Got a weight problem? Have you been dieting but finding that the scale doesn’t register any loss of poundage? Then let me make a suggestion: Get a hammer and smash the scale.
If you think that sounds like a reasonable remedy, then you may qualify for membership on the Latino Eligibility Task Force for the University of California.
Last month, the committee expressed alarm that once racial preferences are eliminated in undergraduate admissions and students are judged on their academic records and test scores, the number of Latinos enrolled in the University of California system will drop sharply. The task force’s solution was not to find ways to improve the performance of Hispanic applicants. It was to get rid of the test on which Hispanics score low.
Ending use of the Scholastic Assessment Test would double the number of Hispanics who would qualify for admission to the University of California system. It would also increase the number of eligible blacks.
There is no doubt that Hispanics and blacks do worse on the SAT than whites. Nationally, the average score for whites is 1,052, compared to an average of 909 for Mexican-Americans and 857 for African-Americans. If a selective school like the University of California at Berkeley or UCLA measures applicants partly by this yardstick, fewer Latinos and blacks will be admitted than under the old system of affirmative action.
Critics conclude this proves the malignant nature of the test. They say 1) that it is culturally biased, favoring whites over minorities, 2) that scores are related not to academic ability but, more than anything else, to family income and 3) that it doesn’t predict performance in college, as it is supposed to.
The facts, regrettably, don’t support the critics. If the test is culturally biased, why is it that Asian-Americans not only do better on the test than other minorities but also outscore whites? It’s hard to imagine how the College Board could devise an exam that simultaneously favors kids whose parents left England on the Mayflower in 1620 and kids whose parents fled Vietnam as boat people in 1975. But if you believe the cultural bias theory, that’s exactly what it has done.
FairTest, an anti-SAT group based in Cambridge, Mass., claims that scores merely reflect family income. Sure enough, its chart shows that the higher the family income, the better the score. What does this prove? Apparently, it has never occurred to the people at FairTest that rich people are smarter, on average, than poor people and that intelligence may actually come in handy if you want to make money.
But dollars don’t automatically translate into SAT points. Black students from the highest income category score about the same, on average, as the poorest whites. They also do worse on the math portion of the test than Asian-American students from the lowest income bracket.
The College Board doesn’t deny that, in general, high school grades are a slightly better predictor of college success than the SAT. But together, the two measures tell more than either does by itself. And sometimes, grades are simply not very informative. Getting straight A’s from a lousy school is easier than getting straight A’s from an outstanding one. To compare graduates of the two schools, a different measure is needed–and that is where the SAT comes in.
Let the critics have their way, and grades will be even less helpful. Grade inflation is already a problem in the nation’s high schools, and if high school transcripts become the main basis for selecting University of California students, teachers will hand out even more A’s than now.
The expected decline in the number of blacks and Latinos in the University of California is the result of the poor academic preparation they get in elementary and secondary institutions–not from the unfairness of the SAT. The opponents of the test act as though the only tough part of college is getting in. But kids who are not ready for rigorous colleges won’t gain much from being admitted.
In their new book, “America in Black and White,” Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom point out that 42 percent of black undergraduates drop out of Berkeley, compared to 16 percent of whites. Nationally, African-Americans are 50 percent more likely to quit college than whites–possibly because racial preferences funnel them into schools that are more demanding than many of them can handle. Unless the University of California lowers its academic expectations, measures to arbitrarily boost black and Latino enrollment will mean taking a lot of applicants who are likely to fail.
What these students need is not lower standards but better grade schools and high schools, so that they are prepared for the demanding requirements of college. If the SAT shows that the schools are failing black and Hispanic kids, we shouldn’t blame the SAT.
