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Christopher Emanuel

English 1201

Professor Loudermilk

20 January 2019

Research Proposal

Almost every high school student in America takes some kind of standardized test every

year. Being a high school student myself, I constantly hear people talking about their ACT

scores. Students are commonly comparing their scores to national, state, and school averages.

They are also always comparing their scores to the scores of their peers. I always wondered why

the low scores among my peers in my community match up with the average national scores.

Why were students in my community constantly doing above average on standardized testing?

Studies have found that students from wealthier backgrounds constantly score higher on

standardized testing. This is why students in my community are faring better than average on

these test. When I found this out I wanted to know why this was true. Why would the economic

background of a student be a factor in how they did on a standardized test. This is a very fair

question that I am motivated and excited to investigate.

I feel that students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized testing, but

there is no way to even the playing field without hurting someone. Any change to the

standardized testing system would hurt some students, and that is not fair to them. I think it is

very interesting how economic backgrounds are a factor in student testing scores. I believe that

students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on these test for a variety of reasons. There is
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no one thing that is the reasoning for this being true. I already know that studies show wealthier

students do better on standardized testing such as the ACT and SAT.

There is still a lot that I don’t know about this topic. I am hoping to learn why students

from wealthier backgrounds are doing better on these test. I am also hoping to learn how much

better are these students doing on standardized tests. I will find the answers to these questions

from the statistic but out by the standardized testing companies. The first question I have about

my topic is, “Are students from wealthier backgrounds taking the test more times”? The other

question that I have is, “do students with wealthier backgrounds have better access to study

materials”?