Professors Jennifer Randall and Matthew Diemer speak with The Detroit News about newly released SAT scores by the Michigan Department of Education 

The Michigan Department of Education released the combined average SAT scores for schools across the state on September 4, reports The Detroit News. Three schools in Ann Arbor have the widest gap in the state between Black and white students’ average SAT scores.

The SAT is less about what students learn in the classroom compared with their access to educational opportunities outside of the school day, Marsal School Professors of Education Jennifer Randall and Matthew Diemer tell The Detroit News.

Randall says that students from wealthier families have always had, and continue to have, access to a “secret sauce” when it comes to admissions exams in general. “But the students who have been historically oppressed and marginalized in this community, they don’t have access to that secret sauce.”

Diemer described a study he did that looked at how parental wealth is tied to student success. The study found that wealthier parents had access to different activities and educational opportunities for their children in middle childhood and earlier adolescence that others did not. He notes that racial wealth disparities are longstanding and striking—with the average white family's wealth 8-11 times larger than the average Black family's wealth, according to 2021 Federal Reserve data—and so histories of redlining and racism reverberate in SAT scores today.

Diemer says the SAT is “the best system we’ve got, but it’s an imperfect one. … Some kids are just better at taking standardized tests than others, and that might not have that much to do with how much they’ve learned in their classroom.”

“I think the reason that things like admissions tests have risen to the top is that they have this illusion of objectivity … but it is as subjective as things like grades for different reasons,” says Randall.