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From: esc@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (elizabeth)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: SAT scores - sexist?
Message-ID: <1991Apr23.182253.6579@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 Apr 91 22:39:32 GMT
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al885@cwns9.ins.cwru.EDU ("Gerard Pinzone a.k.a. Ataru Moroboshi") writes:
>How many times do I have to say this? There has been absolutley NO
>proof that I can find to prove the SAT's are sexist. I am pleading for
>ANYONE to give me ANY examples that would show this. I am willing to
>listen to anyone who has some proof.

*************************************************

Something I've always heard as one example is what the testmakers use
for material in reading comprehension questions. I've read that in
some RC questions, the material is skewed for sex, for example one
article will be about car maintenance or rocket science. The saying
goes that the boys have a better chance of answering the questions
just on a matter of information they already have rather than actually
understanding what the article is about. I remembered this example
because of a recent incident I observed regarding a spanish midterm.
On one portion, the class was expected to skim an article and answer
some questions about it. The object was to see how good your overall
spanish comprehension was. The problem was that the women did better
than the men on this part because the article was about perfume. The
women could answer some of the questions because most knew something
about the subject, while the majority of men obviously didn't know
anything about the subject and had to rely entirely on the spanish
they knew. So, in this case (like on some instances of the SAT) one
sex had an extra advantage the other sex didn't have just by virtue of
the fact that one sex had extra knowledge or prior experience to draw
upon.  Hope this helps. :)