By Justin Hsieh
Earlier this month, faculty members at the University of California (UC) released a highly anticipated report detailing the conclusions of a yearlong investigation into the University’s use of standardized tests like the SAT and ACT in its admissions process. The report, which recommended the continued use of the tests, alarmed and disappointed many test critics who had hoped for a key victory in the escalating battle over standardized testing in college admissions.
The report was authored by members of the Standardized Testing Task Force (STTF), a committee of the UC Academic Senate created in January 2019 with the charge of “evaluating whether the University and its students are best served by [current] testing practices, a modification of [current] testing practices, another testing approach altogether, or perhaps even no testing at all.”
The STTF was created in response to a July 2018 request from UC President Janet Napolitano that the Senate (which consists of UC faculty and is in charge of academic matters including curricula and admissions) examine the role of the tests in the University’s admissions. Napolitano’s request came amidst growing national scrutiny of the tests’ use in higher education, as critics charged that they both inaccurately predicted college success and disadvantaged students based on race and socioeconomic status.
On Feb. 3, the STTF released the results of its evaluation, delivering a series of recommendations that most significantly included a retention of standardized tests in the University’s admissions process. The report found that the tests actually helped disadvantaged students, who were admitted at higher rates than other students for a given test score — a result, the report said, that STTF members had not expected.
“The STTF found that UC admissions practices compensated well for the observed differences in average test scores among demographic groups,” the report said. “This likely reflects UC’s use of comprehensive review, as well as UC’s practice of referencing each student’s performance to the context of their school.”
In addition, the report found that test scores better predict student performance in college than do high school grades, a commonly suggested alternative metric. While UC currently weighs grades more heavily than test scores, STTF members worried that the elimination of tests altogether would increase reliance on the less reliable metric of grades.
“At UC, test scores are currently better predictors of first-year GPA than high school grade-point average (HSGPA), and about as good at predicting first-year retention, undergraduate GPA, and graduation,” the report said. “The STTF found that California high schools vary greatly in grading standards, and that grade inflation is part of why the predictive power of HSGPA has decreased since the last UC study.”
Another potential alternative that the STTF rejected was the use of the Smarter Balanced (SBAC) Assessment, a state-wide high school test that some thought might better predict college success and reduce bias in student results.
“The Task Force was deeply concerned with a wide range of risks related to the adoption of the SBAC to meet UC admissions requirements, including (but not limited to) test security, item exposure control, and item bank size, as well as inconsistent implementation of the SBAC across states, ambiguity regarding instructional validity, and the likelihood that this change would reduce the utility of SBAC for its main purpose,” the report said.
While these conclusions led the Task Force to recommend the retention of the tests for now, the report also recognized that “UC admissions practices do not fully make up for disparities that persist along lines of race and class,” and included the long-term possibility of a shift toward a more equitable tool for admissions.
“This is not to conclude that consideration of test scores does not adversely affect [underrepresented minority] applicants,” the report said. “If standardized test scores must be compensated in order to achieve the entering class sought by UC, that is reason to question whether it is necessary to use the tests at all, and/or whether it is possible to design an alternative instrument that does not require such compensation.”
Such an “alternative instrument” might include UC’s development of its own admissions assessments, which along with an expansion of eligibility for guaranteed UC system admissions (currently granted to the top 9% of seniors at each local high school) was one of the STTF’s six main recommendations. The STTF estimated that the development of those assessments, however, would take around nine years – a timeline too long for test critics such as UC Student Association president Varsha Sarveshwar.
“At the end of the day, the test has detrimental effects on students of color, in low-income families and individuals with disabilities,” Sarveshwar said. “It doesn’t feel like the test is treating us all equally.”
Sarveshwar was not alone in criticizing the report. UC’s status as one of the largest and most successful higher education systems in the world and the ACT and SAT’s largest market have made it a flash point for the debate over standardized testing in American education. Last year, lawyers threatened to sue the University if it did not end its use of the tests, arguing that it violated state civil rights laws by unfairly disadvantaging certain students. Mark Rosenbaum, one of those lawyers, criticized the report’s conclusion that enrollment disparities were due to students’ failure to complete college prep coursework.
“Rather than blame California’s students, their families and communities, and their teachers, the university should eliminate all reliance on these discriminatory and meaningless tests and instead work with the state K-12 system to…build a student body that reflects the broad diversity of the state,” Rosenbaum said.
While the University does enroll more disadvantaged students than other elite research universities, with 40% of undergraduates being first-generation college students and 36% low income students in fall 2019, its admission of students from underrepresented minorities (37% of California resident students and 26% of all applicants in 2019) lags behind those groups’ representation in the state population (59% of California high school graduates in 2019).
This gap, which many have attributed to the use of standardized tests in the admissions process, has led figures within the University, including UC Board of Regents Chairman John A. Pérez and UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ, to oppose the use of the tests. The report’s conclusion that the tests are not major contributors to enrollment inequality has also led some to question its validity.
“Because of these discrepancies [between the findings of the STTF report and past research on the UC system], we call upon the task force to make the data sets it analyzed available to independent analysts for further review,” said Bob Schaeffer, a director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest).
Schaeffer and FairTest have been leaders in a growing “test-optional” movement that has pushed for colleges and universities to make the submission of standardized test scores optional in the admissions process. While more than 1,000 institutions, including Colorado College, the University of Chicago and Indiana University, have made the switch, UC has not, and the STTF report recommended against doing so.
“STTF had pragmatic concerns about how campuses would evaluate and compare applicants who submit standardized test scores relative to applicants who do not; whether and how campuses would impute, explicitly or implicitly, test scores to applicants; and ethical concerns about how to treat students in the two groups fairly,” the report said. “The current UC admissions practice of putting each applicant’s test scores into context by comparing them to all applicants from the same school… could no longer be used if students could choose whether or not to submit their test scores.”
The College Board, which owns the SAT, praised the report and defended the validity of its conclusions. The College Board and ACT have argued that their tests help predict college performance, that they offer a uniform metric for admissions officers to use to compare students and that disparities in scores reflect broader historical inequality in access to quality education, rather than bias in the tests.
“The standardized testing task force’s evidence-based report shows that the thoughtful and responsible use of testing by the University of California promotes diversity and success,” said the College Board. “This report celebrates the UC admissions professionals who use judgment and context to ensure that test scores advance underrepresented students.”
The report will be reviewed by all members of the Senate through February and March. The Senate will deliver a final report to Napolitano in April, after which the president will make recommendations to the Board of Regents when it votes on the issue in May.
“The University of California Office of the President appreciates the diligent efforts by the Academic Council’s Standardized Testing Task Force (STTF) to thoroughly evaluate the use and efficacy of standardized testing in UC admissions,” a statement from Napolitano’s office said. “The University aims to continue deliberating the role of standardized testing in our admissions process through a careful, fact-based approach so as to arrive at the most informed decision possible.”
