IN LATE JUNE, the trustees of the College Board voted unanimous approval for the most dramatic changes in the history of the SAT, the venerable admissions test that is a gatekeeper of so many American colleges. Beginning in March 2005, the analogy questions that have tormented test-takers since the first SAT in 1926 (untruthful is to mendacious as circumspect is to cautious, etc.) will be abolished. In their place will be more reading comprehension questions, similar to those that already make up most of the verbal test. The math section, which now tests arithmetic, geometry, and basic algebra, will add problems from advanced algebra, while the quantitative comparison questions (which is greater, 2x or x squared, etc.) will be dropped. Finally, a new, separately scored 50 or 60 minute writing test will be added, consisting of multiple choice questions on grammar and usage and a handwritten essay.
The immediate impetus for redesigning the SAT was the attack on the test launched early in 2001 by University of California president Richard Atkinson. Himself a cognitive psychologist and an authority on testing, Atkinson charged that the use of the exam was distorting educational priorities and practices. The SAT, he suggested, though intended to measure verbal and mathematical reasoning ability or aptitude independent of particular courses of study, in reality was more a measure of students' test-taking skills. Recounting a visit to his grandchildren's private school where he found 12-year-olds already being drilled weekly on SAT-type analogies, Atkinson argued that students were wasting valuable time inside and outside the classroom preparing for the test, time that could be better spent learning history or geometry or English.
Atkinson also asserted that analysis of three decades of undergraduate data at the University of California had shown that the SAT II subject tests, in conjunction with high school grades, were actually a slightly better predictor of success in college than the SAT, and that adding the SAT to the mix improved the predictive power by only a trivial increment. (Interestingly, the same data also seem to show that the SAT II writing test is the best single predictor overall.) Since the SAT II tests could thus be substituted for the SAT without any sacrifice of predictive validity, Atkinson recommended that the University of California system drop the SAT requirement in favor of the SAT II or similar achievement tests assessing mastery of specific college-preparatory subject matter.
Atkinson's bombshell was front-page news. Losing the University of California as a customer would have been a severe setback for the authority and predominance of the SAT--perhaps a fatal one. Indeed, several liberal opponents of standardized testing gleefully predicted that California's defection would prove to be the beginning of the end for the "Big Test." To many conservatives, on the other hand, Atkinson was not a hero but a villain. They suspected him of attempting an end run around Proposition 209, which had banned racial preferences in California's public colleges and universities.
On this view, liberal egalitarians were bent on killing the test because it stood in the way of achieving a politically correct ethnic mix on campuses; the attack on the SAT was the vanguard of an attack on all standards of merit. In truth, some of Atkinson's statements lent support to these suspicions. He did argue that the SAT was unfair or perceived as unfair to minorities and that it devastated the self-esteem of otherwise accomplished people; and he did plead in the long run for a less test-driven, "more holistic, more comprehensive" evaluation of candidates. (And, independent of the SAT controversy, recent University of California admissions preferences for those who have suffered various hardships or "life challenges" strike some critics as so selectively awarded as to constitute backdoor affirmative action.) But in hindsight it is clear that both liberal and conservative responses to Atkinson tended to fixate on the issue of abolishing the SAT, while ignoring his central demand: to replace aptitude tests with tests of achievement.
