California State University Chancellor Timothy P. White said Wednesday that he has asked academic leaders to study whether the SAT and ACT are valid predictors of student success, raising hopes that the nation’s largest public university system will ultimately drop standardized test scores as admission requirements.I'm not convinced that these tests should predict "student success", as there's a lot that happens to a person between taking such tests as a high school senior and graduating from college. These tests used to be very strong predictors of academic success freshman year, has that changed?
Several studies have found that the tests do not accurately predict whether students can do well in college. Critics also argue that they place low-income students who can’t afford expensive test prep at a competitive disadvantage. Those concerns have prompted a growing list of more than 1,000 colleges and universities — including the University of Chicago — that have made the tests optional.
But it's hard to take the given rationale seriously when you read outright lies like this:
“We do focus on being inclusive rather than exclusive,” White said after an appearance Wednesday at Cal State Northridge. “There is a lot of evidence that [standardized testing] has a bias against students based on their demographics. There’s no doubt about that."Really? No doubt about that? That's not even close to accurate. The tests aren't biased against (black and Hispanic) students based on their demographics, the student's preparation, background, education, etc, are biased against them. Because they're not as well prepared as upper-middle-class white and Asian kids. It sickens me that I'm paying the salary of someone who pretends to think otherwise--or worse, who actually believes it.
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Upper-middle-class Hispanic and black kids have known, at least since the 80s, that they do not have to take the same number of honors/AP classes, have as high a GPA or score as well on the SAT/ACT tests as white, let alone Asian, kids and they will still be accepted into elite colleges that reject their better-scoring classmates - a perverse incentive if there ever was one. Several friends of my kids admitted as much, and I knew a number of incredibly high-scoring URMs who were initially shunned by their white and Asian college freshmen classmates; who erroneously assumed they were less qualified, due to AA. Once they were past that issue, they were shunned and ridiculed by their fellow racemates, who had been admitted with lesser records, due to AA (not that they wanted to hang out with them, but being harassed is never fun).
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