Will California Fail the Test?
Blum, Edward
Will California Fail the Test? Getting rid of the SAT will not improve college admissions. BY EDWARD BLUM IF YOU LIKE WHAT California has done to deregulate electricity, you will love its plans...
...BY EDWARD BLUM IF YOU LIKE WHAT California has done to deregulate electricity, you will love its plans to make college admissions "fairer...
...Ultimately, Dr...
...while small, liberal arts colleges may have the luxury of considering a broader range of factors, this would be unworkable at any large university system...
...In a move that stunned the higher education establishment, University of California president Richard C. Atkinson recently asked the university's academic senate to discard the Scholastic Assessment Test I, which has been the bane of college-bound high school students for over 50 years...
...The results of Atkinson's proposal will be exactly the opposite of what the "fairness" crowd wants...
...There is another distressing aspect to the controversy over standardized testing...
...The SAT and other high-stakes tests, he has said, "can have a devastating impact on the self-esteem" of young students...
...But that's only the beginning...
...For the sake of efficiency, GPAs and test scores must be the main criteria for screening applicants...
...Nearly two years ago, the department's Office of Civil Rights floated Edward Blum is director of legal affairs at the American Civil Rights Institute...
...It would likely reward the children whose parents can send them to private schools and hire special tutors for them...
...As to shifting from an "ability" test like the SAT I to an "achievement" test like SAT II, such a decision would be a big mistake...
...This gap exists at every grade level and among all economic groups: Middle- and upper-class blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans lag behind middle- and upper-class whites and Asians...
...For 2001, the California system has received over 90,000 applications for undergraduate admission...
...Instead of using the SAT I, Atkinson wants the California system to use the SAT II, which tests a student's mastery of subjects studied in high school, in addition to his grades, essays, and a number of other subjective criteria...
...Atkinson wants the nation's largest university system to take a more "comprehensive" and "holistic" approach to evaluating prospective students...
...Virtually all successful inner-city schools are ones that rely on frequent and demanding testing...
...Gaston Caperton, the president of the nonprofit College Board which designs and distributes the SAT, has written that the disparity "is particularly troubling because we are not talking about disadvantaged youngsters...
...Only after howls of protest from the university community did the Education Department start to back off...
...Atkinson surely knows this...
...Atkinson's proposal and vote to end the use of the SAT I. New admissions guidelines would be in place for the freshman class of 2003...
...Simply put, the great irony of the SAT I is that it is biased in favor of black and Hispanic students, not the other way around...
...In spite of the endless siege on standardized tests, the College Board—which has often gone along with its critics—concludes that the SAT "and other admissions tests tend to 'over-predict' the college performance of African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans...
...Atkinson wants state schools to abandon all numerical measurements of student aptitude...
...guidelines that stated "the use of any educational test which has a significant disparate impact on members of any particular race, national origin, or sex is discriminatory, and a violation of Title VI and/or Title IX, respectively, unless it is educationally necessary and there is no practicable alternative form of assessment which meets the educational institution's needs and would have a less disparate impact...
...Atkinson's push for a more "holistic" approach to evaluating applicants is naive at best, cynical at worst...
...Instead of eliminating one of the best predictors of college achievement, California should intensify its efforts to prepare every student to compete on the SAT I...
...Achievement tests stack the deck against kids from poor backgrounds and poor schools, whereas an aptitude test usually gives them an opportunity to exhibit their potential...
...Atkinson's call for ending the use of the SAT I should also be seen as a counterpunch to Proposition 209— the California initiative that ended racial preferences in public educa-tion—and to lawsuits challenging race-based admissions in other states...
...That is, minority students at predominantly white colleges and universities attain significantly lower grade-point averages than white and Asian-American peers who attained similar SAT scores in high school...
...If this happens it will be heartbreaking for the students of California...
...Some have speculated that the California Board of Regents—the ultimate arbiter on matters such as this— will eventually heed Dr...
...Even minority students from relatively wealthy families with well-educated parents do not perform as well as white and Asian students from similar backgrounds...
...Putting aside the fragile self-esteem of applicants, the real reason for this latest move is the persistent and disheartening disparity in standardized test scores that sets whites and Asians apart from blacks and Hispanics...
...Even though the top 4 percent of all qualified high school graduates in California are assured spots at the University of California, some campuses—Berkeley and Los Ange-les—and graduate programs have not recovered their pre-209 levels of minority enrollment...
...Rather than demonize one of the best methods for assessing intellectual skill, California should demand greater effort from minority pupils and reform failing inner-city schools...
...In other words, schools were told to ditch the SAT I or face the threat of discrimination lawsuits...
...Critics of the SAT I conveniently overlook the fact that continuous testing has proven to be the best method for narrowing the educational gap between the races...
...Disarmed of the race preference, California's elite campuses no longer have the proper numerical racial "diversity" (read, proportional representation) so beloved by university administrators...
...No one should be surprised by this latest assault on the SAT I. For years the test has been attacked as culturally biased by various racial advocacy groups such as the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens, left-leaning college administrators, and most important, the Clinton-era Department of Education...
Vol. 6 • March 2001 • No. 25
