Also, “hundreds of dollars” as a one time expense per kid isn’t unaffordable even for poor people. The selective admissions schools in NYC are full of poor Asian immigrants: https://nypost.com/2014/07/19/why-nycs-push-to-change-school....
By way of example, simply taking the SAT twice has an undisputed significant beneficial effect --- potentially over 100 points on the verbal? I made both my kids take both the ACT and SAT, and take them both twice. An underprivileged kid might only be taking the one test their school asks them to take.
As far as I can tell, most American kids don’t prepare for the SAT even with free or cheap methods. The cost of test prep seems like a red herring.
And, I mean, this kind of has to be true. Otherwise, you're ultimately going to get checkmated into arguing that low-SES working class folks are just genetically predisposed to do poorly on college entrance exams, which nobody believes.
Obviously, degree attainment tracks SES for other reasons: low SES prospective students have to be in a position to forego 4 years of income and job experience, as well as the prospect of moving away from their families to higher-SES areas in order to take advantage of the earnings potential of those degrees. But there are stark difference just in entrance exam scores themselves between high- and low-SES students (and between Black and white students, with SES fixed).
I don’t think we understand structural poverty. I think in part that’s because we focus on income alone, and race, but not on factors like subculture. The secret to unlocking the mysteries of structural poverty involve figuring out why white people in Oregon or West Virginia are poor while folks like Mormons managed to build solidly middle class societies despite persecution and moving to the middle of nowhere.
Your cited studies show a 10-37 average increase, which means some prep improves half the preppers even more.
> Also, “hundreds of dollars” as a one time expense per kid isn’t unaffordable even for poor people.
Saying this shows how out of touch you are. Speaking of New York, the recent under-10 chess championship was won by a refugee in a homeless shelter. Yes, hundreds of dollars is out of range for his family.
> The selective admissions schools in NYC are full of poor Asian immigrants
Middle class in Asia can be poor in New York City.
No, it shows how out of touch you are. You can’t craft general rules for society around the unique circumstances of people who are literally at the very bottom. They need special help outside the regular system.
But for ordinary poor kids, a few hundred dollars is not out of reach. What is beyond their grasp, however, is the cultural and social capital that would be required for upward mobility in the inevitability subjective regime you’d have if you got rid of the SATs. Poor asian kids, who grow up in the bottom 1/5th of the income distribution, are more than twice as likely to end up in the top 1/5th as adults than poor white kids. That’s because the gate keeping metrics in this country are objective, and not based on social connections or cultural knowledge.
> Middle class in Asia can be poor in New York City
Yes, so what? If your family is making $35,000 household income (the poverty threshold in NYC), what does it matter whether your family was middle class back in old country? And these kids are dealing with language and cultural barriers on top of the limited financial resources.
Seems like a sound point.
Poor asian kids [...] are more than twice as likely to end up in the top 1/5th [...] That’s because the gate keeping metrics in this country are objective, and not based on social connections or cultural knowledge.
Seems like a reach.