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The Dilemma of Testing

By Shuja Khan posted 05-26-2022 06:22 PM

  
AISAP Blog post,


The University of California at Berkeley adopted the SAT as a standard for admission in 1967, a good 20 years after the ETS was founded. It was a big feather in ETS’s cap. That delay was partly because the school was on the West Coast and the ETS was an East Coast institution. But the other reason was Berkeley had its own method for finding students (Lemann). Prior to the SAT, Berkeley admitted all qualified high school graduates from the state of California. It was then the job of professors to sift through the freshman class. While not an explicitly stated policy, professors of freshmen generally failed about half their students, straining the grade down to a more manageable size. What an interesting way to do admissions.

Adopting the SAT at Berkeley was incredibly disruptive. That was true at every school the ETS reached. And the initial results were positive: schools became more diverse, more meritocratic. All of that was intentional – the founder of ETS, Henry Chauncey, looked around at Harvard and saw kids who weren’t taking advantage of their educational opportunity. Students were hand-selected by a combination of regional feeder schools and family connections. To Chauncey, these kids were given the world and then spent their time doing everything but studying. There had to be more worthy kids out there. What he wanted was to disrupt the process enough to reach them.

My point is not to endorse more testing in admissions. It’s undeniably great (and long overdue) that so many colleges are going testing optional. I’m happy to see independent schools following suit. The early returns are promising – the University of Chicago shifted to testing optional and saw freshman classes with 56% more Black students, 26% more Hispanic and Latino students, 33% more rural students and 36% more first generation students (Einhorn). A recent study also found that testing optional students do about as well as everyone else (Syverson).

My question is about what happens next. We exist in a time of disruption and removing testing from the admissions process opens up possibilities. But here’s the thing: the SAT itself was once a disrupting force. The idea started with a world war and the need to test thousands of enlisted men for placement in the armed services. Once people saw that massive testing was possible, it fundamentally altered our society into a place that was more meritocratic. Schools like Harvard became more diverse (of course the bar there was pretty low). The early returns for testing were as positive as they’ve been for its removal. The problem is the story doesn’t end there.

At the time that the SAT and ACT were founded, who knew what was to come? Who knew that Stanley Kaplan was going to create a test prep program that would spawn an entire industry of gaming the system and furthering advantage for the richest kids? (Indeed, even Kaplan started as a way to help middle- and lower-class families level the playing field – test prep was also a disruptive force). Who knew that the SAT would end up having a stronger correlation with household income than with freshman year grades, the thing it was actually designed to predict (Lemann)? The ETS is a huge enterprise; it has become the establishment, the very institution that fights the change it once endorsed.

In other words, we’ve been here before. The story of the SAT can teach us something. Let’s disrupt our processes, but let’s also take the time to think about next steps. We create a vacuum by removing testing and history tells us that privilege will inevitably rush in to fill the void. What happens in the long term? Are we going to create new systems that are just as easy for the wealthy to game? Or can we do something different? 

As someone who has tutored for the SAT for a long time, I’m well aware that testing is only good at measuring one thing: how good kids are at testing. I’ve seen bright kids get sidelined because of their anxiety, second-guessing themselves out of correct answers. I’ve seen slick kids with no real academic motivation do well on the SAT because they don’t get nervous. I went to a very large magnet school in New York City, and I’ve seen the rampant cheating that goes into taking the SAT. I’m sure the ETS has found ways to stamp some of that out using technology, and I’m also sure those kids have gotten smarter. But overall, the SAT is a poor tool for telling us much of anything.

But I wonder about all other tools too. I was once impressed by an applicant who had started a non-profit. Is that impressive though? Maybe it means that kid had a meaningful cause to which they devoted a great deal of time and energy. Or maybe it means the parents hired a lawyer and they started a non-profit for them, a thing that’s not hard to do if you have money. I also wonder about interviews. I was a kid who grew up in an abusive household with a sometimes absent father and a mother who didn’t speak English. I never did well in interviews – can we all see how some kids might not be prepared to shine in that setting? And then there are recommendations. Kids from independent schools get long-form narratives that paint a wide picture of a human being. Kids from big public schools get checklists. As humans, we find stories compelling. Can we see the privilege there too?

In the end, any formal tool that we use to access an applicant can be gamed. Any system can be pushed and pulled, manipulated toward privilege. So what’s the answer? I believe the answer lies in taking risks. If you see a kid that doesn’t fit the profile of what your school is looking for, a kid for whom there are plenty of red flags, find a reason to accept them anyway. Maybe they never founded a non-profit or did a poor job in their interview, but so what? Take a risk. See that kid all the way through to graduation and it will make your school a better place. More than that, it will add a little erraticism, a little disruption to a process that’s been frighteningly easy to game. 

What that looks like is going to be different at every school. Maybe it means not accepting only the “perfect” applicants that walk through our doors. Maybe it means setting aside a percentage of our admissions pool for kids with red flags or kids that don’t fit the bill of what is “typical.” Because if we’re not careful, we’ll end up with a new system that will just as effectively promote privilege. In fact, it might get worse.




Shuja Khan
Director of Enrollment Management
Rowland Hall

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