New SAT Data Highlights the Deep Inequality at the Heart of American Education

New data shows, for the first time at this level of detail, how much students’ standardized test scores rise with their parents' incomes — and how disparities start years before students sit for tests. One-third of the children of the very richest families scored a 1300 or higher, while less than 5 percent of middle-class students did, according to the data, from economists at Opportunity Insights, based at Harvard. Relatively few children in the poorest families scored that high; just one in five took the test at all.