Opponents of standardized tests for college admissions were jubilant after the University of California system agreed May 13 to extend its policy of test-free admissions. But the SAT and the ACT are the thermometer, not the fever. Getting rid of them only makes it harder to identify, and ultimately to fix, the very real problems of educational inequity in California and the nation.
The decision by the regents of the University of California—whose 10 campuses educate 280,000 undergraduate and graduate students—resolves a 2019 lawsuit charging that the SAT and ACT are biased against the poor and Black and Hispanic students. Another lawsuit filed last year, and aimed mainly at protecting students with disabilities, said that even making the tests optional didn’t go far enough and that they should not be considered under any circumstances.
California has plenty of company. According to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, more than 60% of U.S. four-year colleges and universities won’t require SAT or ACT scores for fall 2022 entry.
The plaintiffs in California are right about one big thing: The urgent need to increase minority access to top colleges and universities. Low-income students and minorities are underrepresented in higher education, particularly in selective schools like those of the University of California. That’s bad for the students and for society as a whole, which needs to draw on the brains and energy of everyone, not just the privileged upper tier.
Where the plaintiffs are wrong is in arguing that the SAT and ACT are irretrievably racist. True, the tests aren’t a perfect indicator of who will succeed in college and who won’t. Students from privileged upbringings can boost their scores through expensive test prep.
But the test makers have taken seriously the need to expunge class, race, and gender bias from test questions. The SAT was redesigned and relaunched in 2016. A test of its validity involving 223,000 at 171 colleges and universities found that “the SAT is essentially as effective as high school grades in predicting students’ college performance and, when these two measures are combined, offers the most accurate understanding of student performance than either measure used alone,” according to a 2019 study by its creator, the College Board.
Considering the source, go ahead and shave that estimate if you want and say SATs are only half as accurate as high school grades in predicting college performance. That’s still valuable incremental information when used in context. Admissions committees aren’t simply ranking students by SAT or ACT score and taking the top decile or two. Sensibly, they make allowances for the challenges that underprivileged applicants face. A 600 SAT verbal score means more to them if it’s from a student in Compton than a student in, say, Atherton. And even if scores aren’t used for head-to-head comparisons between very different applicants, they’re useful in distinguishing between kids from the same high school.
In May 2020, when the University of California regents voted to phase out use of standardized tests, they faced pushback from within their own system. A review by the Academic Senate found that the SAT helps, not hurts, disadvantaged students and that “campuses adjust for socioeconomic differences and admit disadvantaged students with lower test scores compared with more advantaged peers,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “UC Riverside Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox said his campus — the most diverse in the UC system after Merced — has prospered using the current admissions process, winning top rankings for helping low-income, first-generation and underrepresented students succeed.”
The SAT and ACT shine a harsh but much-needed spotlight on the inequities of the educational system and society in general that result in relatively few Black, Hispanic, and low-income being on a par with more privileged students in college readiness. To block use of the SAT and ACT scores because their results are depressing is to shoot the messenger. And it certainly doesn’t serve the interests of minority applicants who do overcome the odds and ace the standardized tests.
The best solution, of course, is improve education and living conditions so more students from all parts of society are ready for the rigors of an elite education. Since that’s a long-term project, it’s reasonable to give some preference to college applicants from underprivileged backgrounds to correct historical injustices. But that should be done out in the open, no apologies necessary, rather than by suppressing discomforting information.