Tests, tests, tests.
Americans love tests, except when they don’t.
They don’t love them as much as they used to in California.
The University of California’s Latino Eligibility Task Force has found that Hispanic eligibility would go up dramatically if taking the SAT was made voluntary, as it was before 1968. The task force has recommended that the state reduce its emphasis on test scores and concentrate on other factors–like grades, class standing, extracurricular activities and overcoming hardships.
Texans don’t love tests as much as they used to, either. Texas Gov. George W. Bush has signed a law that effectively does what California’s task force is recommending. The law requires that the top 10 percent of all Texas high school graduates be admitted to the state university of their choice, regardless of SAT scores or other factors.
Nationally, the American Bar Association has launched a pilot project that calls for participating law schools to de-emphasize LSAT scores in admissions. Other schools, like Massachusetts School of Law, already have made LSAT scores optional.
Nationwide, almost 300 of the nation’s 1,600 four-year colleges and universities have decided to not require SAT or ACT scores when making admissions decisions for all of their applications, according to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, a Cambridge, Mass.-based organization that opposes standardized tests.
“We support educational excellence, but, filling test bubbles on Saturday morning is not excellence,” Bob Schaeffer, a center official, says. “Doing well in school, being able to write and solve problems, that’s excellence. That’s a far richer and more meaningful measure of excellence than filling in bubbles on Saturday morning.”
Yet, over at the White House, they’re not quite sure if they like tests or not.
On the one hand, the Department of Education is investigating whether the University of California’s standardized test requirements violate federal educational opportunity laws. At the same time, President Clinton is calling for national standardized tests for grade school students, despite opposition from both sides of Congress, for different reasons.
The Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have opposed national tests as culturally biased. Congressional conservatives have opposed national tests as an unnecessary federal intrusion into local schools.
Yet, Bill Clinton warmly supports it. Why? Because the polls tell him that an overwhelming majority–more than 70 percent–of Americans support national tests.
I am certain that all of those folks have their hearts in the right place. But, before they jump on the standardized test bandwagon, they should ask themselves whether this is the best way to do it.
Many people say “yes” to tests because it sounds like the right thing to say. We are a test-obsessed nation. Since standardized tests appeared on the scene during World War II, Americans have gotten into the habit of imbuing SATs with more than they really tell us. We have come to think of SATs as accurate measures of “intelligence,” even though the test-makers at the Educational Testing Service caution us that they are not.
They are supposed to help predict how good of a chance the test-taker has of future academic success. Yet, studies repeatedly show SATs to be more effective at predicting the performance of white males and some Asian groups than anyone else.
That’s appropriate, since white males made up the vast majority of those the tests was designed in its early days to test. The ETS was created in 1947 in the midst of a post-war crush of mostly white and male college applicants, aided by the GI Bill.
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Unfortunately, today the SAT and ACT are more likely to underpredict the future performance of blacks and Hispanics, shunting many aside before they’ve had a chance to prove themselves in the classrooms of select institutions.
The main thing standardized tests tell you is how well the individual has been prepared to take the standardized test. Just ask the many reputable companies who advertise classes to help you boost your college admission scores by 10 percent or more.
Almost all of these classes are offered in nice neighborhoods, convenient to the families who can afford them the most and need them the least. Few are found in the ghetto or the barrio. Funny how those who protest the loudest about grade inflation “dumbing down” American education seldom seem to complain about the test score inflation caused by such “prep classes.”
Ironically, standardized tests were created, in part, to provide objective criteria that could overcome the biases that put “ceilings” or “quotas” on the opportunities of Jews and other minorities.
Today, some new barriers to upward mobility have appeared. Some, like the prep classes, have been created in response to the test itself. That poses a new test for a young nation that still believes in equal opportunity.
It is a test that won’t be answered in little bubbles on a sheet of paper.