Update on the Test Optional Debate: The UC Faculty Report

University of California faculty task force advises retaining the use of SAT and ACT in admissions, due to their role in advanced analytics and concerns around grade inflation.

Last month, the Academic Council’s Standardized Testing Task Force delivered a report it was charged to produce by outgoing UC President Janet Napolitano over a year ago. The 228-page report represents the Task Force’s rigorous analysis of new and historic data on the use and validity of standardized test scores in the University of California’s admissions process.

Given that the faculty-led Task Force was comprised of scientists, economists, and legal and education scholars (among others), it’s no surprise the report relies heavily on statistical analysis. What was surprising to many was the Task Force’s conclusions around standardized testing.

Mechanics of UC Admissions

First, it’s important to understand how admissions works at the University of California. UC uses a two-step process for admitting students, determining system-wide eligibility either on the basis of “local context” or “admissions index” (i.e., California students in the top 9% of their class based on either UC prerequisites or a combo of GPA and test scores), then determining campus-specific admission on the basis of 14 factors, of which test scores are one. (Out-of-state applicants only participate in the second step.) This means that SAT and ACT scores already play a relatively small role in determining a particular student’s chances of admission to a particular UC campus.

This backdrop provides a helpful context for understanding the UC faculty Task Force’s findings. The comprehensive nature of UC admissions’ review, especially the 14-factor evaluation, led the task force to conclude that variance among test scores between student populations was effectively compensated for.

Test Scores Are More Reliable Than GPA

According to President Napolitano’s charge, the Task Force was to weigh in on two questions regarding the role test scores play in evaluating both college preparedness and success in UC coursework:

How well do the UC current standardized testing practices assess entering high school students for UC readiness?

How well do the UC current standardized practices predict student success in the context of our holistic, comprehensive review process?

Thus, the first key takeaway from the faculty report is that SAT and ACT scores do indeed help UC identify competitive applicants. Citing growing data around grade inflation and compression (more students reporting GPAs in a narrower range), the Task Force concluded that considering only a student’s GPA would be an insufficient way to assess preparedness. Departing from recent studies that tout the validity of GPA over against test scores to predict college success, the report claims that the validity of test scores among UC applicant cohorts has in fact increased since the issue was last comprehensively studied. In their words, “the predictive power of test scores has gone up, and the predictive power of high school grades has gone down, [since 2010].”

The Task Force also seems to be aware of a widespread assumption that test scores represent, at best, applicant information made redundant by grades. (In other words, if you have high test scores, then presumably you have high grades, as well, and vice versa.) By controlling for grades, however, the report finds “a substantial relationship between test scores and college retention, grades, and graduation.” This leads to their conclusion that test scores improve (rather than impede) the predictive validity of GPA.

Test Scores Aid Racial Diversity

Perhaps more surprising, the report pushed back against what has become an intensely political and emotional issue. Among many students, university administrators, and the general public, the common perception is that using test scores in admissions inhibits racial and economic diversity.

Crucially, the faculty Task Force found, after analyzing new research, that this perception lacked concrete evidence:

“The task force did not find evidence that UC’s use of test scores played a major role in worsening the effects of disparities already present among applicants and did find evidence that UC’s admissions process helped to make up for the potential adverse effect of score differences between groups.”

In fact, the report continues, the consideration of SAT and ACT scores is actually helping low-income Latino and black students who might otherwise be lost in a sea of applicants without the promising marker of their test scores. In a massive application pool like the state of California, there are so many differences in high school experience, coursework, and rigor, that the Task Force saw just how valuable an independent metric like SAT and ACT was in evaluating a student’s academic track record.

What’s more, that metric was especially valuable if the student was low-income, first-generation, or otherwise underrepresented. The report states this conclusion in unequivocal terms: “Test scores were better predictors of outcomes for underrepresented groups than for majority groups.”

Recommendation To Re-examine SAT & ACT Essay

Finally, the Task Force assessed and found lacking the SAT’s Essay and ACT’s Writing sections. Specifically, they analyzed the predictive validity of standardized test essay sections on UC’s internally developed Analytical Writing Placement Exam (AWPE). After discovering that whereas SAT/ACT Reading and SAT Writing/ACT English sections were strong predictors of performance on AWPE, SAT Essay and ACT Writing had only a “moderate association” with passing performance on AWPE.

The report addresses whether or not to continue requiring essay sections in an appendix:

“With limited explanatory power added by the essay scores, it is worth considering the social costs of additional writing tests. It is not ideal that students spend lots of time preparing for various tests while they could be focusing their energy on more important academic and social activities that could benefit them in the future.” 

So while it stops short of recommending outright that UC make the SAT and ACT essay sections optional (as most other colleges have already done), a lack of willingness to fight for its utility seems decisive enough. We can all but expect the Board of Regents to reject the standardized test essay requirement in their May ruling.

Conclusion

While the Task Force’s recommendations have yet to be accepted by the UC Board of Regents (a decision is expected in May), the report signals a new direction in the decade-long battle over the use of standardized testing. It may be too soon to tell precisely where that direction leads, but that hasn’t stopped the conjectures.

Many view the report a symbol of the competing perspectives among university stakeholders: whereas the test optional movement has found support among top UC officials such as the Berkeley and Santa Cruz chancellors, UC faculty have been less enthusiastic in their support. In this view, the Task Force’s recommendations represent not only the attempt to apply scientific objectivity to the issue, but also the chasm between the administrators who guide policy and instructors on the front lines of policy implementation.

In his appraisal of the report, Jed Applerouth predicts “the tide of test-optional admissions will stop at the doors of the UC system.” Yet universities, like most complex organizations, don’t operate purely rationally. Instead, they tend to behave pragmatically, pursuing self-interest wherever it leads.

And if the pessimistic demographic forecasts are to be believed, going test optional will likely remain an attractive way to stay competitive in a shrinking market. For how long? Unfortunately, nobody knows.