I volunteer tutor teens in the SAT and the problem is a bit deeper than just parents. A few of my students have a similar amount of base intelligence as me, and if they studied as much as I did, they would have no problem with finding a path of least resistance to the upper-middle/lower-upper class. The problem is that even if I'm 100% sure this path exists, they are skeptical because it seems like I'm in a entirely different world from them, so I'm not different than an MLM influencer promising them $10k a week. I knew a lot of people who spent all their time studying and on extracurriculars, but the same isn't true for my students. It would require a Herculean amount of self-discipline to commit yourself to that much work when no one else you know is taking the same path.
This is why (imo), test prep should be a class you take at school. Why should it be a separate thing and a multi billion dollar industry? A lot of the SAT/ACT prep for HS students is about understanding how the tests work and how to approach questions.
We already have a bunch of federally mandated AYP testing (no) thanks to No (ALL?) Child Left Behind, why can't this just be old copies of the ACT or SAT. By the time kids are ready to apply for college, it will be second hand and not another extra thing they have to learn.
You can already get 8 free SAT practice tests and Khan Academy offers a free online class. If you go through all of them and learn from your mistakes, that should be more than enough to get a decent score. With tutoring and classes, you're mainly paying for someone to pressure you to put the effort in, similar to with fitness classes.
That is probably the reason it isn't taught at school. School itself does very little to encourage class mobility, starting from being funded by local property taxes.
