The Daily - The Messy Fight Over the SAT

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Concerned about the effect on diversity, many colleges have stopped requiring standardized tests. New research suggests that might be a mistake.David Leonhardt, a senior writer for The Times, discusses the future of SATs and why colleges remain reluctant to bring them back.Guest: David Leonhardt, a senior writer for The New York Times.Background reading: The misguided war on the SATFrom Opinion: Can the meritocracy survive without the SAT?For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. Many American colleges have stopped requiring standardized tests, like the SATs, on the theory that they hurt diversity. But new research suggests that colleges may have made a mistake. Today, my colleague David Leonhardt on the war on the SATs and why colleges are still reluctant to bring them back. It's Wednesday, January 17th. So, David, ever since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, it's opened up this larger conversation around the college admissions process.

You know, what's fair and what tools do we have to create diverse student bodies now? And recently, you've been reporting on the SATs in this context. Tell us why you decided to focus on the SATs in particular. There's been a radical change with standardized tests in this country, both the SATs and the ACTs, which many students also take when applying to college. And for years, people have not liked the SAT. I mean, I'm sure you remember taking it, Sabrina. It's not fun to take. Who likes the SAT? Yeah. I mean, I can still remember the dark gym I went and sat in anxiously 35 years ago.

And on top of the inherent unpleasantness of standardized tests, I think a lot of people, particularly on the political left, have worried that standardized tests, I think a lot of people, particularly on the political left, have worried that standardized tests are an enemy of diversity. And so there's been this criticism bubbling up, and then comes COVID. And during the pandemic, it was basically impossible for teenagers to go out and take these standardized tests. And so one college after another announced, you no longer have to take the SAT or ACT to apply here. They went test optional, as they called it. And is this most colleges? Yes, nearly all colleges. And when the colleges announced it, they said this is a temporary move. But almost all colleges have remained test optional. So that's a really big change in college

admissions. And I got interested in that change to understand what has it meant that colleges have moved away from these standardized tests that they required for decades. It also turns out that there's been some new research looking at what is the use of the SAT? What does it tell you about applicants? And in part because of that new research and in the use of the SAT? What does it tell you about applicants? And in part because of that new research and in part because of the experiences that colleges have had with an admission system that doesn't include standardized tests, there are now a bunch of people in higher education who are saying, we made a mistake and we should bring back our test requirements. Okay, so let's talk about the case to bring it back.

Now, you were actually on the show last summer, and you talked about some of this new research. Remind us briefly of those findings, David, and tell us where the SATs come into them. So this in-depth study looking at college admissions that was released last summer ended up finding that the richest applicants have huge advantages in college admissions. And a lot of people have assumed that the SAT must be one of the advantages that richer applicants have. Because think about it. If you're rich, you can take test prep classes. You can take the SAT multiple times. You also might go to a private school or a top public school that's going to prepare you better for the test. There are all kinds of ways in which you might have an advantage on the SAT because of wealth. But it turns out that many of the other aspects of the admissions process are more tilted toward the rich than standardized tests. the rich than standardized tests. Think about extracurricular activities. Who can pay to take music lessons? Who can pay to travel to foreign countries and participate in projects that expand their horizons? Right. Cures for cancer in a summer project. Exactly. Who can pay to participate

on travel sports teams? And it's not just extracurriculars. Think about all of the editing that highly educated affluent parents do of their children's college essays. Think about the quality of a school recommendation that you're going to get if you go to a private school as opposed to a public school where the guidance counselor has 500 students whom they're advising. And so actually, standardized tests, a single test that everybody must take, the same test, end up being less tilted toward the wealthy than many other aspects of the process, like extracurriculars and essay writing and school recommendations. So let's pause and unpack that a little bit, David, because I think it'll be surprising for

listeners. I mean, SATs, you think test prep, you think advantage parents pouring money, pouring time, pouring effort into this test prep. Doesn't that confer advantage on the wealthy? Well, first, I should make clear, there are gaps along racial and economic lines in average SAT scores. Upper-income students do better on average than lower-income students. White and Asian students do better on average than Black and Latino students. And this is probably the main point that the critics of the test make. They say, look at these gaps. The test must be biased. But let's start with test prep. The evidence suggests that test prep actually causes only a tiny part of these gaps, maybe not that different from zero. And the way to see that is to look at other tests that millions of students across the country take, but don't take test prep for. known one is called the NAEP. Its nickname is the Nation's Report Card. It's a test nationwide that elementary school students and middle school students take. There's a good chance that you or

your students have taken the NAEP in your state, but that they called it something other than the NAEP locally. And so no one takes NAEP test prep because for an individual student, the NAEP doesn't really matter. It's instead used to see which school districts are doing well, which states are doing well. It's a tool for states and local school districts to see how they're doing. That's exactly right. When you see headlines once a year come out about how much fourth graders or eighth graders have learned in the United States, that comes from the NAEP. What's really striking is that the economic gaps that is between how richer and poorer students do and the racial gaps are incredibly similar on the NAEP as they are to the SAT. And so that is another way of saying test prep just isn't that big a deal. OK, so there are these gaps in both the SATs and the NAEPs, these other important national tests, and they're gaps, as you said, along economic and racial lines.

So if it isn't test prep that's actually driving the gaps, then I guess the question is, what is? And I'm thinking it has something to do with inequality in America. Yes. The tests are picking up real inequities in American life. Think about it. We live in a society with enormous economic and racial inequality. You see this in nearly every

measure of American life, home ownership, life expectancy, poverty. The black poverty rate, for example, is substantially higher than the white and Asian poverty rate. Now, does that mean that the poverty rate statistic is biased? Of course not. It means we live in an unequal society. The problem is the underlying reality. It's not the statistic. And I think in the debate over standardized tests, a lot of people have conflated those two things. They've said there are these racial and economic gaps, therefore the tests must be biased, as opposed to there are these racial and economic gaps because there are these racial and economic gaps, therefore the tests must be biased, as opposed to there are these racial and economic gaps because there are racial and economic gaps

in almost everything in American life. In other words, the SATs are actually mirroring back American reality, you know, showing this deep problem that we have. Like, effectively, they're the messenger, right? And you're saying, don't shoot it. That's right. But if there are these gaps, why should we use the SATs in college admissions? First of all, almost nobody is suggesting that the SATs should be the only factor or even the dominant factor in college admissions. What the advocates for it are saying is that it should be one factor. And the key thing here is that the SAT and the ACT turn out to be a very good predictor of how students are going to do in college academically, especially at the most selective colleges. The data shows that students who do better on the SAT are going to have higher GPAs in

college on average. The SAT and the ACT also predict what kind of graduate schools these students are going to go to, which is a sign that they did better overall in college. In fact, SATs turn out to be a significantly better predictor than high school grades do. And why is the test better at predicting success than high school grades? First of all, high schools are incredibly different. An A at one high school isn't the same thing as an A at another high school. And second of all, something important has changed here, which is grade inflation. High school students just get much higher grades than they used to.

And so these college admissions officers are left looking at transcripts where nearly all the students are getting nearly all A's. They can't make decisions based only on that. Standardized tests are more rigorous because there's more of a distribution and because everyone's taking the same test. The key arguments for using the test is that there are kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who do really well on the SAT and ACT. There are lower income kids who do well. There are black and Hispanic kids who do well. One of the arguments of the test advocates is that those are specifically the kids who are being hurt in a system where they don't take the test. They are not being given a chance to show their potential in a way that high school grades just can't capture as well. There are too many students getting A's for any one of these colleges to admit. So if they just

are going to use grades, they're going to have to do a whole lot of guesswork. They're going to have to say, we think this kid with straight A's is more promising than this other kid with straight A's. Whereas when they combine the two, they say, oh, look, we're looking at these five kids, all of them from disadvantaged backgrounds, all of them have close to straight A's. But look at these two or this one who really stand out on the standardized test. No, they didn't do quite as well as a kid who went to a private school or a public magnet school, but they did well. And that is a sign of enormous potential. And if you don't have the SAT, and admissions officers have told me this directly, if you don't have the SAT, you really have to guess which one of those kids is likely to do the best at these colleges. And it is a particular problem for kids from disadvantaged

backgrounds because these admissions officers have a much better sense of exactly what the classes and the grades and the transcripts mean at these magnet schools and these private schools that every year have multiple applicants to these schools. It's the high schools that don't have that many applicants to the school. When they're looking at these kids who have straight A's and they're choosing among kids, all of whom have approaching straight A's at different high schools, that the standardized tests can be particularly helpful in saying that is the kid who is likely to thrive on our campus. So in theory, this sounds like a useful strategy, right? But are colleges actually using the SATs in this way? Well, MIT is a really interesting example here.

And MIT is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It's one of the most selective colleges in America. It is also one of the only colleges that reinstated its requirement that applicants take the SAT or the ACT. It's a very short list. And part of the reason that they did was when they went and they studied the last 15 years, they found that the students whom they had admitted despite having lower test scores just didn't do as well there. And not only that, but they found that they could admit a highly diverse class while using the SAT as one of the factors. So the current first-year

class at MIT, which was admitted using an SAT or ACT requirement, is about 30% Black or Latino. It is well more than 50% students of color. It's about 20% students who receive Pell Grants, which is the largest federal financial aid program, which means that MIT is more economically diverse than a lot of other elite classes. more economically diverse than a lot of other elite classes. And what the Dean of Admissions, Stuart Schmill, told me is he said, look, using A's alone were not enough for us to admit a class. There are just too many kids who get A's, and we couldn't be sure that it was telling us that they could actually do MIT work. But when we combined grades with standardized tests, with other parts of the application, when we gave kids credit for overcoming adversity, often economic adversity, but we also looked

for kids who'd done really well on the SAT, we were able to admit a class that was both diverse and extremely well-prepared academically. So David, essentially what you're saying here is that the humble and hated SAT is imperfect, but is the only one real yardstick we have in an imperfect system and doesn't need to harm diversity if you use it in conjunction with other things. But, you know, my mind is going back to the beginning of our conversation. You said that the test is still not being used by a lot of colleges out there. Have they seen this data? Are they going to act accordingly? They have seen this data for the most part.

And that raises a fascinating question, Sabrina, which is, given the data, why haven't they gone back to using the SAT? We'll be right back. Okay, so given the evidence you've laid out for me, David, why aren't schools eager to bring back the SATs? I think it's important to say that actually most Americans are in favor of using standardized tests. There's been some polling on this. Eighty-five percent of Americans say that standardized tests should be a factor in college admissions. A large majority of every racial group says they should be a factor in college admissions.

But colleges are, of course, not a cross-section of America. In our polarized society, colleges are one of the places that are most strongly connected to the political left in this country. So on the left, standardized tests have been for some time unpopular and have become increasingly so, in part because COVID gave colleges an opportunity to rethink this. But in part because they think that it is an enemy of diversity, right? That is correct. That one of the most passionate beliefs of the political left is the importance of diversity and particularly racial diversity. And many people on college campuses have a genuine fear and a reasonable fear that standardized tests could be used to reduce the diversity of their campuses.

Now, these fears that the tests could reduce diversity on campus have a connection to the history of these tests, although it's a somewhat nuanced history. So college standardized tests were invented in the early 20th century as part of the progressive movement in this country. And that was a complicated movement. It also had major strains of racism, eugenics in that movement. And today we tend to think of racism in terms of skin color, in particularly terms of white-black. At the time, none of these selective colleges were entertaining the idea of admitting meaningful numbers of Black Americans. The race debate at the time was actually quite different. And it is true that some of the people who were designing the test expected that the test would show that Anglo-Saxons would do better than Jews and Southern Europeans. This was an era of debate about American immigration policy. That was the flavor of the day of elites who were racist, that people from Southern Europe, Italians, Jews, Greeks, would not be able to do as well. That's correct.

Now, some of the other early advocates and inventors of the test had a different view. These were administrators at Harvard who were worried that the American elite was drawing from too narrow a pool of people, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and that if America was truly going to be a world leader, it needed a stronger elite. And it actually needed to use these standardized tests to find students who weren't naturally going to be at a place like Harvard, but in fact, deserve to be. In fact, were extremely talented. And they thought that the standardized tests could actually diversify the students at these elite schools.

So truly a very mixed history with this test in terms of the intentions. Very mixed. You had people who both saw them as a way to restrict opportunity, and you had people pushing for them who saw them as a way to expand opportunity. But today, critics of the tests tend to emphasize only one half of that history. And part of the reason that they do is they see a real connection to today. They say, look, the people who created these tests were racist, And there are real gaps today by economic class and by race. And they connect these two and they say, this is just not something that we should be using. But I wonder, based on what you told me with the MIT example and how the SAT can be used to create diverse student bodies. Are colleges looking at that and starting to say,

maybe we shouldn't be so concerned? Maybe we should reconsider bringing the SATs back? Yes, some of them are right now. But they're also anxious. And part of the reason they're anxious is the Supreme Court decision last year that forbids colleges from using race in college admissions. So in the wake of that decision, it's very clear that people on the political right, some of the same people who brought that lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court decision, are going to be scouring the college admissions process and looking for signs that colleges have deviated from what the Supreme Court has said that they can do. A system that uses SATs has the potential to give brist to those conservative critics. They can say, hey, wait a minute. Why did you admit this kid of one race who has a 1400 when you rejected this kid of another race with a 1500. Whereas a system without standardized

tests is just fuzzier. It's more subjective, and it potentially creates less legal jeopardy for colleges. And in fact, if I remember correctly, it was also precisely the argument the plaintiffs in the Harvard case were bringing before the Supreme Court, right? Hey, I got a high score and they didn't let me in because of my ethnicity. It was one part of their argument, but it was an important part. And how big of a legal risk is this for these colleges? I think we don't yet know. Remember, the idea of using the SAT in college admissions is not just a hypothetical. MIT is doing it. Georgetown is doing it. Some of the top public universities in the country are doing it. They all say they are doing it.

They are creating diverse classes, and they are doing it while following the law. And if when the evidence continues to emerge and it becomes clear, oh, it is possible to use the SAT and still have diverse classes, my instinct is the legal risk may not be as big as colleges fear,

but I just don't think we know yet. So on the one hand, schools have all of these reasons for not wanting to require the SATs. But on the other, you have this data showing that SATs can be pretty useful for college admissions, which makes me wonder, is there a cost to schools not using the SATs? Well, it depends who you ask. So critics of the test would say there really isn't that much of a cost, that in these schools we're talking about phenomenally qualified applicants, even those who would do somewhat worse on the standardized test. These students are not going to drop out for the most part of these schools. They're still going to graduate and they're going to have successful lives. And what the critics of the test say is once you start using

the test, it's really hard not to overuse the test because it's a number. And instead of obsessing over modest differences between how people do on this test and modest differences in how they might do at college, we should instead see schools as engines of social mobility, and we should ensure they're admitting a diverse class of qualified students and not worry too much about whether they're admitting the very most qualified students. Just work harder to find the best students and not obsess over that number. Yeah, and work harder to educate them once they're there. And what the advocates for the test would say is, look, these are the world's finest universities. Part of their mission is to develop new cures for diseases that are

killing people and develop new forms of energy that help reduce the damage from climate change. They have a mission of excellence. And part of that mission is to go find the students who are going to be able to do that work best, to do the research, to become the researchers of tomorrow, and educate them and set them up to succeed. And so this actually gets at something really fascinating, which is, I think, one of the criticisms of higher education from the political center and the political right have been that higher education doesn't care that much about excellence anymore. And the standardized tests have become part of this criticism. The critics of higher ed have said, look, there is this test that can tell you who will do better in school, And yet you are ignoring it.

And that has become wrapped up in this whole larger political debate that we're having right now about higher education. So there's an incredibly basic question at the heart of all of this, which is what is higher education actually for? Like, what's the end goal of it? Is it to make classrooms more diverse and to alleviate inequality in America? Or is it to create merit-based places where talented students can individually reach their full potential? Yes, and almost everyone in higher education would say the answer is both. And I'll tell you, my reading of the evidence is that both is reasonable. I do think that colleges can be both diverse and excellent. But there's no question that there are

some tensions here. And in particular, there's no question that a system with standardized tests runs the risk of reducing diversity, and a system without standardized tests runs the risk of reducing excellence. So those two things are in tension, and we're living in a pretty important moment in higher education right now. So what's the answer? What's going to happen? We're going to find out soon. Schools are looking right now at their admissions policies. They're looking at this new evidence on the SAT and ACT. They're trying to figure out whether to reinstate their test requirements or to remain test optional. They're trying to respond to the Supreme Court decision on admissions. And it's clearly a really tumultuous

time in higher education. It's also a really fascinating time because schools are trying to decide, what do we want to be? David, thank you. Thanks so much, Sabrina. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. The U.S. military struck targets in Yemen on Tuesday, the third attack on the Houthis since a U.S.-led air and naval barrage last week. The American strike destroyed four missiles that posed a threat to ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis, backed by Iran, are firing on ships in protest against the war in Gaza.

And the U.S. and its allies are scrambling to keep the critical pathway for global trade open. Today's episode was produced by Stella Tan and Shannon Lin. It was edited by Lisa Chow Thank you. by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.