As I am not a citizen of the US, I have no idea what the exact makeup is of the SAT, so I have to keep guessing. I take the contrary position for the sake of argument.
As far as the SAT measures knowledge it would be very surprising to see no effect of learning. What we are examining though is the effect of additional test preparation beyond the usual curriculum. So I would argue that the marginal benefit of additional preparation is extremely low as all the necessary knowledge is conferred by the usual curriculum—especially by the students considering taking the SAT and taking additional care to ace them.
I seem to recall that SAT and g are highly correlated. Insofar as the SAT is a g-heavy IQ test I am not at all surprised that additional preparation confers virtually no advantage, just as we know of no way to reliably increase g. Insofar the SAT measures ability like geometry it would be surprising if learning those subjects gives no benefit as long as the required knowledge goes beyond what is already taught in high school.
There is only a moderate correlation between income and taking of test prep
Under-performing minorities are more likely to take test prep than whites
In other words, quite a few people taking test prep are ones likely to be going to poor, under-performing school systems. Either test prep companies are incompetent or our school system is doing a lot better than I had expected, even on the low end!
As I am not a citizen of the US, I have no idea what the exact makeup is of the SAT, so I have to keep guessing. I take the contrary position for the sake of argument.
As far as the SAT measures knowledge it would be very surprising to see no effect of learning. What we are examining though is the effect of additional test preparation beyond the usual curriculum. So I would argue that the marginal benefit of additional preparation is extremely low as all the necessary knowledge is conferred by the usual curriculum—especially by the students considering taking the SAT and taking additional care to ace them.
I seem to recall that SAT and g are highly correlated. Insofar as the SAT is a g-heavy IQ test I am not at all surprised that additional preparation confers virtually no advantage, just as we know of no way to reliably increase g. Insofar the SAT measures ability like geometry it would be surprising if learning those subjects gives no benefit as long as the required knowledge goes beyond what is already taught in high school.
While a good point, the OP’s link says that:
There is only a moderate correlation between income and taking of test prep
Under-performing minorities are more likely to take test prep than whites
In other words, quite a few people taking test prep are ones likely to be going to poor, under-performing school systems. Either test prep companies are incompetent or our school system is doing a lot better than I had expected, even on the low end!