Faculty advocating for the reinstatement of SAT and ACT requirements are criticizing the timeline produced by the UC system\u2019s Academic Senate to revisit its standardized testing policies, saying the process is moving too slowly.<\/p>\n
The UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, approved a roadmap June 5 outlining its plan to research potential changes to admissions policy. The committee formed two work groups: One will study the efficacy of standardized testing in first-year admissions, and the other will look at the UC\u2019s \u201cA-G\u201d course requirement for California first-year applicants.<\/p>\n
If approved by the UC Board of Regents, changes would affect fall 2028 applicants at the earliest, one year later than called for in a petition signed by more than 1,500 UC STEM faculty.<\/p>\n
Electrical engineering and computer sciences chair Jelani Nelson argued the process was redundant, and the topic was already thoroughly researched by UC faculty on the Academic Council\u2019s Standardized Testing Task Force in 2020.<\/p>\n
That report supported keeping standardized test scores as a part of the admissions process based on a comprehensive analysis of test score data, but was rejected by the Board of Regents, which favored then-UC president Janet Napolitano\u2019s proposal to gradually transition to a UC-specific test or test-blind admissions. A feasibility study rejected the possibility of creating a UC standardized test in 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re kind of just redoing work that\u2019s already been done,\u201d Nelson said. \u201cIt\u2019s not clear how we\u2019re going to do that work anyway, given that we don\u2019t have the new data (on students admitted without the SAT).\u201d<\/p>\n
The open letter accompanying a petition to reinstate SAT and ACT reading and writing scores in UC admissions from UC social sciences and humanities faculty urges the UC to \u201creverse course\u201d and accelerate the process of reinstating standardized testing in its admissions process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Fall 2028 entering class will be admitted on a test-blind basis,\u201d the letter reads. \u201cThis leaves at least three to four more years of a system where underprepared students are accepted only to struggle with their academic goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, the petition signed by STEM faculty does note new statistics on low math preparedness across UC campuses, and Office of the President spokesperson Stett Holbrook stated in an email that the new work groups would consider changes to College Board practices and the impact of AI on today\u2019s educational landscape.<\/p>\n
They will also consider whether scores on the SBAC assessment \u2014 a standardized test used to evaluate high school performance \u2014 would be a feasible alternative to the SAT and ACT as a standardized test used in admissions, an idea that was rejected by a similar Academic Senate study group in 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have data from when we had (the SAT). We have data from when we stopped using it,\u201d said Frank C. Worrell, a UC Berkeley education professor who was part of that study group. \u201cSo in some sense, there\u2019s a natural experiment that took place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nelson said the proposal felt \u201ctone-deaf\u201d given the urgency of UC faculty\u2019s calls for more rigor in the admissions process.<\/p>\n
In an email, Nelson expressed optimism that the regents would be receptive if the Academic Senate ultimately recommends to reinstate standardized testing, unlike their rejection of the Standardized Testing Task Force\u2019s recommendations in 2020.<\/p>\n
Worrell said he expects the results of the work groups to be similar to the outcomes of previous studies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know what the results of the SBAC are, the report is there, the result of the committee on the SAT is there,\u201d Worrell said. \u201cThis committee is not going to find anything different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Litong Deng contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Faculty advocating for the reinstatement of SAT and ACT requirements are criticizing the timeline produced by the UC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[3206,1871,145861,119661,90368,148082,148081,48515,143,145,144,138473,45841,148083,32132,30647],"class_list":["post-364916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-academic-senate","tag-act","tag-board-of-admissions-and-relations-with-schools","tag-board-of-regents","tag-college-board","tag-frank-c-worrell","tag-janet-napolitano","tag-jelani-nelson","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-sat","tag-sbac","tag-standardized-testing-task-force","tag-stett-holbrook","tag-uc-office-of-the-president"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}