Free Republic

Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the announcement that the University of California will now join the “test-blind” movement and end the use of the SAT and ACT in its admissions decisions. Some have called for the change to increase diversity in the schools, particularly after California voters refused to change the long ban on affirmative action in education under state law. Here is the column:The Supreme Court will decide early next month whether to take a new case on the use of race in college admissions. For decades, the court has fractured on the issue and...

NEW YORK, NY—The College Board is announcing significant changes to its SAT in an effort to remain a relevant measure of college readiness. Starting next year, all test questions related to math, science, and reading comprehension will be replaced by a single coloring page depicting a likeness of Donald Trump and a space to draw devil horns on his head. "We wanted to boil everything down to the basic essentials of what today's students need to be successful at today's progressive state colleges," said College Board spokeswoman Cynthia Borshvittle. "For most publically-educated students today, literacy and math skills are a...

The University of California (UC) system regents unanimously voted Thursday to waive their standardized test requirement for their incoming freshman until 2024, meaning that high school students will no longer need to take the ACT or SAT to gain admission to one of the expansive system's universities. “Today’s decision by the Board marks a significant change for the University’s undergraduate admissions,” Janet Napolitano, president of the UC system and former Homeland Security secretary, said in a statement. “We are removing the ACT/SAT requirement for California students and developing a new test that more closely aligns with what we expect incoming...

I gather it would be proof positive of “white nationalism” to point out that the only group discriminated against in college admissions is white people. We’ve heard a lot about discrimination against Asians lately, which reminds me: Asians are SO lucky they’re not white! Otherwise, America’s leading hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, would be churning out reports on the worrying rise in Asian Supremacy. In fact, however, a recent study by Georgetown University (probably White Nationalist), funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (presumed hate group), found that if colleges admitted students based solely on SAT scores,...

Brian D. Ray, Ph.D. June 7, 2016 The SAT 2014 test scores of college-bound homeschool students were higher than the national average of all college-bound seniors that same year. Some 13,549 homeschool seniors had the following mean scores: 567 in critical reading, 521 in mathematics, and 535 in writing (College Board, 2014a). The mean SAT scores for all college-bound seniors in 2014 were 497 in critical reading, 513 in mathematics, and 487 in writing (College Board, 2014b). The homeschool students’ SAT scores were 0.61 standard deviation higher in reading, 0.26 standard deviation higher in mathematics, and 0.42 standard deviation higher...

Last year, Hampshire College became the first institution of higher learning in the country to categorically reject using SATs as an admissions requirement. The college’s president, Jonathan Last, waxed rhapsodic about the results of the policy change in a statement which appeared on Diane Ravitch’s blog: · “Our yield, the percentage of students who accepted our invitation to enroll, rose in a single year from 18% to 26%, an amazing turnaround; · “The quantity of applications went down but the quality went up, likely because we made it harder to apply, asking for more essays; Our applicants collectively were more...

For most high school students who want to attend an elite college, the SAT is more than a test. It is one of life’s landmarks. Waiting for the scores—one for verbal, one for math, and now one for writing, with a possible 800 on each—is painfully suspenseful. The exact scores are commonly remembered forever after. ... The pivotal analysis was published in 2001 by the University of California (UC), which requires all applicants to take both the SAT and achievement tests (three of them at the time the data were gathered: reading, mathematics, and a third of the student’s choosing)....

College administrators are scratching their heads trying to figure our how the straight-A students they accepted tanked on the SATs. “The University of California system, for instance, reported a 15-point drop in applicants’ scores but no corresponding dips in other measures of their quality, such as class rank and grade-point average,” Eric Hoover reports in the September 8th issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. “At La Salle University in Philadelphia, SAT scores fell an average of 15 points for applicants and about 10 points for admitted students even though officials had not altered their admissions strategies.” “Robert G. Voss,...

Schools often conceal high dropout rates for minority students. Among the "talented tenth," those in the top 10 percent of test takers, reading scores have dropped four points since 1971 and math scores have not budged since first measured in 1978. So say the latest (2004) results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the nation's report card. At the other end of the scale, dropout rates have actually increased since 1990, rising to 30 percent of all 17-year-olds.

Did UC's low-SAT admissions dodge affirmative action ban? By Michelle Maitre and William Brand, STAFF WRITERS BERKELEY -- Critics on the University of California Board of Regents and around the state have been asking hard questions about the fairness of admission policies at prestigious UC Berkeley. The critics charge that Berkeley's admissions policy, which weighs personal hardship and extra-curricular achievement alongside academic prowess, has let underqualified students into the internationally famous campus. The question also has reignited a lingering debate over whether the process has provided a back-door way to skirt a ban on affirmative action. An analysis of admissions...

The Arizona Republic recently made a baloney sandwich out of the news that Arizona's SAT scores are higher than the national average. There is nothing unusual about the Republic and other establishment media publishing baloney about public education. What was unusual was the way the Republic did it in a front-page story on August 27. The Republic sandwiched the SAT news between two slices of baloney about inadequate school spending, instead of placing the spending baloney in the middle of the story, as it usually does in its education coverage. In other words, it was an inside-out baloney sandwich. No...

In the recent AEI publication, 2003 Index of Environmental Indicators, authors Steven Hayward and Ryan Stowers discus the state of the world’s. Among other things, the two discuss the ways in which the media mis-reports environmental statistics. They find that, on the whole, the United States is becoming less polluted. They believe that the environment is getting better, not worse. In the March 2002 issue of The American Enterprise Eli Lehrer looks at an environmental optimist who comes to similar conclusions: Bjørn Lomborg is a mild-mannered Danish statistics professor who believes in environmental protection laws, votes on the political left,...

<p>ELK GROVE, California (AP) -- The principal at T.R. Smedberg Middle School held meetings last week for parents to discuss their children's scores on standardized tests. There were four meetings in all, with separate gatherings for whites, Asians, blacks and Hispanics.</p>