sethg@athena.mit.edu (Seth A. Gordon) (03/22/88)
In article <3933@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> lazarus@athena.mit.edu (Michael Friedman) writes: >It is often claimed that blacks do worse than whites on tests like the >SAT's and Civil Service tests, etc. because the tests are biased. Does >anyone out there have a list of supposedly biased questions? I suspect it's more class than race. Middle- and upper-class people are simply more exposed, in their culture, to the sort of things the tests ask about than lower-class people are. Since the average income level of blacks is lower than that for whites, blacks tend to score lower. I don't know what the stats are for black vs. white when you correct for economic level. I heard an interesting anecdote from my psych. class on men and women. When a draft of the Stanford-Binet (I think) IQ test was tested, it was discovered that women tended to score *higher* than men on it. The designers of the test *removed* some of the questions that women tended to score better on, so that men and women would average the same score. This speaks volumes to me on the relationship between "intelligence," whatever that is, and intelligence tests. -- sethg%athena.MIT.EDU@mit-eddie.UUCP -- CONVERT me, CONTRA lovers! -- sethg%athena.MIT.EDU@mitvma.BITNET| talk.politics.latin-america: YES 40 / NO 3 sethg@athena.MIT.EDU -------------| I need **63** more YES votes by March 31.