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SHOCK: New York Times Discovers SAT Is Useful After All

Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2024
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by David Lewis Schaefer
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AMAC Exclusive – By David Lewis Schaefer

New York Times; SATs

In a front-page story in the New York Times this month titled “The Misguided War on the SAT,” journalist David Leonhardt describes the disastrous effects of colleges and universities abandoning the requirement that prospective students submit standardized test scores as part of their application. Leonhardt’s observation reflects recent research findings that confirm what mainstream analysts of higher education had long understood.

As Leonhardt, who “has been reporting on opportunity in higher education for more than two decades,” reports, the COVID-19 pandemic made it more difficult for high school students to take the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) and its rival, the American College Test (ACT). As a result, “dozens of selective colleges” stopped requiring test scores at all. While the move was sometimes described as temporary, almost none of the schools restored the requirement.

In reality, as Leonhardt acknowledges, the elimination of testing requirements reflected “a backlash against standardized tests that began long before the pandemic” (in fact, in the mid-1960s) largely grounded in claims of “equity.” More specifically, since average black and Latino scores were lower than those of white and Asian-American students, it was claimed that the tests embodied often subtle racial bias (for instance, by using vocabulary words like “regatta” that students from less privileged backgrounds were less likely to be familiar with).

In response to such charges, the Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT, began scrutinizing questions on the verbal part of the test in order to eliminate any sort of seeming racial or ethnic bias.

But it was more difficult for the biased excuse to explain differences in the quantitative or mathematical part of the test, in which the scores of African-American and Latino students fell well below those of their white and (even more) Asian-American counterparts.

In fact, as a literature review cited by leading scholars Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom in their book No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, “[i]f there is a ‘racial bias’ in the SATs” as predictors of college success demonstrated, “it is a bias in favor of blacks” (their emphasis). 

Nonetheless, in 2019 the Educational Testing Service added an “adversity score” to the test, designed to reflect particular disadvantages students had faced. This was soon replaced by a new program called “Landscape,” which was supposed to put SAT scores in a broader context by assessing the quality of the school a student had attended (this time, unlike in the past, with a view to favoring applicants from lower quality schools), class sizes, and neighborhoods, all of which would supposedly provide a fuller picture of a student’s capacity for learning in college.

When colleges eliminate the SAT-ACT requirement, they are forced to rely chiefly on their admissions decisions on applicants’ high school grade averages, along with personal essays, teacher recommendations, and personal interviews (with extracurricular activities a secondary factor). But as Leonhardt reports, recent research “has increasingly shown that standardized test scores contain real information, helping to predict college grades, chances of graduation and post-college success.”

Widespread, nationwide grade inflation has made high school grades an even less reliable predictor of college success than they were in the past. (Nor, I add, do they reflect differences in the competitiveness of the schools that applicants attended.)

“Without test scores,” Leonhardt reports, “admissions officers sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between applicants who are likely to do well at elite colleges and those who are likely to struggle.” Moreover, SAT/ ACT scores “can be particularly helpful in identifying lower-income students and underrepresented minorities who will thrive” in college, since even when their scores are lower than those from students in wealthier communities, or those of white and Asian-American students, “a solid score for a student from a less privileged background is often a sign of enormous potential.”

By way of background, the SAT was invented in the late 1940s at a time when American colleges were faced with an influx of millions of new applicants thanks to the G.I. Bill. But by the 1950s, it also helped bring about more fairness and equality in the admissions process for most prestigious colleges, many of which (such as Ivy League schools) had previously relied heavily on admittees from socially elite (and expensive) prep schools, and which also widely employed quotas to limit the number of high-achieving, but rarely wealthy, Jewish students. As the offspring of Jewish immigrant parents of modest means, who were able to win admission (with financial aid) to Cornell in 1960, I myself, and many of my friends, had our lives transformed thanks to the SAT.

Nowadays, attacks on the SAT aimed at increasing the number of black and Hispanic students admitted to competitive colleges threaten to restore an environment more like the one that existed before the invention of the SAT – just with different groups being favored as the “in groups” at the expense of other “out-groups” (namely, white people, and especially straight, white males, and Asian Americans). Despite the Supreme Court’s invalidation of racial favoritism in college admissions in the Fair Admissions case, officials at numerous competitive schools have indicated that they will find ways to evade the ruling.

But as Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor observe in their 2012 book Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It, admitting minority or economically disadvantaged students to colleges where they are not well-prepared for the work isn’t likely to do them any favors in the long run. Often, encountering a difficult curriculum for which their previous education did not prepare them may lead them to drop out when they might have done well at less prestigious, but perfectly respectable, colleges.

There is another important difficulty that Leonhardt overlooks. As colleges drop the SAT requirement for admissions, they have increasingly relied on the “personal essays” that applicants must submit. But while these essays are sometimes a surreptitious means of facilitating racial favoritism, a deeper problem is that they can be used to advantage students whose parents are sufficiently wealthy, and unscrupulous, to hire professionals to “assist” them in writing essays that will appeal to admissions officers.

When a journalist I know posed this problem to the admissions director at one of America’s leading academic institutions, he responded, “Oh, we can tell” whether an essay was written by a professional. But since professional essay “helpers,” such as one I spoke with, are highly skilled in the art of composing precisely the sort of essay that will make it seem like it came purely from the hand of an idealistic, highly motivated, and thoughtful but somewhat naïve young person, and those assistants are highly compensated to do just this one task, I wouldn’t bet on an admissions officer’s ability to outsmart them.

An impressive body of recent research cited by Leonhardt confirms earlier findings that test scores are a far better predictor of student success in college than high school grades. A study released last summer by the group Opportunity Insights, covering 12 leading universities (including the eight Ivy League schools) came to just this conclusion, as did a 2020 study by a faculty committee at the University of California.

“The relative advantage of test scores” over grades as a predictive measure, the committee found, “has grown over time” – doubtless largely thanks to grade inflation. M.I.T., which had suspended its standardized test requirement during COVID, reinstated it after reviewing 15 years of admissions records, which showed “that students who had been accepted despite lower test scores were more likely to struggle or drop out.” Thus, admitting such students out of some distorted sense of social conscience was setting them up for failure.

At the same time, without relying exclusively on test scores (a position that nobody advocates), M.I.T.’s admissions dean reported that the scores were “helpful in identifying promising applicants who come from less advantaged high schools” but had the potential to succeed. (For such students, as a Harvard economist who participated in the Opportunity Insights study put it, “the SAT is their lifeline.”) Yet after re-instituting a standardized testing requirement, M.I.T’s current freshman class includes higher percentages of black and Hispanic students than “at many other elite schools,” Leonhardt reports.

Despite these facts, administrators at many elite colleges persist in refusing to require applicants to submit test scores, justifying their decision by claiming that they don’t help to identify the most promising students, a claim that, as Leonhardt bluntly puts it, “is inconsistent with the evidence.” In fact, in 2020 the University of California announced that it would no longer accept SAT scores even from applicants who wanted to submit them – despite its own committee’s findings.

What Leonhardt calls “the strongest case against the tests” now comes not from those who deny their predictive value, but from “educational reformers who want to rethink elite higher education” so as to emphasize diversity and “social mobility” at the admitted expense of excellence.

One such reformer, an education professor at the University of California-Riverside, proposes “a stripped-down admissions system” in which applicants who meet minimum high-school grade requirements are admitted through a lottery. But as Leonhardt rightly asks, if the nation’s leading universities are compelled to admit large numbers of mediocre students instead of enabling top students to learn from the nation’s leading scholars, who in the next generation will “produce cutting-edge scientific research that will cure diseases” or be best equipped to run corporations and nonprofits “that benefit all of society”? (Of course, the curriculum at such universities would have to be watered down to prevent large numbers of enrollees from dropping out.)

In conclusion, let me add another reason why many more colleges outside of elite institutions like Harvard and M.I.T. may be abolishing standardized testing requirements.

Regrettably, far too many parents, in choosing a college for their son or daughter to attend, rely heavily on the rankings issued annually by U.S. News and World Report. Those ratings are highly arbitrary, relying as they do on such factors as a school’s “reputation” among administrators at other colleges. The rankings (including the mix of criteria used) need to be reconfigured each year (as if a school’s merit changed annually) just to sell a new issue. But one factor that enters into a school’s ranking is the degree of its competitiveness, in the sense of the ratio of applicants to those admitted: the lower the ratio, the higher the college’s apparent status.

As a result, as I learned years ago when some colleges eliminate the SAT/ACT requirement, they may be motivated by another factor than doubts about the tests’ reliability, or a desire to admit more minority members. Rather, by waiving the requirement, the schools encourage more high school students (of whatever economic or racial background) who didn’t score well on the test to apply. While few of those low-scoring applicants are going to be admitted, the more applicants the college rejects, the higher its “competitiveness” score.

Having devoted my life to academia and gloried in the opportunity to teach numerous bright, motivated students while associating with other faculty who shared my love of learning, I’m sorry to acknowledge one or two dark truths about life in the ivory tower. But as they say at Harvard (without always living up to the standard, as certain recent, headline-making events demonstrate), “Veritas.”

David Lewis Schaefer is a Professor of Political Science, Emeritus at College of the Holy Cross.

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Melinda
Melinda
8 months ago

I hope Mike Rowe has a great impact on students wanting to learn a trade. Those jobs are more important to society’s functioning than many of the useless degrees now being handed out. There are attributes as important as great intelligence, such as diligence, persistence, honesty, all of which make up character.

Jeri
Jeri
8 months ago

May all DEI supporters need a heart surgeon to save their life and end up with an Affirmative Action DEI educated doctor. May all DEI supporters need a lawyer and get an Affirmative Action DEI graduate. May all DEI supporters needing good reliable transportation and car seats for their new child and young family get a vehicle and car seat built by an Affirmative Action DEI human…hopefully you get the drift…. Sadly this is what hard heads need to understand. Gotta love that 2×4 mentality. For many until they are looking at their loved ones in the coffin at the funeral the lights don’t go on.

Dave
Dave
8 months ago

I was an ACT test administer for close to 30 years. I always said, what ACT math score do you want the person who designed the bridge you are driving over to have, a low or high score. I can say this because you don’t want me to be that person because of my math scores!!!

Robert Zuccaro
Robert Zuccaro
8 months ago

“I graduated from the fourth grade and it only took me two years!”- Jethro Bodine, President of the Teachers Union.

Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite
8 months ago

NYT——-is not a credible news agency

BACKWOODS
BACKWOODS
8 months ago

College = INDOCTRANATION!
So why send your young adults?

Gayla
Gayla
8 months ago

Too late. Education system sucks!

Bob
Bob
8 months ago

Good article. Let’s be honest the good student, regardless of race, has a shot at a college degree. The SAT/ACT test provides an indicator of just how much the student has learned in his/her initial 11/12 years of education. The good student is not applying to the Ivy League colleges, usually the exceptional student chooses those school to apply to. So, what is the real issue? Simply the education received in the underprivileged communities is lacking. It was true in the 1960s as it is today. Hopefully, the Charter School concept will address the quality of education received as well as develop completeness with standard public education systems. Who benefits? Every child regardless of race or social background.

Stephen Russell
Stephen Russell
8 months ago

Really NYT whose your reporters 5th graders?

anna hubert
anna hubert
8 months ago

Illiteracy and poverty go hand in hand and can be can be seen across the globe

Susan
Susan
8 months ago

Education and competition are necessary for a functioning society.

Mimi
Mimi
8 months ago

I hate to say it, but a college education doesn’t mean that a “graduate” actually knows how to do anything productive in life. The professors are a group of DEI students themselves. My grandson is in college and his first creative writing class, had a professor showing Madonna videos to his class every week and having them write an essay about whatever aspect of the video he wanted. I’m not kidding, my grandson knows a great deal about Madonna, and paid his hard earned cash for the privilege. I was shocked. What aspect of his career in finance is that going to prepare him for?? How to work for an idiot boss? He got an A in the class, but what a waste of time and money!

A Voter
A Voter
8 months ago

Who needs an SAT when you have Race and Gender to base admissions on? When universities will hire plagiarists to run them, an SAT is seen as a roadblock not a step in the right (left) direction.

Gabe Hanzeli kent wa
Gabe Hanzeli kent wa
8 months ago

what! but they said hiring and admitting people on merit was racist! standardized tests are racist. math is racist (those damn Arabs).

Maybe the new york times needs to stop being a democrat news paper.

Tim Toroian
Tim Toroian
8 months ago

I agree with Jeri below. I’ve had heart surgery and definitely want the best. If the military started taking the less physically fit we’d be in trouble. I knew a recruiter who said only about 15% of males were fit enough to tolerate boot camp.

Vonniequirk
Vonniequirk
8 months ago

My son is an African American Male who took AP courses in High School and special college courses through a program I found at a local college. He is now 47 years young and is earning more than 3 times my salary! The SAT and PSAT are necessary evils and everyone needs to help their child prepare for them and stop using COLOR as an excuse why your child cannot learn! It is up to every parent to help their child get educated and pointed in a right direction for their lives so that they can be productive members of society. (I am stepping off my soap box now)

Clay Rooks
Clay Rooks
8 months ago

Being a retired college professor who spent many years in the Honors Program and had responsibility in admitting students to the Honors Program, I fully agree with Prof. Shaefer. SATs and ACTs are very good indicators for admitting students. GPAs do not accurately predict success in college as different high schools have varying standards and awarding of grades, plus grade inflation has risen to the point that average high school grades are now in the B range. It was not unusual to see applications from students who had high GPAs in the 3.5 to 4.0 range who only had okay to good SAT scores. It was wise to use SATs and ACTs as part of admissions and colleges should return to doing so.

Alan Daniel
Alan Daniel
8 months ago

To be a truly great nation, an outstanding educational establishment is required. The top schools must be the best on earth, the high schools throughout the nation must be excellent overall, and even the grade schools must educate their students to a high standard of reading, English, history and mathematics. In 1940 our entire educational system was world class, today it is the worst in the highly developed nations. What happened? Liberals. Then wokes. From 1964 forward our educational system crashed and burned. To get back to what it once was you have to fire every teacher, ban unions, put the toughest administrators in charge, then hire again. ALL EDUCATION BEGINS WITH DISCIPLINE, and that is the key thing that has been lost.

Beverly
Beverly
8 months ago

I think the “Elites” believe in dunning down education so they can control..the people…Poor America has drank the cool aid. So now we are going on “feelings.” Please someone help us.

Thinking
Thinking
8 months ago

Another reason some elite Universities want to eliminate the SAT/ACT tests. Ole Joe is paying off the student loan. Let everybody in. If they learn anything or not, that is okay. In the America of ole Joe merit doesn’t count. Just the color of your skin and gender. If the tests were skewed to the elite they can change the test easily enough. But an entrance exam should be done, before a student would be admitted to a university. The K-12 education is a joke. Students never are held back. Having a high school diploma says nothing. Either we make it mandatory for every graduating high school senior to take the SAT/ACT as an end exam or an entrance exam be taking at each university. Geared to that school. As an example the exam for MIT would be different than a state university or the elite schools such as Cornell or Harvard. That way the teachers in the K-12 grades will be held accountable to teaching these kids and not pass them on even if they can’t read or add. Lengthen the school day and the school year. It is not a year but 6 months they are in class. More homework given. And maybe shorten the K-12 and make it K-10. 18 year olds goofing off in high school while they could have been in a junior college or trade school. That is another thing we have to institute is more technical colleges. Where are our journeymen plumbers, electricians, carpenters etc etc coming from. We can’t all work at a desk for the government. Let us educate the kids, of all colors.

David Millikan
David Millikan
8 months ago

I’m surprised the people in NYT’s even know how to read let alone know what intelligence is.

Wayne
Wayne
8 months ago

So that idea of sending the dummies to college didn’t work out so well

MariaRose
MariaRose
8 months ago

Eliminating the one factor that helps show the ability of the individual to do college-level work, means that the college is expecting to lower the college-level performance expectations and will waste/expand the time the future student will need to attend college to take all required courses for their degree because they will have to take courses to get them to college-level learning skill–courses they should have been given or had available while in high school. Hey from the college/ university side, this is just another way to fund their programs. But it is a very loud announcement of the lack of helpful corrective education programs given to our students in all grades under college. Proper education learning is missing and should not be only available to schools where it costs more to attend. Plenty of students can learn from public school education if the teachers are teaching rather than following a prescribed method of expectations in the classroom, based on nothing to do with actual teaching.

Robert
Robert
8 months ago

I was in school before and during the introduction of the SAT. Originally the point for it’s existence was to see what students knew without knowing what materials would be covered in advance. In other words the idea was a test to see what students really knew without studying in advance for the test! Of course since then one could buy study guides etc. for the SAT (if you had the money) which not only defeats the original purpose but gives those with money an unfair academic advantage. The Times was right about the SATs with their earlier opinion. The SATs should be eliminated!

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