Education

U.S. Court Says Awards Based On S.A.T.'s Are Unfair to Girls

By WILLIAM GLABERSON Published: February 04, 1989

New York State's method of awarding merit scholarships to high school students on the basis of their scores on Scholastic Aptitude Tests discriminates against girls, a Federal judge in Manhattan ruled yesterday. He ordered the state to change its selection process. In a preliminary ruling, Federal Judge John M. Walker said the state's exclusive use of S.A.T. scores to award Empire and Regents Scholarships violated the equal protection clause of the Federal Constitution. ''After a careful review of the evidence,'' Judge Walker said, ''this court concludes that S.A.T. scores capture a student's academic achievement no more than a student's yearbook photograph captures the full range of her experiences in high school.'' For reasons that experts have not fully explained, boys consistently outscore girls on the widely used tests, and the performance gap between the two sexes has been growing every year. Tests Widely Criticized Lawyers said the ruling is the first in the country to declare that standardized achievement tests, which have been widely criticized, discriminate against any group. The tests, usually taken by students in their junior year in high school, have become a ubiquitous feature of American life and are widely used in helping to determine admission to colleges and graduate schools. They are used exclusively to set minimum standards at hundreds of colleges nationwide, according to critics of the tests. But it was not clear yesterday what effect, if any, the ruling would have on the many more colleges that use the tests only as part of their admissions process. More Challenges Expected Critics of the testing companies said they thought the decision would open the door to a wide variety of attacks on the tests. Robert A. Schaeffer, a spokesman for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, said the decision was an important victory for the critics that would encourage challenges to many current uses of standardized tests. Isabelle Katz Pinzler, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union Women's Rights Project and the lead attorney for the case, said her organization would now consider legal challenges to other uses of the tests. ''It's really a very important, precedent-setting case,'' she told The Associated Press. ''It's really not fair to anybody to give a scholarship based on a three-hour test given on a Saturday afternoon rather than four years of high school.'' Mr. Schaeffer said the decision ''opens the door to race- and sex-bias challenges to other programs across the country which similarly misuse test results.'' In Albany, State Education Commissioner Thomas Sobol said, ''I have not yet seen the injunction, so it's difficult to be precise about its implications.'' Martin C. Barell, the Chancellor of the Board of Regents, said late yesterday: ''I wouldn't care to comment until I see the ruling.'' He also said it was ''much too premature'' to decide on an appeal. New York is one of two states that rely exclusively on the S.A.T. to determine eligibility for their state-scholarship programs. The other is Massachusetts. Most other states combine several factors, including S.A.T. scores and high-school grades. The lawsuit was filed last October by two organizations, the Girls Clubs of America and the National Organization for Women, and by 10 New York high school girls. It challenged the State Education Department's plan to revert to using only the S.A.T. to determine eligibility for the state scholarships. For 10 years until last year, that was the sole criterion in New York. Two years ago, aware of the problems with the S.A.T. test, New York devised a plan to use high school grades in tandem with the test to award the scholarships. But it abandoned that plan in October and went back to using only the S.A.T.'s when state officials determined that schools were inflating students' grades in hopes of having more scholarship winners. In his decision yesterday, Judge Walker said New York could go back to the system it used last year or develop other ways to combat the unfairness to girls. Mr. Sobol said that correlating grades from one school district to another was ''very chancy and not really satisfactory.'' He said the Education Department had advocated a return to state exams that measure what a student has learned, rather than the student's ability to do work.

Mr. Sobol, who is also the President of the University of the State of New York, said that he could not act without the State Legislature, but that if state law were changed by May, it could affect current high school seniors applying for the state scholarships. #26,000 Scholarships a Year New York awards some 26,000 Empire and Regents Scholarships annually. The Empire Scholarships for Excellence are worth up to $10,000 over four years. The Regents College Scholarships award up to $1,250 over five years. In the 1987 competition, 57 percent of the 25,277 Regents winners were male, but only 47 percent of the competitors were male, a study by the New York Public Interest Research Group found. Boys won more than twice as many Empire scholarships as girls won. It was unclear late yesterday how the ruling would affect other testing agencies or admissions departments that use the S.A.T. The National Merit Scholarship Program employs the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, an exam similar to the S.A.T. that is administered to more than one million high school juniors a year. But Marian C. Roderick, the executive vice president of the non-profit National Merit Scholarship Corporation, said the test is used only for screening, and not to make the final awards. Richard S. Tompson, an admissions officer at Northwestern University, said, ''In every case, the high school transcript and curriculum are the most important tools, and the S.A.T. is just used as a way to put that all in perspective. ''In recent years, selective schools have de-emphasized the S.A.T. We have found that the three years of college preparatory work is much more useful for judging prospective students than any standardized test. There is always the hypothetical situation where you have two students who are identical except for their test scores. I have yet to see that hypothetical situation.'' The S.A.T. is developed by the Educational Testing Service, which was not a party to the lawsuit. Its lawyers, however, did participate in the case as friends of the court. The company's general counsel, Stanford vonMayrhauer, said last night that he had not read the court's opinion but he did not believe it was significant. The Educational Testing Service, he said, has always said that the test should not be used as a sole method to evaluate any candidate. Racial Bias Is Seen, Too The tests have also been assailed as being discriminatory to members of minority groups, who have different cultural and educational backgrounds than the people who create the tests. Across the country, testing professionals have noted that women do not do as well as men on many standardized tests. The testing industry and academics are studying the issue. Some of the industry's critics have said they believe the differing scores come about because the questions are written with a male bias. Experts offer a mixture of explanations, from sex bias in the questions, to social pressures that keep girls from doing better than boys, particularly in math, to differences in brain functions between the sexes. Girls generally do better academically than boys but score lower on the standardized tests.Until 1972, according to figures from the College Board, girls did slightly better on the verbal section and boys did slightly better on the math section. Since 1972, boys have consistently scored higher than girls on both sections. Judge Walker's opinion is a preliminary injunction that came after he heard testimony for one day and reviewed submitted evidence that one participant said was more than two feet high. The State could appeal the preliminary ruling. If it does not, or if it does not agree to comply, Judge Walker would then hold a full trial of the issues in the case.
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