Change
SAT? Not so fast
Bob Laird
Monday, November 26, 2001 ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle www.sfgate.com
UNIVERSITY of California President Richard Atkinson made national headlines when he proposed that the university drop the long-standing SAT I admission requirement. In a speech to the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, he added that UC faculty members are considering replacing the SAT I with two additional SAT II tests.
Unfortunately, Atkinson's proposed cure is worse than the disease. Currently, the UC system requires all freshman applicants to take the SAT I, or its competitor, the American College Test (ACT) and three SAT II tests. SAT I is a test of developed reasoning ability, not directly tied to the high school curriculum, with two sections, verbal and math. The SAT II tests measure achievement in specific subjects.
The new plan would drop the SAT I (and ACT) and require SAT IIs in the five main subjects the university currently requires of entering students: English, math, history/social science, lab science and foreign language. Atkinson has argued - disingenuously - that replacing the SAT I with two SAT IIs is not an increase in required tests because the current UC admission policy requires five tests for admission. But the SAT I is really one test, with two parts taken at the same sitting. Replacing the SAT I with five SAT IIs means students will have to register for several different sittings over their last three years of high school.
And it isn't as if California students will not have to bother with the SAT I. Many, perhaps most, California high school seniors will continue to apply to other institutions, in and out-of-state, that still require it. Clearly, one of Atkinson's reasons for dropping the SAT is to increase the number of African American, Latino and Native American students who qualify for the UC system and gain admission to the most selective UC campuses: Berkeley, UCLA and San Diego. Based on my experience as director of undergraduate admissions at UC Berkeley, I believe that the five-SAT II proposal will work directly against this goal.
There are already achievement gaps by race and ethnicity on the SAT II tests very similar to the SAT I gaps that have received national attention. These gaps are a complex issue, but replacing the SAT I with two more SAT II tests will not solve it. During the past 20 years, UC campuses have struggled to get disadvantaged students of every ethnicity, particularly African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans, to complete the current requirement of three SAT II tests.
Significant numbers of under-represented minorities have been ineligible for UC, not because their grades weren't good enough or because they didn't have the required college prep courses, but because they didn't complete the SAT IIs. Adding two more such tests will make things more difficult for disadvantaged students.
Whatever the shortcomings of the SAT I, almost every high school senior knows you have to take it. It will be a lot more complicated to figure out which five SAT II tests you should take, when to take them, and how to go about registering - and paying for them. With five SAT IIs, students will need a strategic plan for the last three years of high school.
In order to take the test as close to the completion of the relevant high school course work as possible, many students will want to take the tests in biology, world history and probably writing in the 10th grade, the U.S. history and possibly the math test in the 11th grade, and the language test at the end of the 11th grade or beginning of their senior year. Students will undoubtedly take the test numerous times in hopes of improving their scores.
The students least likely to get the sophisticated advice such a plan requires are almost certainly those in disadvantaged high schools, where there are either no counselors or the counseling load is as high as 600 students or more per counselor. Moving to five tests will sharply increase the advantage affluent students already enjoy, because each SAT II test date will cost $14 to register plus $6 to $11 per test. SAT II fee waivers for low-income students are sharply limited. There are two other important issues about SAT II tests.
The first is the inherent advantage for native speakers of a number of other languages, especially Spanish or Chinese, when they select their third SAT II test in their native language. The current formula used to determine UC eligibility doubles the scores on applicants' SAT II tests, further magnifying the advantage already gained by native speakers of a language other than English.
No one would argue that knowledge of another language is bad, but Atkinson wants UC admissions tests to measure the curriculum studied by students in California high schools. Allowing students to take a SAT II test in their native language hardly meets that criterion.
The second issue is another SAT II quirk that works against African Americans. The California curriculum framework for 11th-grade American history begins with very brief reviews of the Enlightenment and the origins of the American Revolution, then skims through the Civil War and the second half of the 19th century.
The first formal study unit in the course focuses on the Progressive Era in the early 20th century. The SAT II U.S. history test, on the other hand, begins with the pre-Columbian period and includes American history through the end of the 20th century. The extraordinary disadvantage of being tested on a curriculum that students have not studied since the eighth - or, in some cases, the fifth - grade affects every California public high school student.
In California, African Americans are more likely to take the SAT II test in U.S. history as their third SAT II than any other test but English literature. Last year, these students averaged 499 in the U.S. history test, while Latino students averaged 691 in the SAT II Spanish test. Before UC moves to requiring five SAT IIs, it needs to resolve the issue of native language speaker advantage and the misalignment in the SAT II U.S. history test.
The faculty admissions committee should also determine if there are other misalignments - one likely suspect is world history. More than ever, the university needs to depend on the careful deliberative process of its faculty in deciding on its uses of standardized tests in its admission policies. Atkinson is clearly impatient to make big policy changes.
It is equally important not to leap into the void. Bob Laird was director of undergraduate admissions at UC Berkeley from 1993 to 1999.
He is the author of a forthcoming book, "Somewhere to Get to: The National Battle Over Affirmative Action From Inside UC Berkeley."
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