SAN JOSE, Calif. - In what would rank as the first major testing change in 30 years, an influential faculty committee proposed Wednesday that the University of California scrap the frequently criticized SAT I aptitude exam and seek new custom-designed admissions tests to measure what a student has learned in high school.
The proposal will be debated by faculty members at all University of California campuses before coming to the Board of Regents later this year.
The first class that could be affected by such a change would be freshmen entering in fall 2006.
"It is very early in the process to say if it will be adopted," said Dorothy Perry, the University of California-San Francisco professor who heads the statewide academic senate's Board on Admissions and Relations with Schools, or BOARS. But the board carries great weight.
The recommendation comes a year after University of California President Richard Atkinson rocked the academic community by suggesting the 175,000-student University of California become the first large system to reject the exam long seen as the key to the country's most prestigious colleges. The University of California is the largest user of the SAT I.
Atkinson said the test of verbal and math reasoning had assumed larger-than-life importance to students and too much time is being wasted learning how to take it, stealing time from learning the academic subjects important to success in college.
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Such a change could have repercussions for how students are tested elsewhere.
"I do think this is historic, or at least potentially so," said Nicholas Lemann, whose 1999 book "The Big Test," popularized the debate over the SAT I's validity. "California is so huge. If they write this new test and it's good, that test in effect will become the national test and replace the SAT."
The change may be a hard sell to rank-and-file faculty members, said Matthew Malkan, a UCLA physics and astronomy professor who sits on the board of the California Association of Scholars.
The SAT I "is the only exam that is the same for all applicants all over the country and stays the same year after year," said Malkan, a former chairman of the faculty committee that oversees UCLA admissions.
The new testing approach is not expected to significantly increase racial and ethnic diversity on campus, a spokesman for Atkinson said.
But achievement tests are philosophically desirable, BOARS concluded.
Achievement tests hold schools accountable for student performance and reinforce the message that the best way to prepare for college is to take challenging classes and study hard, the report said. Aptitude tests "send the message that academic success is based in some part on immutable characteristics that cannot be changed and are, therefore, independent of good study skills and hard work."
Currently, the University of California requires applicants to take the SAT I math and verbal sections or the less-popular ACT exam, which is curriculum-based, as well as SAT II achievement exams in math, writing and a subject of the student's choice. Since 1999, achievement tests have been given twice the weight of the SAT I or ACT exam in admissions.
BOARS proposes requiring one three-hour achievement test covering reading, writing and math, plus a writing sample. Two additional hour-long tests in specific subjects also are recommended.
Gerald Hayward, a co-director of PACE, an education think tank associated with Stanford and Berkeley, praised the recommendations.
"I think the strength of the proposal is it's based on creating ways to improve the quality of a student's high school preparation to go to college," he said, "rather than on something that's not as closely related."
Kenny Burch, a graduate student in physics at the University of California-San Diego who serves on BOARS and chairs the University of California Students Association, said he thinks the shift in thinking is what's most important.
"The university is looking at a principled approach on why to use admission tests and how to use them. When students come here, they will understand why they got in."
BOARS' recommendation to the University of California Academic Council lays out policy goals the new exams would have to meet. These include being free of racial and cultural bias, a criticism that is leveled at the SAT I.
But Christina Perez, an advocate with Fair Test, said most standardized tests do not meet that standard, and many elite institutions rely instead on grades, essays and letters of recommendation.
"All the options have the same problems: They are susceptible to coaching, they do not do a good job of predicting how someone will do in college and they do not measure anything of value," Perez said.
ACT, a national testing service, and the College Board, which produces and administers the SAT exams, have agreed to work with the university to develop the new admission tests.
Knight Ridder Tribune
