By Marcelle Richards
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The SAT I scores released Tuesday show that women are slipping
in comparison to men at the state and national levels.
But the creeping gender gap may indicate there’s more to
the equation than a lack of resources or rigorous courses to
account for differences in scores.
Women in California trail men by 49 points at the state level
and 42 points at the national level, which is up four points
nationally from last year.
Because the performance of women cannot be tied solely to
socio-economic status ““ which is criteria used by some to
argue that the test is racially biased ““ both critics and
proponents are examining the score discrepancies in attempts to
explain them.
“It’s tough. The traditional things we think about
for African-American and Latino students don’t really work
here,” said public policy associate professor Meredith
Phillips.
Kris Zavoli, the College Board’s director of secondary
school services for the West, accounts for the gender gap by saying
women take fewer hard science and math classes, such as AP calculus
or physics in high school, since culturally they aren’t
pushed as hard to do so as men. The College Board is the agency
that administers the SAT and Advanced Placement tests.
Phillips, who specializes in educational policy and who studies
the effects of the SAT, said the test doesn’t use material
from these advanced classes and that the difference is more
accurately attributed to the distribution of scores.
Men have higher averages because they tend to get perfect scores
more often than women, she said.
Though the SAT I is designed to reflect students’
understanding of classroom material, University of California
President Richard Atkinson took a stand against it in February when
he urged the university to strike the SAT I from admissions
criteria.
Until now, debate has largely focused on how the SAT I
requirement affects minorities, who have a higher population in
low-income cities, as those in low economic brackets often
can’t afford test preparation.
This year, African-American students nationwide scored a
cumulative 201 points less than whites, as compared to 198 last
year; Latino students this year scored 151 points below whites, as
opposed to last year’s 147.
“This proposal is about fairness in educational
decision-making,” Atkinson said in a February statement.
“Applicants for higher education should be assessed on the
basis of their achievements in high school, in the context of the
opportunities available to them.”
Atkinson, while a supporter of standardized tests, is against
the SAT I because he says it measures an applicant’s
test-taking skills rather than their knowledge.
Zavoli said the fervor the test stimulates over inequalities is
a blessing in disguise.
Since attention is drawn to the differences in quality of
schools and curriculum, the public and government will look to the
SAT I as proof that students must be provided with these resources
so they can pass the test, Zavoli said.
Zavoli said California’s ethnic composition accounts for
its lagging place in the national line-up of verbal scores. With a
score of 498, California was eight points below the national
average on the verbal section. It was three points higher in math,
with a score of 519.
“The fact that we have a much lower verbal score, 64
percent in the state have English as their first language, 81
percent nationally,” Zavoli said. “There’s some
staggering diversity issues to deal with here. We’ve got a
lot of bilingual kids or kids who didn’t learn English as
their first language.”
The proposal to eliminate the SAT I in UC admissions
requirements has been placed before the Academic Council, a
systemwide advisory board that will be called to make a
recommendation on the proposal to the UC Regents once the vote
approaches.
UC media relations coordinator Abby Lunardini said she did not
know whether the council would use the latest report from the
College Board in making its decision.
“I don’t know if they’ll exactly use (the
statistics) in their body of research or not, but the information
is out there for them,” she said.
The Academic Council’s decision will have a
“significant bearing on what the regents will do, but
ultimately, it’s up to the regents to independently decide on
the proposal,” Lunardini said.
The regents are expected to revisit the issue this fall to
determine the fate of the controversial admissions tool.
With reports from Kelly Rayburn, Daily Bruin Senior Staff.