Test score gaps shrunk by a small margin in the last two decades, but other indicators show reason for optimism: the portion of students taking the SAT rose drastically over the last two decades, outpacing the increase in the number of public high school graduates from 2000-2020.
Rising SAT participation and college enrollment Still, nearly a third (31%) of white test takers scored above 600 on the math portion of the SAT, compared to just 7% of Black test takers. In 2002, the average white student’s SAT math score was 106 points higher than the average Black student’s (533 compared to 427) by 2020, the gap narrowed to 93 points. Despite a wide range of efforts to reduce inequality, the racial gap in SAT scores has scarcely narrowed during the lifetimes of the class of 2020. In 1996, the gap between the mean Black score and the mean white score was 0.91 standard deviations by 2020, the gap had narrowed to 0.79 standard deviations. The race gap in test scores is far from a new phenomenon Asian and white students consistently outperform their Black and Hispanic or Latino peers on the math section of the SAT. (This analysis builds on our earlier work on this issue from 2017, “ Race gaps in SAT scores highlight inequality and hinder upward mobility.”) We investigate SAT scores by race using the College Board’s publicly available data for over 2.1 million 2020 high school graduates, with a particular focus on the math section. In 1926, the SAT was created to give talented students, regardless of income, the chance to compete for college admission and scholarships. Nearly 100 years later, it often excludes the lower-income students it was created to help. Although the original exam was primarily aimed at economic diversity, part of its stated modern mission is to help increase racial diversity, too.īut Black and Hispanic or Latino students routinely score lower on the math section of the SAT - a likely result of generations of exclusionary housing, education, and economic policy - which too often means that, rather than reducing existing race gaps, using the test in college admissions reinforces them.