 0.4 isn't impressive at all for that cell.
Also, you've made a gross mathematical error; "you are expected to do 40% worse on the test" is a statement about the effect size, not the correlation.
They said "highest", not "solid". Family income isn't the highest factor there.
Is that really what you think? In reality, the possession of a brain can't have any correlation with SAT scores at all, because there is zero variance in the trait.
That's true.
> This is not the gotcha that you think it is.
But your point makes the guy I'm responding to look much worse. After controlling for parental education, the effect of parental income is radically diminished. Most of that 0.36 correlation is just confounding. Parental education isn't even a great indicator itself; it's a proxy for intelligence. It's just a much better proxy than parental income is.