California calls for the end of SATs

Richard Atkinson doesn't want high school seniors to slave away over SAT prep books anymore. The University of California president asked that the Scholastic Assessment Test be withdrawn as a requirement for admission to the school system, in a speech to the American Counsel on Education on Sunday. The proposal is now being considered by the Academic Senate of the University of California. Atkinson called for the development of standardized tests directly tied to UC's applicant course requirements. In the interim, he suggested that the school system continue to require three SAT II subject tests. "I recommend that all campuses move away from admission processes that use narrowly-defined quantitative formulas and instead adopt procedures that look at the applicants in a comprehensive, holistic way," Atkinson said in his speech. "It would also help to ensure that standardized tests do not have an undue influence but rather are used to illuminate the student's total record." This announcement is expected to cause considerable debate within the educational community. Lee Stetson, Penn's dean of admissions, said that the University does not plan to make any changes in the way it uses the SAT to evaluate applicants. He stated that the test is used in the most selective schools as just one factor in the admissions process, not as the determining factor. Seppy Basila, vice president for learning and assessment at the test preparation company Kaplan, Inc., agreed. "The SAT is far from a perfect test. It's really only one part of the admissions process," Basila said. "Every study has shown that when you use the SAT in conjunction with GPAyou get a better idea of the performance in college." While he couldn't speak for other public institutions, Steve Mostert, director of communications and customer services for undergraduate admissions at Pennsylvania State University, said Atkinson's announcement would not affect the school's admissions policies. "We'll continue to use SATs in our evaluation process," Mostert said. "We like using them as an equalizer in the evaluation with a majority of the weight in the decision based on the student's high school performance." In addition, the question of race has been prevalent in the SATdebate, especially at the University of California, where its Board of Regents voted to eliminate the use of race as a factor in admissions decisions in 1995. Since then, the school has been planning other ways to increase diversity, including a system to take effect this fall that will allow the top four percent of the graduating class in every high school, regardless of standardized test scores, to attend one of UC's nine campuses. "[The proposal] is not an attempt to increase diversity or the number of ethnic minority students, nor is it in anyway an attempt to circumvent the ban on affirmative action," UC spokesman Charles McFadden said. "It is an attempt to open the door a little wider to qualified students." He added, however, that "people from ethnic minorities have said they found the SAT I unfair because they're not sure what the test is measuring.... The SAT II, by contrast, is designed to measure actual mastery of student coursework rather than something called academic potential." Stetson, however, disagreed with the idea that the SAT is a biased exam. "I think the SAT, more than being racially biased, reflects the inequality in the educational programs offered to individual students," he said. Basila agreed, saying that there is no question that students coming from lower-income backgrounds score lower on the SAT. "Interestingly, they also score lower on SAT IIs and state exams," he said. "Students who have had less exposure to certified teachers and good books don't perform as well as students who have had a privileged education."