SAT Faces Its Own Test in State Hearing : Education: On the eve of reforms and updating, the widely used college aptitude exam comes under fire. Critics charge bias against women and minorities.

The Scholastic Aptitude Test, used to judge students for college admissions, underwent scrutiny itself Wednesday during a state Senate committee hearing at Cal State Los Angeles on possible biases in the exam and proposed reforms.

The sharp division of opinion was a preview of the controversy likely to greet SAT changes, possibly including the addition of a mandatory written essay, expected to be announced in two weeks.

Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the Senate Special Committee on University of California Admissions, said the hearing was a signal that California leaders fear that proposed changes could further hurt the college entrance chances of women and ethnic minorities, who already allege that the test favors white males.

Some critics called on the University of California to stop requiring applicants to take the SAT or the rival, and less used, American College Testing exam, or ACT. Officials of the College Board, the national organization that sponsors the SAT, and UC representatives defended the SAT as a useful tool and contended that divergent test results among ethnic groups reflect different high school educations, not bias.

Amid much national interest, the College Board is scheduled to announce a decision about reforms on Oct. 31 at a Boston meeting. Under study are an essay writing sample, mathematical questions without any hints from multiple-choice answers, more vocabulary testing based on reading passages instead of isolated word exercises and even the permission to use calculators. Test makers say they want the SAT to be less coachable and more relevant to high school learning.

Some Asian and Latino educators said Wednesday that an essay could discriminate against immigrants for whom English is a second language. Other critics contended that the College Board wants the reforms only to keep its competitive edge against ACT, which was overhauled recently.

The possible SAT changes “amount to little more than adding fancier and more expensive tail fins to an educational Edsel,” testified Bob Schaeffer, an official of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, a Massachusetts-based group long hostile to the College Board. He said reforms under discussion would not lessen “the biases, inaccuracies, coachability and lack of relevance to a sound college admissions process.”

Gretchen W. Rigol, executive director of the College Board’s testing programs, said she was under orders from her bosses not to comment on specific SAT changes. But she stressed that test questions long have been screened for possible built-in bias and that any changes would be guided by “an absolute commitment to guaranteeing fairness and equity.”

Torres wrote legislation that would force testing companies to measure the impact on women and minorities of any major restructuring before use in California. It passed both houses of the Legislature, but Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed the bill last month, saying that testing agencies already do such reviews.

The senator said Wednesday that he would reintroduce his bill next year. He predicted that it would pass again and that “she will sign it,” referring to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dianne Feinstein.

Torres said, however, that he had not yet made up his mind whether the UC system should drop the SAT requirement.

Average SAT scores of white males are significantly higher than those of women, Latinos and blacks, although that gap has closed a bit in recent years. Asians, as a group, score higher than average in math but below average in verbal skills.

A federal judge ruled last year that New York state’s use of the SAT as the exclusive criterion for awarding scholarships discriminated against girls. The College Board insists that the test was never intended for such use and that scores should be judged only in the context of school grades and class rankings.