El Cerrito Patch welcomes letters to the editor up to 300 words. Send them to elcerrito@patch.com. See past letters here.

To the Editor:

The SAT Reasoning Test, also known as the Scholastic Assessment Test, is taken by many students for college admissions in the United States. The College Board developed the SAT, and there are three sections: Mathematics, critical reading, and writing, which assess how well students can analyze and solve problems based on skills they learned in schools. SAT also costs money, which is about $49 ($75 international), so students usually take it in their junior and senior years.

Before taking the SAT, students will do SAT prep classes to prepare for the test. However, these expensive classes usually cost up to hundreds of dollars. Therefore, this would be unfair to students from low-income families who also intend to get high scores on SAT.

“Many critics also accused designers of the verbal SAT of cultural bias toward the white and wealthy,” according to Wikipedia. Also, the latest research shows that students from high-income families mostly get high scores on SAT, compared to low-income families. Thus, if we don’t want SAT to continue being an unfair test, then every American high school should offer free SAT prep classes all year round. Students, no matter rich or poor, will have fair chances to compete.

Nonetheless, if free SAT prep classes are offered at high schools, then many benefits would come true, and students will have equal chances at college success.

Maggie Li
Freshman, El Cerrito High School

Note from Eric Jepson, who teaches ninth-grade Advanced English at El Cerrito High: El Cerrito High School students live with the hiccups and glories of our education system every day. Many of them are thoughtful about both the short-term and longer-term impacts of adult decision-making upon their lives. This is one in a series of letters to Patch written by freshmen at the school.