“Since the inception of standardized tests almost a century ago, they have been instruments of racism and a biased system,” states the National Education Association (NEA). The NEA report goes on to reveal, “Decades of research demonstrate that Black, Latin(o/a/x), and Native students, and students from some Asian groups, experience bias from standardized tests administered from early childhood through college.”
Even with this knowledge, many schools are still using standardized testing, whether it comes in the form of Common Core tests or college entrance SATs. However, with the onset of the pandemic, these tests’ biases are now being exposed more than ever, especially in high schools. Below, we discuss how COVID-19 has shed a laser light on standardized test bias, how the pandemic has revealed the need for conversations around access and equity during the college admissions process and that maybe it’s time to end standardized tests – for good.
Standardized Testing & Eugenicists: A Dark History
Standardized tests first entered public schools in the 1920s, launched by eugenicists (those who study the selection of desired heritable characteristics to improve future generations) whose pseudoscience promoted the ‘natural superiority of wealthy, white, U.S. born males,” according to Rethinking Schools. To add to this controversial take on the origins of standardized testing, an NEA article, The Racist Beginnings of Standardized Testing, also exposes racial comments and beliefs from psychologist and eugenicist Carl Brigham, who helped develop aptitude tests for the U.S. Army during World War I and was commissioned to help build the SAT. The article cites a quote from Brigham’s 1923 book, A Study of American Intelligence, where he states, “African-Americans were on the low end of the racial, ethnic, and cultural spectrum.” The NEA article goes on to reveal that Brigham believed that testing showed the superiority of the ‘Nordic race group’ and that he warned of the ‘promiscuous intermingling’ of new immigrants in the American gene pool.
Unfortunately, according to the Rethinking Schools article, “High-stakes standardized tests have disguised class, and race privilege as merit ever since its inception. The use of test scores to demonstrate a ‘mental ability’ gap and now an ‘achievement’ gap exposes the intrinsic nature of these tests: They are built to maintain inequality, not to serve as an antidote to educational disparities.” The article adds that in the wake of a decade-long barrage of standardized tests unleashed by policies such as No Child Left Behind and now, the Common Core, a movement of resistance has emerged around the country. For instance, in 2019, lawsuits demanded that the University of California system eliminate the requirement that students take the SAT or ACT to be considered for admission, according to Forbes. The lawsuit argues that using the tests goes against the state’s anti-discrimination statute as children from low-income families, children of color, and children with disabilities are at a disadvantage. The article cites the research supporting this idea, including:
- In terms of income, a 2015 analysis found that students with family income less than $20,000 scored lowest on the test and those with family income above $200,000 achieved the highest.
- In terms of race, in 2018, combined SAT scores for Asian and White students averaged over 1100, while all other groups averaged below 1000.
Today, the pandemic has shed a new light regarding the SAT “test-optional” option and barriers within the college admissions process.
How COVID Exposed College Admissions Testing Bias
According to Inside Higher Ed (IHE), with test centers closed in 2020, colleges turned to test-optional admissions. Application numbers rose at highly selective colleges, with record-breaking numbers across the country:
- Duke University reported an increase of 25 percent.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology was up 66 percent.
- Rice University grew 26 percent.
Students felt they had a better chance at gaining admission to a highly selective college without a perfect SAT score. The IHE article noted, “On an individual basis, it seemed that one barrier to elite college admissions had been lifted, set in motion by a pandemic but defended in the name of access and equity.” The idea of test-optional seems promising by designing pathways for students to enter a college regardless of their ability to test well.
However, one caveat to this theory, according to IHE, is “The colleges’ decision to focus on the word optional. By its very definition, optional implies choice. For instance, during the height of the pandemic, when open test centers were scarce, wealthier students could fly into parts of the country to take an SAT or ACT at an open center. Well-resourced high schools coordinated previously unscheduled in-school test days to guarantee access to the exams before the fall deadlines. And all this happened as many students in underresourced communities had yet to return to in-person instruction.” Thus, the SAT score became another luxury item in a year that highlighted social inequities. These factors revealed the inevitable truth that society is conditioned to be impressed by scores, and this bias still exists even within a ‘test-optional’ review.
The Future of the SAT & Hope for a More Equitable Future
So what has been done to correct these standardized testing biases? In 2016, the College Board made extensive changes to the SAT to make it less memorization-based and more focused on preparing students for careers and college. However, data shows that racial gaps are still prevalent in the new version, even with modifications. In 2019, the College Board announced another change, the “adversity score.” According to the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Review, “Designed to counterbalance the economic and social factors thought to drive the achievement gap, the ‘adversity score’ would have given colleges a number based on 15 factors thought to measure the amount of disadvantage a student has faced.” Facing backlash, the College Board abandoned this move and decided to equip schools with a bulleted list of information about each student’s neighborhood and high school rather than a single score.
Even with all of the biases and changes – how does standardized testing still endure? The bottom line – it turns a huge profit. According to Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Review, the National Board of Education on Testing and Public Policy at Boston College places the value of the testing market as between $400 million and $700 million. In addition, there is also the test prep industry. Parents spent $13.1 billion on test prep, tutoring, and counseling in 2015.
Where do we go from here? The Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Review article believes, “Nearly a hundred years of revisions and experimentation have done little to change the racial and class bias inherent in this test – it may be time to give it up altogether.” According to Rethinking Schools, “One of the first steps toward rethinking assessments is to ask, ‘What is the purpose of the assessment?’ and, ‘Is this purpose worthy or meaningful?’ Answering these questions means examining what is essential for students to learn, how we help them learn, and how we know what they have learned.” The article also adds, “Alternatives to standardized testing are used in both the U.S. and other industrialized countries. These alternatives range from student portfolios to district-wide proficiencies to outside review teams evaluating a school. There is growing evidence that these measures better show how well students and schools are performing.” However, moving forward, many educators are in agreement that, “The focus should be on promoting authentic assessments that reflect the broad range of students learning and skills, including creativity, leadership, critical thinking, and collaboration,” states the NEA.
