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Spanish Speakers Lose Leg Up to UC

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Times Staff Writers

Maribel Magana is a fair student who generally scores poorly on standardized tests.

But in the stiff competition for acceptance at the University of California, she has an advantage over many other struggling students: She grew up speaking Spanish.

In the UC eligibility formula -- a weighted index combining test scores and grade-point averages -- a high score on one of three subject tests, known as SAT IIs, can be a saving grace for an otherwise weak applicant.

Fortunately for Magana, a senior at Locke High School in South Los Angeles who took her SAT IIs on Saturday, Spanish is among the offerings. Designed for nonnative speakers, the tests are available to everyone but are typically easy points for students like Magana.

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But the advantage to native Spanish speakers is about to be radically reduced.

The University of California requires 800-point SAT II tests in math, writing and a third subject of the student’s choosing. As it stands, because UC doubles subject test scores, a perfect performance on the popular 800-point Spanish exam -- a relatively common occurrence -- counts the same as a flawless -- and rare -- 1,600 on the SAT I college entrance exam.

Changes approved by the UC regents this summer and set to take effect in 2006 give far less weight to SAT IIs.

The changes are likely to have the greatest effect on applicants who score poorly on the SAT I, a broad test of verbal and math skills. According to a Times analysis of UC data, Latinos who score 1,000 points or fewer on the SAT I will likely go from having about the same chance for admission as low-scoring whites and Asians to being at a disadvantage. They will still fare better than African Americans, the analysis shows.

Any decline in the eligibility of Latino applicants would be a setback in the university’s struggle to maintain a diverse student body, especially following the state’s 1996 ban on affirmative action in public institutions, the analysis shows.

Even now, Latinos are significantly underrepresented on UC campuses. They account for 42% of 18- and 19-year-olds statewide, but only about 16% of UC admissions last year. African Americans comprise 7% of 18- and 19-year-olds and less than 4% of UC admissions.

Race and ethnicity have become the subtext to an admissions debate that began in October, when John Moores, chairman of the UC Board of Regents, issued a report suggesting that under-qualified applicants were being admitted to UC Berkeley, possibly at the expense of applicants with much higher test scores.

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Blacks and Latinos, by and large, score well below Asian Americans and whites on SAT I and other standardized tests. The theories for why that occurs range from test bias to a range of socioeconomic, cultural and historic factors.

What is clear is that for the last three years, the Spanish test has allowed Latinos who score poorly on the SAT I but are fluent in Spanish to compete with low-scoring whites and Asians, while blacks are still left behind, the Times analysis shows.

The Spanish tests have the greatest effect on admission at UC Riverside, because any applicant who meets the UC eligibility requirements is guaranteed a spot there. The seven other undergraduate campuses are more selective.

A range of SAT II language tests is offered, from Chinese to Hebrew. They tend to attract native speakers, who often push up the average scores well beyond those for such tests as science or history.

But no test has the same effect as the Spanish exam, by far the most popular test chosen by Californians.

Among UC applicants last year who scored 1000 or less on the SAT I, Latinos averaged 629 out of 800 on their third SAT II, according to university data analyzed by the Times. Asians averaged 488, whites 461 and blacks 438.

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The doubling of those already high scores has translated to higher eligibility for Latino students. Among low-scoring applicants, they were admitted to UC campuses last year at a rate of 65%, compared with 66% for Asians, 63% for whites and 49% for blacks.

Keith Widaman, a psychology professor at UC Davis who headed the faculty committee that drafted the current eligibility formula in the late 1990s, said the decision to count the SAT II twice was based on studies showing that subject tests in general are a better predictor of college performance than the SAT I.

The committee did not understand the extent to which native Spanish speakers would benefit until after the policy went into effect in 2001, he said.

In July, for reasons that had nothing to do with the Spanish test, UC regents decided to alter the eligibility formula. The new formula gives more importance to what UC considers an improved SAT I, which will add an essay worth 800 points and be based more on high school course work.

Applicants will also chose two -- not three -- SAT II tests from among various subjects, including foreign languages. But each of the five tests -- the three sections of the SAT I and the two SAT IIs -- will be worth 800 points.

Thus the SAT I will rise in importance and the edge a language test can provide will greatly diminish.

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“If there is a person out there who scores poorly on every single test and extraordinarily well on one test ... I’m not sure that is the best student for the university,” Widaman said.

At Locke High School, 62% of the students are Latino, nearly all the rest are black, and standardized test scores are among the worst in the state -- except on the Spanish exam. Changing the eligibility formula could increase the difficulty of sending such students to UC campuses.

“Our kids are horrible test takers,” said John Mandell, college counselor at Locke. But on these exams, “they do well.” He encourages native Spanish speakers to seize the advantage by taking one of the two Spanish exams offered.

On the SAT I, most Locke students score far below the average of 1,205 for applicants admitted to UC. Last year, only one senior broke 1,000.

From his windowless office, Mandell ticked off recent SAT II Spanish scores among Locke students: three perfect 800s and several more scores above 700.

Based on her performance Saturday, Magana hopes to join the ranks of the high scorers, because getting into a UC depends on it. With an SAT I total in the 800s and a 2.95 grade point average in the courses UC requires, she needed more than 1,500 points total on the three SAT IIs to meet the eligibility requirement.

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She figured she could score 500-plus in writing, suffer through math and make up the difference on the Spanish Reading with Listening exam, which includes a section that requires answering multiple-choice questions based on taped passages.

She will not find out the results for two weeks.

Magana rejected the idea that the exam offers an unfair advantage. “We have to learn two cultures. We have to learn so much more things than other people do,” she said.

The SAT II is one test in Spanish “out of a million in our lives that we have in English.”

Other Latino students say the SAT II opened up opportunities for them. Guadalupe Reyes and Minerva Cardona, both 18, graduated from Locke this year with nearly identical GPAs and SAT I scores. Now they are roommates at UC Davis.

Reyes doubts she would have been accepted to Davis had it not been for the 750 she scored on the Spanish Reading SAT II. Cardona scored 760.

Reyes, who grew up in South Los Angeles with her Mexican-born mother, remembers the exam as “very easy.”

Back in elementary school, she started in bilingual classes but quickly moved into mainstream courses, including top-level English classes. She graduated with a 3.38 GPA. But on the SAT I, she scored 840 -- 403 points below the average of those admitted to UC Davis this year.

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Based on how they performed on their other SAT II tests, it is likely that both Reyes and Cardona would have qualified for UC Riverside without the Spanish exam.

The exam’s boost may have helped them in getting admitted to the more competitive Davis campus.

Defenders of the current eligibility formula argue that disallowing Spanish speakers from showing off prowess in their native tongue would be akin to barring the children of physicists from taking the physics test.

“The fairness issue cuts both ways,” said Nina Robinson, a policy director in the office of the UC president. “You can say a student whose native language isn’t English is significantly disadvantaged throughout their entire schooling -- and particularly disadvantaged when it comes time to take the SAT I verbal.”

Many of the same students, who grew up speaking Spanish at home, face myriad disadvantages: poverty, parents too poorly educated to help them with their homework, fewer honors course offerings at their high schools, weak English skills.

But, even though they tend to come from more affluent families, black applicants to UC face many of those same obstacles. And there is no easy way for them to compensate for poor SAT I scores.

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“African Americans are the students who get most left out of the admissions process at the UC schools,” said Seppy Basili, a testing expert at the exam preparation firm Kaplan Inc.

Like Magana, James Stevensen, 17, a senior at Locke who is applying to four UC campuses, took the SAT II on Saturday. He chose the physics test, but average scores on that exam are significantly lower than those on the Spanish and other language tests.

The Spanish tests are “a good thing for students not very well-prepared in subjects such as English or physics.” But, he said, “It does raise some questions -- if there is a level playing field.”

The answering machine at Locke celebrates the institution as “home of the Successful Saints, where each and every one of our students is expected to go to college.”

That is an admirable goal, at best. In the fall of 1999, 804 students started as freshmen at Locke. They quickly began transferring or dropping out. Last June, 225 graduated. Of those, 132 planned to attend community college and 58 headed for four-year colleges. About 25 applied to the University of California and roughly half were accepted.

Before the late 1990s, students from schools like Locke might have received extra consideration because of their minority status.

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But no more. In fact, enrollment of blacks and Latinos in the UC system dropped off considerably after the affirmative action ban.

But in the last few years the number of blacks and Latinos has rebounded as UC schools instituted a program requiring campuses to consider various factors -- such as overcoming hardship -- in their admissions decisions.

Another new program guarantees UC spots for the top 4% of students from every participating high school who have completed certain courses, even if those students do not meet the standard eligibility requirements.

Since 1998 -- and especially since the formula gave heavy weight to the SAT II -- the admission of Latinos has significantly outpaced that of blacks, but both groups remain underrepresented on UC campuses.

“I’m used to being in a place where I see more Latinos and African Americans,” said Reyes, the freshman at Davis. “I feel like I have less people to go to when I need help or have a question, because I think they wouldn’t understand. I have to get used to it since I’ll be here for four years.”

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Times staff writer Peter Hong contributed to this report.

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