Wrong conclusion

To the Editor:

Daniel Nieh ("Building a real meritocracy," DP, 3/24/06) implies that parental income is the direct cause of high SAT scores and that those scores are therefore meaningless, but that conclusion does not necessarily follow from the data.

It's equally plausible (I would say more so) that wealthy students are simply better educated, and that blue-collar, poor students who go to Harvard are more successful merely because the exceptionally intelligent and motivated among them are able to overcome the lack of options they are presented with. Thus low SATs don't imply future success, but, rather, having other qualities that make up for low SATs does.

This doesn't mean that the SAT is broken, however -- as a measurement of learned knowledge, it may be dead on. Rather than ignoring the SAT, then, we should focus on improving -- and equalizing -- public school education.

In other words, the solution to educational disparities is not to attempt to forgive those students who are presented with fewer opportunities for failings not their fault, but to instead provide them with the same opportunities as everyone else.

Daniel MargolisEngineering senior

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