By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
More than 1,600 four-year colleges and universities have dropped their requirement of either the SAT or ACT tests for admission due to the pandemic. While this trend began before the pandemic, the difficulty of administering these tests on-site has driven more to drop test requirement for now and perhaps forever.
Arguments widely given for not returning to using these tests center on equity. Test-prep services are more available to affluent families and supposedly disadvantage the economically poor students. But these tests are mainly aptitude tests that measure ability to solve new problems, and not achievement tests where a teacher can teach-to-the-test and students can memorize answers. The small advantage of SAT or ACT test-prep is mostly related to getting used to the format of aptitude tests and using test-taking strategies. Both the cost of test-prep and the resulting increase in score are not great.
Test opponents also argue the tests are unfair to historically disadvantaged minorities who generally average lower scores due to cultural factors. One remaining option is to rely on state assessment tests which are all achievement tests. Teachers have now become proficient at using last year’s questions to test-prep students for this year’s assessments, so while state assessment scores have gone up, the critical thinking and problem-solving skills measured on ACT, SAT and NAEP have continued to go down.
The other option is no testing. Basing admissions on high school GPA has always been the best predictor of college success. However, with states under pressure to raise graduation rates, many schools are dramatically inflating grades—often against their teachers’ professional judgement—in order to show (fraudulent) success.
What is missing in this movement to provide inclusion in academia is that, when implemented on a large scale, it penalizes the most studious set of students, threatens to pull down academic rigor and will ultimately result in lower national performance in science and other fields.
In the last “normal year” of 2019, SAT math scores nationwide continued a 20-year decline for all groups, except Asian-American students whose scores continued to rise. Education reformers keep pressing for an increase in college completion from 40 percent of high school graduates, but Asian-American students long ago surpassed 60 percent college completion.
Confucian-based countries, including South Korea, Japan, China, Singapore, Taiwan, etc., value education more highly. Individual students vary in academic performance, but it is distributed in a bell curve, and the Asian-American curve is substantially higher. They outperform all other groups, both minorities and our white majority of students. Eight of the top ten students in this years Regeneron Science Talent Search (formerly Westinghouse and then Intel Science Talent Search) have Asian names.
Despite living in America for many generations, this value for education continues to be passed down in Asian-American families as a “success frame.” This is the belief that “an A-minus is an Asian F.” To gain entrance to Harvard or UC-Berkeley is success. To have to attend a state university is unfortunate. Professors Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou describe this educational mindset in their book: “The Asian American Achievement Paradox.”
This is not a new dilemma. Over 70 percent of New York’s elite Stuyvesant High School were Asian-American students, as were 60 percent of Bronx High School of Science students. Admission is based upon a rigorous test that Asian-American students passed in far higher numbers. Mayor DeBlasio proposed to discard their race-blind, test-by-merit system and substitute a quota system to “integrate” schools. It would be terribly unfair to students who studied hard; nine-out-of-ten of the best scoring Asian-American students would be derailed from the best education possible.
And by eliminating merit testing, America would likewise lose many of its best future experts.
The use of civil service testing came to the West from its use for over two millennia in China. You rose to public office based on your tested skills, not on your family connections. Now, in a strange contradiction in logic, the measurement of academic skill as merit by the ACT or SAT is being discarded in the name of inclusion, but will result in exclusion of many of our best students.
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John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.