Firms Agree to Alter Standardized Test

In a decision that could shift millions of scholarship dollars to girls, the companies that develop and administer the Preliminary Scholastic Assessment Test--better known to college-bound high school juniors as the PSAT--have agreed to changes intended to eliminate alleged gender bias in the widely used standardized exam.

The federal Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday that the College Board and the Educational Testing Service have agreed to add--starting next year--a multiple-choice section on writing skills to the PSAT, which is taken annually by almost 2 million high school students.

Although the junior-year exam is designed largely to prepare the students for the longer SAT college entrance exam, it also helps determine who gets tuition awards from the National Merit Scholarship Corp.

Under the agreement, the testing organizations were not found to be in violation of Title IX, which forbids discrimination on the basis of sex. Both groups denied any fault or wrongdoing in the design of the exam.

But they acknowledged that the test’s revision, which will be completed by next October, “will help measure the varied talents of an increasingly diverse student population.”

Each year, about $25 million in National Merit scholarships are awarded to high school students on the basis of their performances on the PSAT. The American Civil Liberties Union filed allegations of gender bias two years ago on behalf of FairTest, a Cambridge-based organization that strives to keep bias out of standardized exams.

According to FairTest studies, girls have made up about 55% of the test-taking pool for the PSAT but only 36% of National Merit scholarship winners. FairTest called for awarding of the scholarships based simply on school grades.

Girls on average score 50 to 60 points lower than boys on the PSAT, with the largest gap found in measures of math ability--an inequity that FairTest argued was due to gender bias in the test.

National Merit officials have argued that the test simply demonstrates that more boys than girls are top students. But other studies, including one published recently in the Harvard Education Review by Educational Testing Service’s own staff members, concluded that the SAT’s math portion favored men.

Experts have attributed women’s lower performance to a variety of social and historical factors, including child-rearing philosophies, that discourage girls from excelling in fields such as math that have been traditionally dominated by men.

Girls have tended to achieve higher scores on verbal tests. The PSAT includes a verbal component, but the College Board and Educational Testing Service agreed to expand it with the multiple-choice section to measure writing skills.

The agreement received muted praise from groups that have pressed for revisions in the exam.

“By agreeing to overhaul the PSAT, ETS and the College Board are effectively admitting their college admission exams are not accurate and are biased,” said Pamela Zappardino, FairTest’s executive director.

Officials of the testing companies could not be reached late Tuesday. But in a written statement issued jointly with the Office for Civil Rights, the companies said they have been studying the addition of a writing component “for some time” and referred to studies that support the exam’s expansion.