The University of California has a history of setting off changes in the
standardized testing industry. Complaints from California, for example, led to
the creation of the SAT’s writing test. Now, a universitywide faculty panel is
pushing for another major change: dropping the requirement that all applicants
for undergraduate admission submit two scores on SAT subject tests.
While the proposal would maintain the requirement that applicants submit
either SAT or ACT scores, the elimination of the SAT subject tests (once known
as achievement tests) would represent a significant erosion in institutions with
such requirements. The College Board says that about 160 colleges — generally
among the most elite — require or recommend at least one SAT subject, but the
number of institutions with requirements is a minority within that group. So the
departure of the University of California’s nine undergraduate campuses, with
their 121,000 applicants, would be a major blow to the program.
Also potentially a blow: the conclusion of University of California
professors that the subject tests add very little information of value to
admissions officers, making the tests not worth applicants’ or universities’
time.
While the University of California is highly influential on admissions
standards, the institution is not speedy on these issues. The idea of abandoning
the SAT subject tests has already been under consideration for several years,
and the concept is far from being approved. But in a key milestone — noted by
the Los Angeles Times Sunday — the Academic Senate of the system has sent
the proposal to all campus faculty groups to review. After their comments come
back, votes by two Senate bodies would be required to eventually send the idea
to the university’s president and board. Senate leaders said, however, that the
board has generally been supportive of faculty groups taking the lead on
questions of admissions testing.
The College Board offers 20 SAT subject tests, broken into five categories: English,
history and social studies, mathematics, science and languages. The tests are
each one hour and consist of multiple choice questions.
Michael Brown, chair of the Academic Senate and a professor of counseling and
clinical psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, said that
the important finding of the faculty review of the subject tests wasn’t that
they didn’t test anything of value. The problem is that when examined on top of
grades in a high-school preparatory curriculum and the basic SAT or ACT, there
is “very little” more that is gained by having the additional testing on top of
other admissions requirements.
“They aren’t getting that much out of it, and they are not getting
information that they can’t get in other ways,” he said.
A detailed faculty report on the idea of abandoning the subject
tests also notes that many students — especially low-income and/or minority
students — become ineligible to apply because they do not take the subject
matter tests. While students from top high schools are steered to prepare for
and take the exams, that doesn’t happen elsewhere. So the testing requirement
was found by the faculty panel to add next to nothing of value while diminishing
the pool of low-income and minority students.
Brown said that as the idea has been discussed among various faculty groups,
there was some concern from engineering professors that admissions offices might
lack necessary information about applicants for their programs. Brown said that
before making the most recent recommendation, the professors studying the issue
ran testing models to identify the predictive value gained for engineering
applicants, and while it found slightly more value than for other students, the
value was still extremely small. In addition, Brown noted that the proposal
going forward gives departments or programs the right to recommend specific
tests from the SAT subject portfolio. Generally, Brown said, when programs make
such recommendations, applicants follow them, and this might create the
possibility for the test being used in a far more limited way.
The California faculty panel also noted that reliance on the SAT subject
tests has become much more common among private than public institutions.
Harvard, Yale and Princeton Universities all require SAT subject tests. But some
of the most elite of public universities — such as the University of Michigan and the University of Texas at Austin — do not require the tests.
While Michigan will look at scores if applicants volunteer them, Texas will set
aside the scores, and reviews them only for possible use in placement of
admitted students.
Edna Johnson, a spokeswoman for the College Board, took strong exception to
the idea that the subject tests are expendable or limit the diversity of
applicants. She called the tests “a fair, unbiased measure” of knowledge of
specific subjects. Both students and colleges gain by having this information,
Johnson said.
If the University of California has “a broader swath of tests,” it can see “a
fuller picture — more information — which is clearly more advantageous to all
students,” she said. Eliminating the requirement would lead admissions offices
to have “more subjectivity and less tangible academic data.” As for minority
students, she said that some do better on the primary SAT and some do better on
the subject tests, so minority students benefit from having all of the tests
required.
Robert Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest: National Center for
Fair & Open Testing, a leading critic of the College Board and standardized
testing, said that the strong opposition from the College Board to the
California proposal is predictable. Schaeffer cited the College Board’s own data
to show that 36 percent of all SAT subject tests are administered in California,
making him think the board will start a “pull out all the stops” campaign to
“block this proposal.”
Fees from the test are significant, Schaeffer said. According to the College
Board’s fee schedule, it costs $20 to register to take an SAT subject
test, an additional $8 for other subject tests, and an additional $20 for the
special “listening” portion of some of the foreign language tests, in which the
multiple choice questions relate to passages that are recorded for test-takers.
Students applying to many colleges may also face additional fees for having
their scores reported.
“If UC were to drop subject tests, barely six dozen campuses in the country
would require them,” said Schaeffer. “The potential domino effect of more
schools eliminating that testing requirement could cost the College Board tens
of millions.”
As to the substance of the proposal in California, Schaeffer said that the
faculty committee has produced considerable evidence that the requirement is
limiting diversity without adding information that admissions officers need. He
said that all testing on which wealthy applicants hire coaching companies favors
wealthier students over others, so any reduction in the number of tests required
promotes equity. If the university system follows through, he predicted it would
see an increase in minority and low-income applicants who would no longer face
an “unnecessary hurdle.”
— Scott
Jaschik