Should the UCs Reinstate the SAT?

The University of California system is considering requiring SAT or ACT scores in admissions again, after more than 3,000 faculty members signed open letters in favor of bringing back the test requirement. Professors say their students have fared worse in math since the UC system did away with a standardized testing requirement in 2020. Many of the nation’s most selective universities have already reinstated the exams after a pandemic pause, but a 2019 lawsuit — which argued the SAT and ACT discriminate against disabled students and measure race and wealth more than academic aptitude — had limited the UC system’s ability to restore the tests. We’ll discuss the debate and hear from you: Should the UCs bring back the SAT and ACT?

Statement from Ahmet Palazoglu, chair of UC’s Academic Senate:
The Academic Senate’s comprehensive review of the University’s undergraduate admissions policies will align with the Board of Regents’ timeline to deliver a policy recommendation on the use of standardized tests in admissions by the end of the 2026-27 academic year (June 2027 for our campuses based on the quarter system).

Guests:

• Felicia Mello, higher education reporter, Berkeleyside
• Lisa Holder, civil rights attorney; member, California’s Reparations Task Force
• Mina Aganagic, professor of mathematics and physics, University of California Berkeley

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Mina Kim: Welcome to Forum. I’m Mina Kim.

Thousands of the University of California’s 26,000 faculty members have signed a pair of open letters urging the UC system to bring back the SAT and ACT. More than 2,300 faculty members in science and math are calling for reinstatement of the mathematics test for STEM majors, and more than 900 in the social sciences and humanities are calling for the return of the verbal test.

They say that without these test scores, the admissions process lacks a sufficiently reliable indicator of readiness for college-level work.

This hour, we’ll hear from proponents and opponents of the tests, and from you, our listeners. Do you think the UC system should, after going test blind in 2020, require SAT and ACT scores again for admission?

Joining me first is Mina Aganagic, professor of mathematics and physics at UC Berkeley and co-author of the STEM faculty letter calling for bringing back the tests for UC entry.

Professor Aganagic, welcome to Forum.

Mina Aganagic: Thank you for having me.

Mina Kim: So what caused you to write this letter? What were you seeing as a science and mathematics professor?

Mina Aganagic: Firstly, starting in about 2020, we started seeing the population of students in our classrooms change.

All of a sudden, we saw students thoroughly unprepared to take math in college.

Now, when I say “thoroughly unprepared,” the level of what they were missing was mathematics taught in elementary and middle school. So we’re not saying these students didn’t take pre-calculus or calculus or haven’t mastered that. The issue is at a much, much earlier level.

Students who struggle with material that’s taught literally in elementary and middle school simply cannot learn calculus. For those students, learning calculus is literally an impossible task.

So it was heartbreaking seeing so many students struggle.

Mina Kim: That’s what you were seeing in classrooms. What effects were you seeing on the students themselves, or even on your own ability to teach?

Mina Aganagic: You’d see an enormous amount of stress on the students.

For the first time, you’d see students who tried to take the class three times and were failing again. They’d say, “I’ve done everything.” And they had done everything, but the task put in front of them was to cover a multiyear gap in one college calculus class together with 400 to 700 other students.

It is simply impossible.

It’s sort of like asking you to climb a wall with no footholds at all. A mathematical genius could not do that.

They feel like they’re failing. They feel horribly stressed out. And it’s just a human heartbreak.

Mina Kim: Right. And, Mina, you feel that a way to address this is to bring back the SAT and ACT test scores in the admissions process. You think the SAT is a reliable way to measure an applicant’s readiness for college-level work?

Mina Aganagic: I think there are two crucial things to understand.

Firstly, most of the SAT actually focuses on the kind of math that’s taught in middle school. So it’s essentially impossible to do well if you haven’t mastered middle school mathematics. I don’t mean acing it, but you will be able to do all right.

The other absolutely crucial thing to understand is how UC uses the SAT. This is essential.

The UC was never providing a linear ranking of students and saying, “We’ll take those with the top SAT scores.” No.

What we do is the following. You take two students — let’s say two students from a poor Black neighborhood. They’re going to the same high school. We have grade inflation. Both of these students ace their math class, and we have to pick one.

How are we going to pick?

Right now, if we have to pick one, it’s going to be a random choice. In fact, Berkeley doesn’t even take teachers’ recommendations into account. So we would literally flip a die.

What we’re asking for is, give us the SAT score.

I’ll look at this student from a poor Black neighborhood and this second student from the same neighborhood. It will allow us to choose. It will allow us to make an informed choice.

Mina Kim: You mentioned grade inflation. So that’s why you’re saying high school math grades are not as reliable an indicator as an SAT score.

What about the Smarter Balanced test that all California public high school juniors have to take? Would that be a reliable measure?

Mina Aganagic: Smarter Balanced would certainly be better than having nothing at all.

But practically, there are huge problems with trying to use Smarter Balanced.

One concern is simply test security — questions leaking. Right now, Smarter Balanced is intended to assess how schools are doing. It’s not designed as a high-stakes test.

Converting it into one would require huge resources just to achieve the same thing the SAT is already doing.

Mina Kim: We’re talking with Mina Aganagic, professor of mathematics and physics at UC Berkeley, who wrote a piece in The Washington Post titled “I’m a Professor at Berkeley. Bring Back This Requirement for Entry,” referring to the SAT and ACT in the UC admissions process.

Now, I’m sure, as you know, Mina, critics of these tests say that SAT scores track closely with income and racial disparities and that students who have the time and money to invest in test-prep courses, for example, will do better. So using these scores as a factor in admission would only continue — and perhaps even exacerbate — inequities in access to a UC education.

How do you respond?

Mina Aganagic: Every measure we have, including Smarter Balanced — literally anything that measures preparedness — already has these inequities baked into it.

The SAT is no better and no worse than any other measure we have. There’s simply no way around that.

The crucial thing is how we use the SAT.

We are not comparing a student from an affluent background to a low-income student and comparing their SAT scores. We compare students who are alike in every other respect.

The SAT becomes one part of a student’s file. When we cannot decide between two students who are otherwise identical, it lets us make a much more informed choice than flipping a die, which is deeply unfair.

Imagine two students who are completely alike. One worked harder; the other didn’t. Because of grade inflation, you can’t tell. The SAT can help tell you which one you should pick.

Mina Kim: We have comments coming in. Listeners, you can share what you think about whether the UC should bring back the standardized testing requirement by calling 866-733-6786, emailing forum@kqed.org, or finding us on Discord, Bluesky, Facebook, or Instagram at KQED Forum.

Steve on Discord writes, “Isn’t that pandemic-driven scholastic performance drop a more likely explanation than the lack of test scores for students performing poorly, or students’ poor math skills, that you’re seeing in your classes?”

Mina Aganagic: There has certainly been an overall decline in math preparedness. Nobody is questioning that.

But what we’re seeing here is a population of students at the very lowest level of preparedness.

Usually what you see is a bell curve. If you’re talking about the overall level shifting, you would expect the entire bell curve to shift.

That’s not what we’re seeing.

What we’re seeing is the bell curve becoming almost U-shaped. You see students who are acing our classes and students who are hopelessly failing, with very little in the middle.

That’s the issue.

Mina Kim: Could the UC system, though, use math placement tests for admitted students, for example, or SAT scores after they’re admitted, to place them into the correct level of courses instead of making them a factor in admissions?

Mina Aganagic: You could use that, but it does not address the fundamental injustice that we cannot tell two otherwise similar students apart.

The student from a poor Black background who studied hard and another student from the same background who didn’t study as hard — we cannot tell them apart.

Mina Kim: Doesn’t the UC also offer courses to help students who seem like they’re struggling? Maybe remedial…

Mina Aganagic: We’re pouring a lot into remediation.

However, there are certain gaps that you simply cannot fill. They become too large.

If you’re asking someone to fill a gap from elementary and middle school, it’s just hopeless. For those students, it would take years of work in college to catch up.

California has this beautiful Master Plan for Higher Education, with community colleges, the CSU system, and the UCs, and real pathways between them.

A student who is not as well prepared could have a real path upward. They could go to a community college, take remedial classes, and then transfer to a UC.

They’re not placed into a classroom where they simply have no way of succeeding because the task is impossible.

It is not their failure. It’s the failure of the whole system, and we should not perpetuate this.

We should use the SAT as a placement tool to put students in the right places, to give them ladders they can climb.

Mina Kim: We have just a minute left before the break.

You’re talking about your concern for the students and the enormous stress they experience. The UC Student Association has come out against restoring the standardized testing requirement.

I’m wondering how you make sense of that.

Mina Aganagic: I think there is a vast amount of research showing that, if the SAT is used in the way UC uses it, it actually advances equity because it lets us identify those students who can thrive given their socioeconomic background.

Mina Kim: I was wondering how you make sense of the fact that the students themselves seem to be saying they don’t want it.

Mina Aganagic: The only way you can make sense of that is to say we should simply have open admissions. We would not have to choose.

In a situation where you do not have to pick between those two students from the same poor Black background, you really don’t need additional data.

But we can’t.

There is something that can help, though, which is community college. Every student in California gets access to community college.

Mina Kim: Well, Mina, I really appreciate you coming on to lay out how you feel about this. I can see your passion, and I encourage listeners to read your Washington Post piece, “I’m a Professor at Berkeley. Bring Back This Requirement for Entry.”

Mina Aganagic, thank you so much, professor of mathematics and physics at UC Berkeley.

We’ll learn more about how standardized testing ended in the UC system and hear from an opponent of bringing back the tests for admission after the break.

Stay with us.