The Aug. 21 letter <\/a> was sent to Regents Chair Maria Anguiano, UC President James B. Milliken and Academic Senate Chair Ahmet Palazoglu. <\/p>\nThe UC debate over whether to restore SAT and ACT emerged as one of the university\u2019s most closely watched issues after more than 3,000 UC faculty signed open letters demanding the exams return. Math and science faculty said first-year students were arriving in UC classrooms unprepared and many needed to learn middle school math concepts. Faculty members in humanities, social sciences and arts have also weighed in, saying that verbal reasoning and writing skills were lacking too.<\/p>\n
Regents dropped SAT and ACT requirements in 2020 during the pandemic. Opponents of the exams say the tests are unfair because they correlate to family race and wealth, and point to rising UC graduation rates as evidence the policy has not hurt students. <\/p>\n
Those who support the tests counter that GPA is also linked to race and wealth. They point to a 2020 UC Academic Senate task force that concluded that UC\u2019s admissions process compensated for score differences among racial and ethnic groups. They add that Ivy Leagues and other elite schools that went test-optional in the pandemic have reversed course.<\/p>\n
UC\u2019s Academic Senate is already weighing the question.<\/p>\n
On Aug. 11, Academic Council Chair Palazoglu and Vice Chair Susannah Scott formally commissioned the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, or BOARS, to look at the \u201cpotential advantages and disadvantages\u201d of standardized tests and review UC\u2019s A-G course requirements. BOARS is expected to issue its report on testing by February and on A-G courses by May. Anguiano has asked the UC Academic Senate for a testing recommendation by June 2027.<\/p>\n
Gov. Gavin Newsom, an ex officio regent who appoints most of the board, has not taken a position.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s an important discussion and debate. I\u2019m open to argument, interested in evidence,\u201d Newsom said when asked about the debate at an Aug. 19 event in Hayward. \u201cShow me the data. I have feelings about this. There\u2019s anecdotes about this. But I want to see the data. And I made that point at the regental level.\u201d<\/p>\n
The governor said he had discussed the issue with Milliken but did not elaborate. \u201cThe data needs to bear out the ultimate determination on this, but again, there\u2019s some contra-data that\u2019s coming out and suggesting different things,\u201d Newsom said.<\/p>\n
GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton and lieutenant governor candidate Gloria Romero, a Republican who is a former Democratic state Senate majority leader, sent regents a joint letter last month calling for reinstatement.<\/p>\n
Apart from Newsom, no prominent California Democrat has publicly weighed in on the testing debate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three Republican state senators are pressing the University of California to reinstate SAT and ACT scores in undergraduate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[176246,176245,10360,1581,7,9,8,3291,2324,3290,1086,41960,176244,176243,4574,1523,5247,176247],"class_list":["post-444774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-a-g-course-requirement","tag-academic-debate","tag-aug","tag-board","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-datum","tag-member","tag-newsom","tag-pandemic","tag-regent","tag-rosilicie-ochoa-bogh","tag-sat-testing","tag-student","tag-test","tag-uc","tag-vice-chair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444774","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=444774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}