UC Academic Council Standardized Testing Task Force:
In sum, mean differences in standardized test scores between different demographic groups are often very large, and many of the ways these tests could be used in admissions would certainly produce strong disparate impacts between groups. However, UC weights test scores less strongly than GPA, and comprehensive review appears to help compensate for group differences in test scores. The distributions of test scores among applicants are very different by group, but the distributions of test scores among admitted students are also very different by group, and in almost exactly the identical way. The Task Force did not find evidence that UC’s use of test scores played a major role in worsening the effects of disparities already present among applicants and did find evidence that UC’s admissions process helped to make up for the potential adverse effect of score differences between groups.
Yet this is not to conclude that consideration of test scores does not adversely affect URM applicants. If
standardized test scores must be compensated in order to achieve the entering class sought by UC, that is reason to question whether it is necessary to use the tests at all, and/or whether it is possible to design an alternative instrument that does not require such compensation. UC admissions practices do not fully
make up for disparities that persist along lines of race and class. Whether these disparities arise from test scores, GPA, or others among the 14 factors that comprise comprehensive review at UC, the outcome of UC admissions processes is that many of the populations historically excluded from opportunity are still underrepresented by wide margins. Some members of the Task Force emphasized UC’s responsibility to assist disadvantaged and URM students who attend schools with lesser resources than those attended by students from affluent families, and they worried that continuing to use tests would help preserve the status quo. These members contended that the University has an obligation to interrupt perpetuation of inequality, especially when the state played a historic role in creating it, and must do more to serve the state’s aspiring college students more equitably.
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The charts the political leaders of CA didn’t want anyone to see.
