The Relevance of Standardized College Entrance Exams for Low SES High School Students Regina Deil-Amen and Tenisha Lashawn Tevis
DEIL-AMEN & TEVIS / College Entrance Exams 141 The Review of Higher Education Winter 2010, Volume 33, No. 2, pp. 141–175 Copyright © 2009 Association for the Study of Higher Education All Rights Reserved (ISSN 0162-5748) Circumscribed Agency: The Relevance of Standardized College Entrance Exams for Low SES High School Students Regina Deil-Amen and Tenisha LaShawn Tevis For the past half century, the U.S. school system has functioned as a highly rationalized and vertically integrated mechanism for socializing and sorting students into the existing social and economic structure. As educa- tional hierarchies expanded to increase access to postsecondary education, so reliance on the college entrance examination also expanded, with both meritocratic and stratifying consequences. The initial rise in the use of col- lege entrance exams provided an “objective” mechanism to counteract the widespread discrimination in college admissions processes (Lemann, 2000). However, critics have since exposed such exams, particularly the SAT, as weak predictors of college academic success, particularly for nontraditional students (Sedlacek, 2004); and the lower average scores of African American and Latino students on these exams continue to present daunting obstacles for them, especially in the form of barriers to admission to selective colleges (Hacker, 1992; Hedges & Nowell, 1998; Jencks & Phillips, 1998; Phillips, Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, Klebanov, & Crane, 1998; Steele, 1997). Underrep- REGINA DEIL-AMEN is an Assistant Professor at the Center for the Study of Higher Edu- cation at the University of Arizona, Tucson. TENISHA LASHAWN TEVIS is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Educational Resource Center at the University of the Pacific. Address queries to Regina Deil-Amen at the Center for the Study of Higher Education University of Arizona, Education Building, P.O.
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