by Patricia Gándara
It is with sadness and dismay that I see UC faculty support of the SAT resurging as a cure for all ills afflicting higher education.
I was a member of the faculty committee, known as the Standardized Testing Task Force (STTF), that was charged in 2019 with reviewing the University of California’s policy on the use of the SAT/ACT in admissions. I was also a member of the group of six that was charged with writing the first draft of the final report for this committee. The report we submitted at the beginning of 2020 was characterized as recommending that the test continue to be used in admissions, at least until a better test could be developed. However, that was somewhat misleading.
There was strong disagreement among the committee members about the use of the test. Roughly half of the committee argued that the test was the best predictor of college performance and therefore should be retained. Others, including Saul Geiser with the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley, argued that the statistical models upon which this finding rests are flawed. Some members contended that the test was biased against some groups of students and that using test scores in admissions was a misuse of the test because it assumed the relationship between test scores and later grades was immutable. Several people agreed to continued use of the SAT based on the premise that UC would replace it with a less biased UC-developed test as quickly as possible, which obviously has not happened.
The reality is that students from higher income backgrounds and stronger schools outperform those students from lower income and African American and Latino backgrounds on the test. It is also a fact that students from more economically advantaged communities attend schools that provide stronger instruction with better prepared and more experienced teachers. Students in less privileged communities often receive weaker math (and other subject) instruction. Access to strong instruction varies considerably by home and schooling resources – that is what the test tests, not necessarily mathematical potential.
As an educational psychologist, my training is in using tests to identify students’ strengths and address their weaknesses in order to equalize their access to educational opportunity, not to deny that opportunity. Applying high stakes –such as university admission—to these tests is anathema to fairness. The evidence shows that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to apply to UC if they must take the test. When UC eliminated the use of the SAT/ACT in admissions, more students from groups that typically declined to apply (low income, Black and Hispanic) did so, gaining access to a critically important academic resource that will have consequences for the rest of their lives. Countless students who take themselves out of the running for fear of the test will miss out on the opportunities a UC education can provide.
It is appalling that having identified that some groups will not perform as well as others, supporters of the use of the SAT are content to allow the test scores to deny opportunity rather than to address these students identified instructional needs. While some may have weak backgrounds in mathematics, these students have met a high bar in other areas of academic accomplishment to have been admitted to the university in an extremely competitive admissions process. Most students who have been admitted without test scores are doing fine. The students who are failing to meet the requirements of STEM courses have demonstrated that they are interested in pursuing math instruction by enrolling in these courses. The faculty can choose to reject them or to find ways to meet their needs.
Meeting these students’ needs, however, would require the use of a different kind of test—one that identifies the specific skills and knowledge needed to be successful in specific STEM areas of study. Students could then choose to take supplemental courses designed to fill in the learning gaps or opt out of a STEM major. The SAT does not allow or provide for such instructional specificity.
Reinstatement of the SAT/ACT at the UC would simply reinforce the deep inequality that exists in our educational system, no doubt resulting in proportionately fewer low income, Black and Hispanic students gaining admission. The UC made the bold decision to broaden its lens to incorporate a wider range of skills and abilities in its admissions process rather than relying on a flawed instrument to make those decisions. Like other bold decisions, it requires some adjustments to the system. But that is no reason to abandon a commitment to fairness and the well-being of all the state’s students.
Patricia Gándara is a professor emerita at UCLA and co-director of The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. Professor Gándara holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and has taught Testing Policy at UC Davis and UCLA.
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