Are standardized tests racist or anti-racist?

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They make their lists, double check them, trying to decide who’s in and who isn’t. Once again, it’s admissions season and tensions are running high as university leaders grapple with tough decisions that will affect the future of their schools. Chief among these tensions in recent years has been whether standardized testing should be at the heart of the process.

In 2021, the University of California system discontinued the use of all standardized tests for undergraduate admissions. California State University followed suit last spring, and in November the American Bar Association voted to drop the LSAT requirement for admission to one of the nations law schools from 2025. Many other schools have recently come to the same conclusion. Science magazine reports that among a sample of 50 US universities, only 3% hold doctorates. science programs currently require applicants to submit GRE scores, up from 84% four years ago. And colleges that dropped their testing requirements or made them optional in response to the pandemic are now feeling torn about whether to bring those tests back.

Proponents of these changes have long argued that standardized tests are biased against low-income students and students of color, and should not be used. The system serves to perpetuate a status quo, they say, where children whose parents are in the top 1% of the income distribution are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy League college than children whose parents are in the bottom quintile. But those who still endorse the tests argue the mirror image: Schools have been able to identify talented low-income students and students of color and provide them with transformative educational experiences, they argue, precisely because these students are tested.

These two views that standardized testing is a driver of inequality and a great tool to improve it are often opposed in contemporary discourse. But in my opinion, these are not opposition positions. Both of these things can be true at the same time: tests can be biased against marginalized students, and they can be used to help these students succeed. We often forget an important lesson about standardized tests: they, or at least their results, take the form of data; and the data can be interpreted and used in multiple ways. This may seem like an obvious statement, but it’s crucial to resolving this debate.

I teach a doctorate. quantitative research methods seminar that delves into the intricacies of generating, interpreting and applying data. One of the readings I attribute to Andrea Jones-Rooys’ Im a Data Scientist Who Is Skeptical About Data article contains a relevant passage to our thinking about standardized testing and its use in admissions:

Data can’t say anything about a problem any more than a hammer can build a house or almond flour can make a macaroon. Data is a necessary ingredient for discovery, but you need a human to pick it, shape it, and then turn it into insight.

When reviewing applications, admissions officers must turn test scores into information about each applicant’s potential for success in college. But their ability to generate this information depends on what they know about the larger data-generating process that led to students getting these scores, and how managers interpret what they know about that process. In other words, what they do with test scores and whether they end up perpetuating or reducing inequality depends on how they view bias in the larger system.

First of all, who takes these tests is not random. Obtaining a score can be so costly in terms of time and money that it is out of reach for many students. This source of bias can be addressed, at least in part, by public policy. For example, research has found that when states implement universal high school testing policies and make testing part of the regular curriculum rather than an add-on that students and parents must provide themselves, more students underprivileged enter university and the income gap narrows. . Even if we solve this problem, however, another, admittedly more difficult problem, will still have to be solved.

The second issue concerns what the tests actually measure. Researchers have debated this question for decades and continue to debate it in academic journals. To understand the tension, remember what I said earlier: Universities try to determine candidates’ potential for success. The ability of students to fulfill their potential depends both on what they know before arriving on campus and on being in a supportive academic environment. The tests are meant to measure prior knowledge, but the nature of how learning works in American society means that they end up measuring other things as well.

In the United States, we have an unequal elementary and secondary education system due to historical and contemporary laws and policies. American schools continue to be heavily segregated based on race, ethnicity, and social class, and this segregation affects what students have the opportunity to learn. Well-resourced schools can afford to provide more enriching educational experiences for their students than under-resourced schools. When students take standardized tests, they answer questions based on what they learned, but what they learned depends on the type of schools they were lucky (or unlucky) to attend.

This creates a challenge for testers and universities that rely on their data. They attempt to assess students’ abilities, but the unequal nature of the learning environments in which students were raised means that the tests also capture underlying disparities; this is one reason why test scores tend to reflect broader patterns of inequality. When admissions officers see a student with low scores, they don’t know if that person lacked potential or was instead deprived of educational opportunities.

So how should colleges and universities use this data, given what they know about the factors driving it? The answer depends on how colleges and universities perceive their mission and larger purpose in society.

From the beginning, standardized tests were intended to screen students. A congressional report on the history of testing in American schools describes how, in the late 1800s, elite colleges and universities were dissatisfied with the quality of high school graduates and sought a better way to select them. The president of Harvard first proposed a system of common entrance examinations in 1890; the college entrance examination board was formed 10 years later. This orientation towards exclusion led schools to use tests to find and admit only students who seemed likely to embody and preserve a prestigious heritage of the institution. This led them to some pretty unsavory policies. For example, a few years ago a spokesperson for the University of Texas at Austin admitted that schools’ adoption of standardized tests in the 1950s arose out of concerns about the effects of Brown v. Board of Education. UT looked at the distribution of test scores, found thresholds that would eliminate the majority of black applicants, and then used those thresholds to guide admissions.

Read: The college admissions process is completely broken

Universities today often claim to have inclusive goals. They speak of the value of educating not just the children of the elite, but a diverse cross-section of the population. Instead of seeking out and admitting students who have already had huge advantages and specifically excluding almost everyone, these schools might try to recruit and educate the types of students who have not had huge advantages. outstanding educational opportunities in the past.

Careful use of test data could support this goal. If student scores indicate a need for more support in particular areas, universities could invest more educational resources in those areas. They could hire more instructors or support staff to work with low-scoring students. And if schools notice alarming trends in areas of consistent data where students haven’t been adequately prepared, they might respond not with displeasure, but with leadership. They could advocate for the state to provide K12 schools with better resources.

Such investments would be in the interest of nations, considering that one of the functions of our education system is to prepare young people for current and future challenges. These include improving equity and innovation in science and engineering, addressing climate change and climate justice, and creating technology systems that benefit a diverse audience. All of these areas benefit from diverse groups of people working together, but diverse groups cannot come together if some members never learn the skills to participate.

Read: The SAT isn’t what’s unfair

But universities, at least elite ones, have not traditionally sought inclusion, through the use of standardized tests or otherwise. Currently, research on the behavior of universities suggests that they operate as if they are largely in competition for prestige. If that is their mission as opposed to promoting inclusive education, it makes sense to use test scores for exclusion. Enrolling students with the best results helps schools optimize their market metrics, i.e. their rankings.

In other words, the tests themselves are not the problem. Most components of admission portfolios suffer from the same biases. In terms of favoring the wealthy, admissions tests are even worse than standardized tests; the same goes for participation in extracurricular activities and inheritance admissions. Yet all of these provide universities with useful information about the types of students who may arrive on campus.

None of this data speaks for itself. Historically, people who interpret and act on this information have conferred advantages on wealthy students. But they can make different decisions today. Whether universities continue their exclusive trajectories or become more inclusive institutions does not depend on how well their students fill out the bubble sheets. Instead, schools have to find the answers on their own: what kind of business do they work in and who do they exist for?

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