Exams Do Not Show a Person’s True Merit

By Nikitha Mateti

Many know the college admission system to be flawed, whether it’s placing a quota for certain ethnicities or letting money and status influence its decisions. For this reason, tests are often viewed as our equalizer, the one true show of merit no matter where a person is in life. However, we can clearly see that students of certain races are less successful than others, and this can range from state-wide testing to exams happening in a single school. But how does any of this make sense? It’s observable how wealth could lead to an advantage, but race has always managed to interfere with education even though it is something uncontrollable as well as irrelevant to one’s knowledge. Thus, it is critical to understand the built-in racial complexes of test-taking and how that has influenced individuals, both young and old, to have a varied path of success from their peers.

It’s best to begin by understanding how prevalent racism is. The article Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education states that,  “Two-thirds of minority students still attend schools that are predominantly minority, most of them located in central cities and funded well below those in neighboring suburban districts''. By physically separating the races from each other and continuing the pattern of wealth distribution set centuries ago by their ancestors, society is able to underfund minorities and overlook the problem as another norm in our lifestyles. However, this fixed mindset unallows for a majority black and minority races to prosper as they are stuck in an unbreakable cycle with no release. What’s more, black and other minority students are divided by a mental and social barrier that has existed as long as humanity has. Studies from the American Psychological Association have reported that, “compared with white students, black students are more likely to be suspended or expelled, less likely to be placed in gifted programs and subject to lower expectations from their teachers''. Not to mention, “In 2014, the high school graduation rate for white ­students was 87 percent,” according to the National Center for Education Statistics. For black students, the rate was 73 ­percent”, showing how it’s not only their physical barrier, but the social barrier many educators maintain about minority students being less intelligent than others due to their origins in first world countries as well as their fixated stereotypes. And this is more than true for testing. 

Image By Sanjana Nitturkar

Though colleges can also be unfair towards certain minority groups, this information is often publicized and criticized for a short period of time, preventing it from happening as often. However, in the classroom setting, racial bias has almost become the norm, with it being so integrated into our society that few identify it as an issue. A research piece conducted by Stanford University shows that on average, the scores of white students exceed the scores of black students throughout American school districts. Of the counties they collected, only ten of the hundred school districts interviewed broke the trend, all of which were small, predominantly black districts. But test results aren’t as directly affected by social barriers the way college administrators clearly deny minority students, after all, they are cold hard numbers earnt by the students. Unfortunately, test scores are influenced by many things, such as environment, opportunity and experience, all of which may give unfair advantages or disadvantages to a student. Stanford explains that, though some may be quick to point to economic status, general educational opportunity plays a larger role as these opportunities become experiences which then become representation of your knowledge. To further expand on this, this means underprivileged students in the same school with the same funding are less likely to be introduced to educational opportunities than their peers, meaning they are less able to make and learn from their mistakes and develop new hobbies, which shows in their test results. So, though these are accurate test results the students earnt, they are also representations of a student’s life and opportunities to learn and explore. When we look at job differences between these groups, results only become more divided. 

Many choose to get a job at some point in their life, whether it is after pursuing a diploma or right after high school. But the test gap in their studies only carries on into their future. In the Economic Policy Institute it’s demonstrated that, “Hispanic men made 14.9% less in hourly wages than comparable white men (...), while Hispanic women made 33.1% less than comparable white men''. This shows that the test results from their earlier stages of life not only dictated their lives in primary education but their overall success in life. This is clearly unfair since societal pressures and opportunities are seen as the main reason for this difference, and it is easily imaginable that there could be a world where all groups made similar pay based on their merit instead of race, had there not been primary biases. For this reason, people should work together to tackle this root cause and begin to implement educational opportunities for all instead for certain groups. At first this might prove unsuccessful as minority groups are not used to these new opportunities, but after encountering them time after time, the gap can be pushed closer and people of all ethnicities will be able to earn the life they deserve. Though it may be unfair currently, small steps such as education on racial disadvantage can help lead society to the end goal, where we can effectively stop and revise racial bias in schools.