California schools may scrap SATs in admissions decisions

If a group of Latino faculty and administrators gets its way, the Scholastic Assessment Test will cease to be a non-negotiable factor in admission to the highly competitive University of California system. Last week, the Latino Eligibility Task Force -- created in 1992 with representatives from the nine UC campuses and the Office of the President -- presented the University of California Board of Regents with a proposal to eliminate the consideration of SAT scores in admissions decisions, claiming that the tests discriminate against minority students. Eugene Garcia, the dean of UC-Berkeley's Graduate School of Education and the chairperson of the task force, explained that the SAT is "not a very good predictor of how students will do at the university." "The real problem with the SAT is that it doesn't distinguish [among students of varying socio-economic backgrounds]," Garcia added. Instead, the task force suggested that admissions officials use an alternate test which would evaluate students on the basis of skills and knowledge acquired in high school. "If you are going to use a test, you ought to use a test that is fair to all students," Garcia said. UC officials, however, said the proposal to cease taking the SAT into account is "one of many ideas being considered," and would have to go through several years of scrutiny before it could be brought to a vote before the UC Board of Regents. Garcia pointed to statistics predicting a 50 to 70 percent decline in decline in Latino enrollment at UC-Berkeley and UCLA as admissions officials phase out affirmative action at the undergraduate level. These statistics demonstrate the necessity of eliminating SAT consideration, which contribute to Latinos' underrepresentation in the system, he said. Last November, California voters approved a proposition outlawing affirmative action throughout the state and ending its use within the UC system. Because the school-age Latino population within the state is soaring, the elimination of preferential admissions will exaggerate Latinos' underrepresentation within the UC system, Garcia said. But eliminating the SAT requirement should increase Latino students' eligibility for the UC system by 59 percent, he added. For students matriculating into the UC system in 1997, the non-affirmative action policy only applied to graduate schools. Next year, however, the policy will also affect all undergraduate students. Opponents of the policy point to statistics showing that minority enrollment plummeted in the graduate schools which had eliminated affirmative action considerations. UC-Berkeley's Boalt Law School, for example, had only one African-American matriculant, a student who had been admitted and enrolled in 1996, but who had taken a year off before beginning law school. None of the 15 African-American students admitted to Boalt in 1997 enrolled in the school -- a drastic decrease from the 20 African Americans who enrolled in fall 1996. The number of Latinos enrolling in Boalt also declined from 28 in 1996 to seven in 1997, while Native-American and Asian-American enrollment also decreased. And although UC officials pledge to maintain adequate levels of minority representation within the system, they admit they "don't know what we will be able to do to maintain the diversity here." UC-Berkeley spokesperson Bob Sanders added that the non-affirmative action admissions procedures "may not create as diverse a student body as we have had before."

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