For decades, the SAT has reigned supreme as the test, a pencil-biting, white-knuckle experience for generations of high school students that admissions officers nationwide have used to measure an undergraduate applicant’s potential for success in college.
Although first administered 75 years ago, it was the University of California’s adoption of the standardized test in 1968 as a requirement to enter the Golden State’s flagship university system that propelled its popularity nationwide. Today, more than 2 million high school students take the SAT I Reasoning Test each year, and the UC, with more than 90,000 applicants systemwide, remains its biggest user.
But that may not be the case for much longer if UC President Richard C. Atkinson can help it.
In February, Atkinson dropped a bombshell during a keynote address at the American Council on Education’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., by advocating that the SAT I be dumped as a condition of admission to the nation’s universities, and by revealing that he had already asked the Academic Council — the faculty body with responsibility for UC admissions standards — to consider making the test optional. Calling it “the educational equivalent of the nuclear arms race,” he said, “America's overemphasis on the SAT is compromising our educational system.”
A distinguished cognitive psychologist, Atkinson comes to the debate with significant credentials; he has made a career out of measuring intelligence and was the founding chair of the Board on Testing and Assessment, which was created by the National Academies of Science in 1993 to examine nationwide testing practices. So when he made his proposal, it was as if he’d launched a missile that exploded not only within the circles of academe, but also on the front pages and covers of the nation’s leading news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time magazine.
Atkinson says the potentially “destructive” nature of the SAT I coalesced for him when he observed a classroom of 12-year-olds in a private school studying verbal analogies in anticipation of many years later taking the SAT — spending time, he says, on test-taking techniques rather than developing reading and writing skills.
“Too many students really believe this test is measuring something fundamental, and when they don’t score that well they feel they can never succeed in life and they’re branded as basically inferior,” Atkinson says. “Universities have played into this by placing so much importance on the SAT I.”
Atkinson is not the first to criticize the SAT. Over the years, disparities in scores have prompted charges that the test is biased against females, underrepresented minorities and students from low-income families. In 2000, for example, black females scored an average 436 on the verbal portion and 419 on the math section, compared with an average score of 529 verbal and 549 math for white males, according to the College Board, the nonprofit association that created the test.
Many educators, however, say the SAT I — with seven new tests administered annually, each taking two years, at a cost of $200,000, to produce — is one of the most thoroughly researched tests available today and meets the highest psychometric standards. Rather than suggesting that the test is a biased instrument, they say, the gap in scores reflects unequal educational opportunity.
As the academic council begins its full examination of Atkinson’s proposal, the debate is simmering at other institutions of higher learning.
“The SAT has always had some controversy attached to it,” says Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education. “But most schools have continued to use it as one element in admissions. With President Atkinson’s speech, the interest in the SAT and its value may receive more attention on lots of college campuses.”
Some universities, says Hartle — who for 10 years was a research scientist for the Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service, the College Board spin-off that administers the SAT — may now ask: If the UC, a very large and selective system, thinks it can do without the SAT I, what value-added is there for us by requiring the test?
The Ohio State University, in Columbus, is asking just that question. Although 85 percent of its applicants submit scores from the ACT — the second-biggest admissions test, administered by American College Testing of Iowa City, Iowa — the university still receives some 3,000 SAT I scores per year.
“Even though the SAT I is submitted with the minority of applications to our school, we’ve decided, based on the information we are hearing from California, that we need to take a closer look at it,” says James Mager, OSU’s associate vice president for enrollment services. Several hundred colleges and universities no longer require the SAT I for some of their entering freshmen, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, an advocacy group in Cambridge, Mass. They include Bates, Bowdoin, Connecticut and Mount Holyoke Colleges. While Bowdoin, in Brunswick, Maine, made the SAT I optional in 1969, Mount Holyoke, in South Hadley, Mass. — which had required the SAT I for admission since 1926 — changed its policy just last year.
“We felt strongly that the SAT I had taken on an exaggerated importance in students’ lives in high school,” says Jane Brown, Mount Holyoke’s vice president for enrollment and college relations. “We very much wanted to send a message to students that we would encourage them to spend their time and energy in more productive ways.” About 17.5 percent of applicants elected not to submit their scores. The college has received support from a private foundation for a five-year study to monitor the effects of its new policy.
Lafayette College, in Easton, Pa., on the other hand, canceled what would have been a five-year experiment of making the SAT I optional in 1999 — a year earlier than planned. Some faculty members felt that there was a perception that schools that did not require the SAT I were not as selective, says Carol A. Rowlands, Lafayette’s director of admissions.
Many of the nation’s most selective universities say that the SAT I will remain an important element in deciding who will pass through their doors.
At Princeton University, Dean of Admission Fred Hargadon says the SAT I is helpful in selecting among prospective applicants who, in any given year, come from more than 5,000 secondary schools across the United States, as well as from 100 countries.
“The SAT I is an imperfect instrument, but it is better than no instrument at all,” Hargadon says. “If we didn’t have it, we’d be trying to create something like it. High school academic programs vary greatly in terms of resources, content, depth, breadth and quality of instruction. The SAT I is the only measure all applicants submit to us in common.”
DESPITE ATKINSON’S CALL to make the SAT I optional, the UC president says he staunchly supports standardized tests and believes it is important to have some sort of a baseline that balances out variations from one school to another. But, Atkinson explains, he prefers tests that measure achievement, or what is actually learned in the classroom, rather than those that try to measure an innate ability or aptitude. The SAT I is vague in what it measures, he says, and when a student does poorly on the test, parents, teachers and counselors have a hard time trying to tell the student what to work on to improve his or her score.
Along with making the SAT I optional, Atkinson is proposing that the University of California create its own set of tests that are correlated to California high school curricula. Until those tests are developed, he recommends that the UC continue to require three SAT II Subject Tests, which measure students’ skills in math, writing and a subject of their choice like biology or American history. In addition, he proposes that all UC campuses move away from admission processes that use “narrowly defined quantitative formulas, and instead adopt procedures that look at applicants in a comprehensive, holistic way.”
This recommendation, Atkinson says, is aimed at creating a fairer basis on which to make admission decisions and to “help ensure that standardized tests do not have an undue influence, but rather are used to illuminate the student’s total record.”
That, in fact, already is the approach at UCLA, where the SAT I is just one of many tools used by admissions officers as they sort through the tens of thousands of applications received each year. Fourteen years ago the campus developed a holistic process for admitting students — one that in addition to grades and test scores looks at such issues as the classes available in a student’s high school, awards and honors received, extracurricular activities, social and economic conditions in the home and whether the applicant might be a first-generation college student. UC Berkeley adopted a similar approach four years ago.
Within that comprehensive mix, the SAT I is a helpful tool, asserts Rae Lee Siporin M.A. ’64, Ph.D. ’68, who for 22 years until her retirement in April was UCLA’s director of admissions and the architect of the university’s holistic admissions guidelines. When she first came to campus, UCLA received an average of 12,000 applications and admitted about 80 percent. Today, that number has more than tripled (a record 40,700 applications were received for the 2001-’02 freshman class), and about 27 percent are admitted, “so every bit of information we can get is useful,” she says. “In some ways, the SAT I has become more important. As we have had to get more and more selective, everything has become more important.”
UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale, too, believes that in conjunction with the holistic approach to admissions there is value to the SAT I, particularly when it comes to spotting “high fliers” — students who do very well on the test but whose grades don’t reflect equal success in the classroom. Since Atkinson’s plan would still allow students the option of submitting their SAT I scores, Carnesale says, “I’d be willing to bet that those students who have very high SAT I scores would continue to send them as part of their applications to the University of California.”
Because of UCLA’s comprehensive admissions process, Carnesale does not believe that making the SAT I optional would diminish UCLA’s academic standards — one of the key concerns of critics who fear that eliminating the requirement would lower standards.
GASTON CAPERTON, the former governor of West Virginia who now is president of the College Board, says he agrees with Atkinson that more colleges and universities should take a holistic approach to their admissions process. And he adds that the SAT was never designed to be the primary factor in admissions decisions. But he disagrees with Atkinson’s view that the test is vague about what it measures, and says it is “the only common yardstick” to use across all applicants.
He suggests there are larger issues that Atkinson and other education administrators should be considering.
“If you drop the SAT, is it going to bring in better teachers or principals?” Caperton asks. “Is it going to change the fact that in 1966 California was sixth in the nation in educational spending and today it’s 40th? Is it going to change the fact that 23 percent of students in California have poor English skills?
“We have an unequal education system in this country,” Caperton continues. “That’s what we should be attacking. This argument about the SAT is the wrong argument. If every kid in America had the same opportunity, we wouldn’t have this problem.”
In that regard, Caperton and Atkinson are not that far apart. Atkinson says he wants more than just a replacement test for the SAT I; in developing that test, he wants the university’s faculty to determine what is essential for students to know upon entering the UC and to then, leveraging the UC’s position as the state’s preeminent university system, encourage local school districts to teach that information. In the long term, Atkinson says, his plan should help improve teaching statewide beginning in elementary schools, thereby leveling the playing field for all students.
BUT FIRST, the UC Academic Council must review Atkinson’s proposal and make a recommendation to the UC Board of Regents. The questions the faculty considers could be even more far-reaching than simply what subject matter and competencies students should be mastering, says Michael Cowan, chair of the Academic Council. They may include, he says, whether the university is screening out potential leaders through its admissions mechanism. Is the UC admitting students who look good on paper, but who end up doing little of merit beyond graduation? Could introduction of a UC test to replace the SAT I force students to take both tests if they also want to apply outside of the UC?
“It’s clear that Atkinson touched a nerve,” says Cowan, a professor of American studies and literature at UC Santa Cruz. “It certainly stimulated a lot of debate on all sides of the issue. The debate itself is a good thing; it makes us go back and question the assumptions we have that led us to determine that certain apparatus should be used to ascertain a student’s achievement and potential.”
A healthy debate is just what Atkinson is looking for.
“I truly hope this is not a UC venture alone,” Atkinson says. “I hope that the country as a whole will step away from the SAT I and from a tradition in the United States that goes back to a period in the early 1920s when people really believed that tests like this measured something innate. That notion of innate intelligence is a very destructive one.”
He adds: “I don’t have all the wisdom here. But what is clear in my mind is that a dialogue on this matter is long overdue.”
