Michael Weiner
The story hit front pages all over the country. The president of
the most prominent public university system in the United States
has called for the elimination of the SAT I as a requirement in
undergraduate admissions, thus undermining one of the fundamental
assumptions that has governed American higher education for the
past half century.
UC President Richard Atkinson’s bold and largely
unprecedented proposal would, for all intents and purposes, rid
this university of a test that has completely failed to achieve the
objectives for which it was created. To be implemented, the
proposal must first be approved by the UC Board of Regents and the
statewide Academic Senate.
But the implications of the announcement, which came during a
speech to the American Council of Education on Feb. 18, could reach
far beyond the UC. Indeed, as California goes, so goes the country.
Atkinson’s decision should spur a radical national
reassessment of the efficacy of this test. Clearly, such a debate
is long overdue.
As I wrote four weeks ago, the SAT was seen by its progressive
creators in the 1930s and ’40s as a way to measure merit
objectively, to end years of elitist discrimination in
America’s institutions of higher education and to foster a
natural leadership for this country based not on class, race or
religion, but on talent and achievement. The idea was to replace a
Victorian aristocracy with a modern meritocracy.
Half a century later, the SAT is taken by more than 2 million
college-bound high school students every year. But the test’s
administration, and the admissions decisions that result from it,
do not even approach objectivity. A $100 million per year test prep
industry ensures that those who can afford it can buy a step-up on
their fellow test takers. Furthermore, statistics show that African
American and Latino students tend to do worse on the test than
their white and Asian American counterparts. The racial and
economic bias of the SAT is well-established, and that should be
enough to cast serious doubt on the value of the test for
predicting a student’s success in college and in life.
But the story doesn’t end there. The systematic dominance
of the SAT and other standardized tests has undermined the central
purpose of secondary education: to teach students to think
critically about their world, to imbue in them a sense of
intellectual curiosity and to foment their drive to contribute to
society. Instead, teachers are forced to instruct to the dictates
of the exams.
The notion of “aptitude,” which is what tests like
the SAT supposedly measure, is so vague that the only message
students can muster from it is that education is not about learning
but about winning. In a society based increasingly on reckless
individualism where communal engagement is on a steep decline, the
results of such an educational philosophy have been nothing short
of tragic.
Into this dismal picture steps Dick Atkinson, a man whose tenure
as UC president has been largely characterized by meekness and
moderation. Atkinson, the former chancellor of UCSD, was elevated
to the top position in the UC system in 1995, at a time of crisis
and upheaval.
Then-Gov. Pete Wilson and the conservative-activist thugs he and
his predecessor had appointed to the Board of Regents were
challenging the university’s use of affirmative action, which
provided for a measure of equality in an educational system that
is, by and large, grossly unequal.
After Atkinson failed to convince Regent Ward Connerly and his
cronies that they shouldn’t ban affirmative action, he
retreated to a defensive position of capitulation and
“consensus building.” A man who was supposed to be the
leader of the most important public university system in the
country, someone with a distinguished career in higher education,
was letting a board full of rich non-educators bully him
around.
This stance is readily apparent in examining the weak policies
Atkinson has pursued in the wake of the affirmative action ban: an
increase in outreach funding, guaranteeing admission to students in
the top 4 percent of their high school class, and most recently,
the flawed community college dual admissions proposal. Such
initiatives are modeled on the Gray Davis philosophy of governance
““ please everyone without accomplishing anything.
But with the proposal to eliminate the SAT, Atkinson has forged
a new path based on what is right, and not on conventional wisdom.
Students, staff and faculty members should urge the Regents and the
Academic Senate to approve this bold and courageous policy.
It’s time to sound the death knell for the SAT.