Let me begin by saying that I was unprepared for the intense public reaction to the address I presented last February at the annual meeting of the American Council on Education. The day before I was scheduled to deliver it, I went to the lobby of my hotel to get a copy of the Washington Post. I was astounded to find myself and excerpts from my speech on the front page; an early version had been leaked to the press. To my further astonishment, the same story graced the front page of the New York Times.

And that was only the beginning. In the months since my address, I have heard from hundreds of college and university presidents, CEOs, alumni, superintendents, principals, teachers, parents, students, and many others from all walks of life. Television programs, newspaper editorials, and magazine articles have presented arguments pro and con. I was most struck by the Time magazine article that had a picture of President Bush and me. The headline read, "What do these two men have in common?" Those who have speculated that the answer is that we had identical SAT scores are wrong. I did not take the SAT.

It came as no surprise that my proposal on standardized testing attracted the attention of educators, admissions officers, and testing experts-people like many of you here for this conference. I have been impressed and pleased by the many researchers, professors, and psychometricians who have shared with me their findings and experience regarding the SAT. But I was very surprised at the number of letters I received from people who had no professional connection with higher education. I heard from a young woman-an honors graduate of UC Berkeley with an advanced degree from Princeton--who had been questioned about her 10-year-old SAT scores in a job interview; an attorney who, despite decades of success, still remembers the sting of a less-than-brilliant SAT score; an engineer who excelled on the SAT but found it bore no relation to the demands of college and his profession; a science student who scored poorly on the SAT and was not admitted to his college of choice, but in later years was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Clearly, the SAT strikes a deep chord in the national psyche.

The second surprise in the months following my speech was the degree of confusion about what I proposed and why I proposed it. For example, some people assumed I wanted to eliminate the SAT I as an end-run around Proposition 209. I did not; my opposition to the SAT I predates Proposition 209 by many years. And, as I said in my ACE speech, I do not anticipate that ending the SAT I requirement-by itself--would appreciably change the composition of those admitted to UC.

Others assumed that, because I am against the SAT I, I am against standardized tests in general. I am not-quite the opposite. Grading practices vary across teachers and high schools, and standardized tests are essential to providing a measure of a student's achievements that is independent of grades. But we need to be exceedingly careful about the standardized tests we choose.

So much for what I did not propose. Let me turn briefly to what I did propose.

I requested the Academic Senate of the University of California to consider two further changes in addition to making the SAT I optional. The first is to use an expanded set of SAT II tests, or other curriculum-based tests, that measure achievement in specific subject areas, until more appropriate tests are developed. The second is to move all UC campuses away from admissions processes employing quantitative formulas and toward a comprehensive evaluation of applicants.

In a democratic society, I argued, admitting students to a college or university should be based on three principles. First, students should be judged on the basis of their actual achievements, not on ill-defined notions of aptitude. Second, standardized tests should have a demonstrable relationship to the specific subjects taught in high school so that students can use the tests to assess their mastery of those subjects. Third, American universities should employ admissions processes that look at individual applicants in their full complexity and take special pains to ensure that standardized tests are used properly in admissions decisions. I'd like to discuss each in turn.
 

Aptitude versus achievement

Aptitude tests like the SAT I have an historical tie to the concept of innate mental abilities-that such abilities can be defined and that it is possible to measure them. Neither notion has been supported by modern research. Few scientists who have considered these matters seriously would argue that aptitude tests like the SAT I provide a true measure of intellectual abilities.

Nonetheless, the SAT I is widely regarded as a test of basic mental ability that can give us a picture of students' academic promise. Those who support it do so in the belief that it helps guarantee that the students admitted to college will be highly qualified. The SAT I's claim to be the gold standard of quality rests on its ability to predict how students will perform in their first year of college.

Nearly 40 years ago, University of California faculty serving on the Academic Senate's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) gathered here on the Santa Barbara campus to consider the merits of the SAT and achievement tests. At that point, UC had only run experiments with both kinds of tests. In the actual process of admissions, UC used standardized tests in admissions decisions only for a small percentage of students who did not regularly qualify through grades in selected courses. Among the questions BOARS asked: What is the predictive power of the SAT for academic success at UC? How might it improve the process of admissions?

To answer these questions, BOARS launched a study that compared both the SAT and achievement tests as predictors of student performance. The results were mixed. In the view of the board, the achievement tests proved a more useful predictor of student success than the SAT, both in combination with grades and as a single indicator. But the benefits of both tests appeared marginal at the time. As a result, both the SAT and achievement tests remained largely an alternative method for attaining UC eligibility. In 1968, UC began requiring the SAT I and three SAT II achievement tests under this rubric, and as a means to study the success patterns of the vast majority of students admitted strictly by their grades in UC-required courses.

This policy paradigm lasted until the late 1970s. As John Douglass has noted in a number of studies on the history of UC admissions, not until 1979 did the University adopt the SAT as a substantial and formal part of the regular admissions process. That year, BOARS established UC's current Eligibility Index: a sliding scale combining GPA in required courses with SAT scores to determine UC eligibility. Even then, GPA remained the dominant factor in this determination. UC established the Eligibility Index largely as a way of reducing its eligibility pool in light of a series of studies that showed UC accepting students well beyond its mandated top 12.5 percent of statewide graduates. The decision to include SAT scores in the Eligibility Index was not based on an analysis of the SAT's predictive power.

Fortunately, today we have such an analysis. Because our students have been taking the SAT I and the SAT II for more than three decades, UC is perhaps the only university in the country that has a data base large enough to compare the predictive power of the SAT I with that of the achievement-based SAT II tests. As you will hear later in this conference, Saul Geiser and Roger Studley have analyzed the records of almost 78,000 freshmen who entered UC over the past four years. They concluded that the SAT II is, in fact, a much better predictor of college grades. We have found that high school grades plus the SAT II account for about 21.0 percent of the explained variance in first-year college grades. When the SAT I is added to high school grades and the SAT II, the explained variance increases from 21.0 percent to 21.1 percent, a trivial increment.

In addition to being a better predictor of college performance, our data suggest that the SAT II is less sensitive to family income and parental education. This means that it is less likely to reflect socioeconomic bias; on a relative basis, poor students whose parents are not highly educated do better on the SAT II than on the SAT I.

When I gave my speech to the American Council on Education, this comprehensive analysis of the UC data comparing the two tests was not available. My arguments against the SAT I were not based on predictive validity but on pedagogical and philosophical convictions about achievement, merit, and opportunity in a democratic society. In my judgment, those considerations remain the most telling arguments against the SAT I. But these findings about the predictive validity of the SAT I versus the SAT II are stunning. They lend new support to the proposition that students should be judged on the basis of their actual achievements, not on ill-defined notions of aptitude.
 

Curriculum-based tests

If we do not use aptitude tests like the SAT I, how can we get an accurate picture of students' abilities that is independent of high school grades? In my view, the choice is clear: we should use standardized tests that have a demonstrable relationship to the specific subjects taught in high schools. This would benefit students because much time is currently wasted in and outside the classroom prepping students for the SAT I; the time could be better spent learning American history or geometry. And it would benefit schools because achievement-based tests tied to the curriculum are much more attuned to current efforts to improve the desperate situation of the nation's K-12 schools.

One of the clear lessons of American history is that colleges and universities, through their admissions requirements, strongly influence what is taught in the K-12 schools. UC's course requirements, the so-called A-G requirements in mathematics, English, foreign languages, laboratory sciences, social sciences, and the arts, help shape what California's public schools offer and what students study. UC's scholarship requirements tell students the grades they must strive for in these courses.

Because of its influence on K-12 education, UC has a responsibility to articulate a clear rationale for its test requirements. In my address to the American Council on Education last February, I suggested what that rationale might contain: 1) the academic competencies to be tested should be clearly defined--in other words, testing should be directly related to the required college preparatory curriculum; 2) students from any comprehensive high school in California should be able to score well if they mastered the curriculum; 3) students should be able, on reviewing their test scores, to understand where they did well or fell short and what they must do to earn higher scores in the future; and 4) test scores should help admissions officers evaluate the applicant's readiness for college-level work. I understand that the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools is in the process of developing principles to govern the selection and use of standardized tests. These principles, in my judgment, will be an extremely important contribution to the national debate about testing.

Universities in every state influence what high schools teach and what students learn. We can use this influence to reinforce current national efforts to improve the performance of American public schools. These reform efforts are based on three principal tenets: curriculum standards should be clearly defined; students should be held to those standards; and standardized tests should be used to assess whether the standards have been met.

The SAT I sends a confusing message to students, teachers, and schools. It says that students will be tested on material that is unrelated to what they study in their classes. It says that the grades they achieve can be devalued by a test that is not part of their school curriculum. Most important, the SAT I scores only tell a student that he or she scored higher or lower than his or her classmates. They provide neither students nor schools with a basis for self-assessment or improvement.
 

Appropriate role of standardized tests

Finally, I have argued that American universities should employ admissions processes that look at individual applicants in their full complexity and take special pains to ensure that standardized tests are used properly in admissions decisions. Let me discuss this statement in terms of the University of California.

UC's admissions policies and practices have been in the spotlight of public attention in recent years as our diverse population has expanded and demand for higher education has skyrocketed. Many of UC's ten campuses receive far more applicants than they can accept. Thus, the approach we use to admit students must be demonstrably inclusive and fair.

To do this, we must assess students in their full complexity. This means considering not only grades and test scores but also what students have made of their "opportunities to learn," the obstacles they have overcome, and the special talents they possess. To move the University in this direction, I have made four admissions proposals in recent years:

• Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC), or the Four Percent Plan, grants UC eligibility to students in the top four percent of their high school graduating class who also have completed UC's required college-preparatory courses. Almost 97 percent of California public high schools participated in ELC in its first year, many of which had traditionally sent few or no students to UC.

 
• Under the Dual Admissions Program, approved by The Regents last July, students who fall below the top four percent but within the top 12-1/2 percent of their high school graduating class would be admitted simultaneously to a community college and to UC, with the proviso that they must fulfill their freshman and sophomore requirements at a community college (with a solid grade-point average) before transferring to a UC campus. State budget difficulties have delayed implementation of the Dual Admissions Program, but we hope to launch it next year.

• For some years UC policy has defined two tiers for admission. In the first tier, students are admitted by a formula that places principal weight on grades and test scores; in the second, students are assessed on a range of supplemental criteria--for example, difficulty of the courses taken, evidence of leadership, or persistence in the face of obstacles-- in addition to quantitative measures. Selective private and public universities have used a comprehensive review of a student's full record in making admissions decisions. Given the intense competition for places at UC, I have urged that we follow their lead. The Regents approved the comprehensive review proposal just yesterday. It will be effective for students admitted in Fall 2002.

 
• Finally, for the reasons I have discussed in this paper, I have proposed that UC make the SAT I optional and to move toward curriculum-based achievement tests. The Academic Senate is currently considering this issue and its review will likely be finished next spring, after which the proposal will go to the Board of Regents.

Achievement tests are fairer to students because they measure accomplishment rather than promise; they can be used to improve performance; they are less vulnerable to charges of cultural or socioeconomic bias; and they are more appropriate for schools because they set clear curricular guidelines and clarify what is important for students to learn. Most important, they tell students that a college education is within the reach of anyone with the talent and determination to succeed.

For all of these reasons, the movement away from aptitude tests toward achievement tests is an appropriate step for American students, schools, and universities. Our goal in setting admissions requirements should be to reward excellence in all its forms and to minimize, to the greatest extent possible, the barriers students face in realizing their potential. In other words, to honor both the ideal of merit and the ideal of broad educational opportunity. These twin ideals are deeply woven into the fabric of higher education in this country. It is no exaggeration to say that they are the defining characteristics of the American system of higher education.

We will never devise the perfect test--a test that accurately assesses students irrespective of parental education and income, the quality of local schools, and the kind of community students live in. But we can do better. We can do much better.

UC would welcome collaboration with the College Board, American College Testing, the Educational Testing Service, or others who have expertise in test development to work with us in developing standardized achievement tests, tied to California's high school curriculum.

The tests we use to judge our students influence many lives, sometimes profoundly. We need a national discussion on standardized testing, informed by principle and disciplined by empirical evidence. This conference is an excellent opportunity to foster that conversation.
 

1. Keynote address delivered at a conference on "Rethinking the SAT: The Future of Standardized Testing in University Admissions," Santa Barbara, California, November 16, 2001.