Should Lowell use test scores for admissions?
The SF Board of Education is gearing up to pass a proposition on changing Lowell admissions again. Every time this has happened in the past, merit standards have been weakened with the explicit goal of enrolling more students from underperforming groups. I keep hearing that standardized tests are “racially biased” — even from people who should know better, like fellow directors of the Lowell Alumni Association (one of whom repeatedly mentions recommendations from the UC system’s Smarter Balanced Study Group). Is there any truth to this claim?
Are standardized tests racially biased?
Would you call the Imperial system a racially biased measure of height? In the United States, white men average 5’10” tall, black men average 5’9” while Asian and Hispanic men are 5’7” tall on average. Calling standardized tests biased because racial groups don’t perform similarly is like calling all metrics of height biased because racial groups aren’t the same average height.
And yet, the only evidence provided by those who believe this myth is the fact that different racial groups do not achieve similar average test scores. Sure, under Kendi-ism, this is sufficient to prove racial bias. But even first-year sociology students know you can’t establish causality without systematically investigating and eliminating all other possible causes: an analysis that is entirely absent from this discourse. For a start, control for obvious factors like number of hours studied, percent of homework completed, and attendance rate, then tell me if there’s still “bias.”
There may be any number of reasons for these group-level differences, but root causes are beyond the scope of this discussion since changing admissions requirements cannot magically fix an underlying lack of academic preparation. In the context of school admissions, the only thing we need to care about is whether or not test results accurately reflect academic proficiency.
Do test scores accurately predict future academic performance of students?
Yes.
While you may have heard about the ever-increasing list of colleges removing standardized testing requirements due to “racial bias,” there is at least one university bringing testing back: MIT. Why should MIT policy matter more in this discussion than that of other institutions which have done away with testing? Because, like at Lowell High, establishing the academic proficiency of incoming students is necessary to ensure the success of MIT students. There are zero majors at MIT where one can avoid having to pass 2 semesters of calculus and 2 semesters of calculus-based physics in order to graduate.
From a carefully annotated announcement from MIT the admissions blog, we learn:
Considering test scores “substantially improves the predictive validity of our decisions with respect to subsequent student success”
Not using test scores “tends to raise socioeconomic barriers to demonstrating readiness for our education”
Test scores helped MIT “identify academically prepared, socioeconomically disadvantaged students who could not otherwise demonstrate readiness because they do not attend schools that offer advanced coursework, cannot afford expensive enrichment opportunities, cannot expect lengthy letters of recommendation from their overburdened teachers, or are otherwise hampered by educational inequalities.”
Closer to home, the University of California’s Standardized Testing Taskforce also found the following:
“Test scores contribute significant predictive power across all income levels, ethnic groups, across both first-generation and non-first-generation students, and across all campuses and majors."
“Admissions tests add substantially to UC’s ability to predict student success beyond the predictive information in high school grades alone.”
There is no question about the predictive validity of test scores, above and beyond what information grades can give us. More importantly, standardized tests help us identify proficient students who may not have other opportunities to show their abilities.
But what did the Academic Senate’s Smarter Balanced Study Group find?
While it is true that the study group did not recommend the use of SBAC results instead of SAT/ACT scores, this is their reasoning on why:
In sum, there is no guarantee that use of the SB assessment in UC admissions would lead to higher admission rates of students from historically excluded groups and those who would be the first in their families to attend college.
In other words, they don’t recommend it because switching to using SBAC scores would not help them achieve their goal of racial balancing.
The study group admits that questions on the SBAC are carefully screened to ensure “fairness, reliability, and ultimately, validity” and the screening process was “reasonable and sufficient to minimize bias and disparities including with regard to underrepresented groups.” However, they still find fault with the SBAC because “these efforts are largely aimed at reducing bias at the item level and that additional efforts to reduce bias and disparities at the level of the test are limited.”
Did you catch that? The study group believes the SBAC should be altered specifically so that different racial groups have similar outcomes. As I said above, the only “evidence” of racial bias is different average outcomes between groups. In other words, there is no evidence of racial bias.
Can other factors be substituted for test scores?
Acknowledging the performance gap between different racial groups on standardized tests, SFUSD formulated Lowell’s previous 3-band admissions system in partnership with the SFNAACP. This system was explicitly designed with the goal of enrolling more students from “underrepresented” racial groups. 30% of the seats were distributed in such a way that students did not have to pass any test, so long as they scored enough points based on grades and the following non-academic factors:
Extenuating circumstances
Socioeconomic status (self-disclosed)
School leadership/service
Demonstrated ability to overcome hardship
Extracurricular activities (school based)
Community Service
Creative abilities in performing and visual arts
Athletics
Participation in peer support/mentoring activities
Attendance at underrepresented middle schools
Attendance at Willie Brown Middle school, regardless of underrepresentation
If test scores are biased and can be ignored in favor of grades and non-academic factors, different racial groups would perform similarly at Lowell High. Is that the case? Not according to Lowell’s latest School Plan for Student Achievement:
While over 80% of grades earned by Asian students are As, just 55% of those earned by black students are As. Additionally, black students have a D/F rate which is over 6 times greater than the Asian D/F rate.
Only 63.3% of black students are earning GPAs of 3.0 or greater — the lowest of any racial group at Lowell High. Compare that with 95.1% of Asian students.
The SBAC scores of Lowell’s 11th graders tells the same story. Less than 70% of black students could read/write at grade level, and less than half could do grade-level math.
Meanwhile, over 95% of Asian students tested proficient in English/Language Arts and over 91% were proficient in math. Nearly twice the proportion of Asian students could do grade-level math as compared with black students.
The data show clearly that admissions based on factors other than test scores results in a substantial gap in academic ability between different racial groups at Lowell High. Does that sound like a promising environment for racial harmony?
Given these facts, is it reasonable to demand that the demographics of Lowell High match SFUSD? Should we expect the same results from groups with such a vast achievement gap? It's clear to me that it would be racist against Asian students to insist on equal outcomes or "proportional representation." Just based on the above-presented facts, wanting Lowell demographics to match SFUSD would mean we are willing to overlook lack of competence if a student just happened to be born the right race. There is nothing to call that point of view besides "racist."
If proficiency levels aren't the same between races, then we shouldn't expect Lowell admission rates to be either.
How can we move forward in an unbiased way?
When the Padlet incident happened, I didn’t agree that the admissions policy of Lowell High had anything to do with alleged racism at the school. Now I do. If you read student accounts of racism from Black at Lowell, it’s clear that most of the reports of “racism” were black students asking for help and not liking the peer response. These unfortunate encounters aren’t the fault of fellow students, they’re the fault of adults who agreed to a misguided two-tiered admissions process which resulted in a sizable academic proficiency gap between racial groups at Lowell. No amount of DEI-type training can erase knowledge of this gap from the minds of Lowell students.
The way forward is to adopt a simpler admissions system that is:
Objective
Based solely on academic merit
Applied uniformly to all applicants (regardless of race or other factors outside the control of the student)
The very best public high schools in our country, like Thomas Jefferson in VA and the NYC specialized schools, achieved their status by using standardized tests as a bar for every student. Why fumble with the soft bigotry of low expectations when we can copy the best and help Lowell take its rightful place amongst the nation’s top-ranked public high schools? Forget the irrelevant benchmark of SFUSD demographics — let’s not give up academic excellence in favor of illegal racial balancing.