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University of California slams the door on standardized admissions tests, nixing any SAT alternative
Los Angeles Times ^ | November 18, 2021 | Teresa Watanabe

Posted on 11/21/2021 5:50:08 AM PST by karpov

The University of California has slammed the door shut on using any standardized test for admissions decisions, announcing Thursday that faculty could find no alternative exam that would avoid the biased results that led leaders to scrap the SAT last year.

UC Provost Michael Brown declared the end of testing for admissions decisions at a Board of Regents meeting, putting a conclusive end to more than three years of research and debate in the nation’s premier public university system on whether standardized testing does more harm than good when assessing applicants for admission.

“UC will continue to practice test-free admissions now and into the future,” Brown said to the regents, during a discussion about a possible alternative to the SAT and ACT tests.

Testing supporters argue that standardized assessments provide a uniform measure to predict the college performance of students from varied schools and backgrounds. But UC ultimately embraced opposing arguments that high school grades are a better tool without the biases based on race, income and parent education levels found in tests.

Given UC’s size and influence, the prolonged debate was closely followed nationally as a harbinger of the future of standardized testing in admissions. Its decision to permanently drop testing requirements is likely to embolden other campuses to do likewise and accelerate the national movement to seek more equitable ways to assess a student’s potential to succeed in college.

“When you have the most prestigious university system in the nation’s most populous state functioning without test scores and developing ways to do admissions fairly and accurately without them, it’s very significant,” said Bob Schaeffer, executive director of FairTest: National Center for Fair & Open Testing. “UC already is and increasingly will become a national model for test-free admissions.”

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: California
KEYWORDS: admissions; affirmativeaction; berkeley; college; collegeadmissions; racenorming; reparations; sat; standardizedtests; wboopi
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The "problem" of course is that blacks and Hispanics underperform whites and Asians on all standardized tests. Studies have found that those tests are not biased in the sense of underpredicting the performance of blacks and Hispanics in college.

The article says high school grades will be used. Of course they should be a factor, but grading standard vary across schools. A school where all the student are weak is not going to flunk everyone. Even within a school, teachers' grading standards can vary widely.

1 posted on 11/21/2021 5:50:08 AM PST by karpov
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To: karpov

So I can just walk in and sit down in any class I want? I’m sure the tuition has gone up though.


2 posted on 11/21/2021 5:55:46 AM PST by HighSierra5 (The only way you know a commie is lying is when they open their pieholes.)
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To: karpov

Cheapened college degrees like this are like counterfeit money. By the boat load.


3 posted on 11/21/2021 6:00:01 AM PST by fwdude
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To: karpov

In many high schools grades are a completely useless in evaluating academic achievement and in predicting academic success ... but it’s an essential exercise in futility in a society based on equity instead of equality.


4 posted on 11/21/2021 6:01:01 AM PST by glennaro (Although I don't believe in "big conspiracies", neither do I believe in "big coincidences")
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To: karpov

The un/under qualified crazies have taken over and intend to promote more unqualified to all levels of society.


5 posted on 11/21/2021 6:01:33 AM PST by blam
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To: karpov

How exciting. I always wanted to be a molecular biologist and an ast. BTW 2+2 is racist


6 posted on 11/21/2021 6:03:38 AM PST by Karliner (Heb 4:12 Rom 8:28 Rev 3, "...This is the end of the beginning." Churchill)
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To: karpov

This is funny. Again California jumps the shark of common sense directly into the morass of educational failure.
The State had such promise 150 years ago.

Liberals are like 3 year olds throwing tantrums. “I want to make everyone the same and everyone who is “of color” better. What does it matter if they can’t do the work? We just won’t have grades anymore. We will just dumb down the curriculum. What does it matter if the school transmits no content as long as the students & graduates can foment disorder and help destroy America.


7 posted on 11/21/2021 6:05:46 AM PST by JayGalt (For evil men to accomplish their purpose it is only necessary that good men should do nothing.”)
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To: karpov

And all the grads get jobs in politics, the media, or the government (the only employers whose standards are low enough to hire them).


8 posted on 11/21/2021 6:07:56 AM PST by Da Coyote
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To: karpov

Evrybody shuod be abel to be a brane surjin!

Or a enjineer! Or a airplain pilot!


9 posted on 11/21/2021 6:10:50 AM PST by Travis McGee (EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: HighSierra5

Say you are Mexican... then it’s FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!


10 posted on 11/21/2021 6:20:19 AM PST by SMARTY (Republics decline into democracies & democracies degenerate into despotisms. Aristotle)
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To: karpov

lottery... only fair way left


11 posted on 11/21/2021 6:24:01 AM PST by Chode (there is no fall back position, there's no rally point, there is no LZ... we're on our own. #FJB)
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To: HighSierra5

If you are in the business of selling something, like a degree in this case; the more butts you can put in seats, sell dorm rooms, activity access etc to, the more you can rake off. It’s been a scam for a long time, abetted by government loans.


12 posted on 11/21/2021 6:34:24 AM PST by dblshot
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To: Chode

Once you rid yourself of objective standards; it is impossible to prove Racism. Of course it is impossible to prove competence.


13 posted on 11/21/2021 6:37:21 AM PST by CoastWatcher
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To: karpov

All they’re doing is cheapening the value of a U of C degree. Employers will figure this out in due time, and hold those with such degrees at the correct level of esteem, at least eventually.


14 posted on 11/21/2021 6:39:54 AM PST by coloradan (They're not the mainstream media, they're the gaslight media. It's what they do. )
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To: CoastWatcher

Of course, if math is racist, I’m not to sure how one proves that the SATs have a disparate impact anyway.


15 posted on 11/21/2021 6:41:50 AM PST by coloradan (They're not the mainstream media, they're the gaslight media. It's what they do. )
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To: karpov

America is being dumbed down. Its being transformed into a pliable clog of the new globalist order run by vile elites. Sadly most people are too ignorant to realize how their institutions, liberties and rights are being destroyed.


16 posted on 11/21/2021 6:42:08 AM PST by allendale
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To: karpov

Clarification: They could find no exam blacks could do well on so the exam is the problem and out it goes.


17 posted on 11/21/2021 6:42:40 AM PST by Midwesterner53
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To: karpov

“Biased results”, meaning English, math, and other subject cannot be known to non-whites. Seems a racist statement to me.


18 posted on 11/21/2021 6:43:08 AM PST by CodeToad (Arm up! They Have!)
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To: coloradan

Due time? You and I just figured it out from reading the announcement.


19 posted on 11/21/2021 6:44:21 AM PST by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: karpov

Colleges have been going “test optional” for several years now. This isn’t something new. One of my kids had a high test score but no GPA because he never went to high school. But, I know of many other kids who scored low on the SAT and still did well in college - one has a masters now.

Funny how you all go on and on here about this issue. When my kid was applying, one college had a minimum score for honors with a full scholarship, and my kid missed it by 40 points. The very next year, the same college decided to drop the minimum and accept the top test scores into honors with a full ride, and I knew of a kid who scored 110 points below my kid and got in. That was a white kid, by the way. But, hey, life isn’t fair. My kid got a full ride to a different college, anyway.


20 posted on 11/21/2021 6:48:34 AM PST by Tired of Taxes
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