College Board Weighs Revising SAT to Keep UC

Scrambling to hang onto the lucrative business of the University of California, the College Board is considering major changes in the SAT test, including adding a writing sample, College Board officials said Saturday.

The proposed revisions, which also include cutting or dropping the verbal analogies section and toughening the math questions, would amount to the most significant overhaul in years in the SAT, a test endured by generations of college-bound students.

“Just adding the writing [section] would be a huge change,” said Gaston Caperton, president of the nonprofit College Board, which owns the SAT.

“We feel it’s a good thing to do, and it would mean a substantially improved program,” he said.

Caperton said he will meet with university presidents and advisory groups around the country during the next three months to discuss the proposed revisions. The trustees are to vote on a final version of the plan in June, he said, with any changes taking effect for the high school class that graduates in 2006.

The College Board’s plan marks the latest turn in a process launched last year, when UC President Richard C. Atkinson proposed in a speech in Washington that his university drop the SAT in favor of a test more closely linked to high school course work.

Atkinson, a cognitive psychologist and testing expert, said the exam was unfair to many students and tested ill-defined notions of aptitude, instead of measuring how much they learned in high school.

Caperton acknowledged Saturday that the criticism by the UC--a nine-campus system that is the SAT’s biggest client--had persuaded the College Board to take action now, although he said the trustees had been considering changes for some time.

“Since the UC said what they said about the test, we’ve talked to lots of people, and it became real clear to me that we needed to come to some conclusions” quickly, Caperton said.

UC spokesman Michael Reese called the College Board decision a positive step, but said it was too soon to tell whether the proposals would meet the criteria for a new admissions test recently spelled out by a UC faculty committee.

Nevertheless, Reese said, “We’re pleased with the direction the College Board seems to be going.”

Sparked by Atkinson’s proposal to drop the SAT, the faculty committee has spent a year drafting guidelines for a new admissions test that would be tailored specifically to the university and would measure a student’s mastery of high school course work.

The committee has called for a core achievement test--of 31/2 to four hours--that would cover reading, writing and math skills. Students would also be required to take two one-hour tests, similar to the SAT II exams, in specific subjects.

Both the College Board and ACT Inc., makers of the SAT’s chief rival, the ACT exam, have said they would be willing to work with the UC to develop a new test.

UC regents are expected to vote on the proposal in July, but at a discussion this month, several regents questioned whether it was worth the expense and time to the university to come up with a new test.

Others asked whether an exam tailor-made to UC standards would be accepted by other leading universities, or if California students who want to apply to several schools might soon have to take even more admissions exams than they do now. The discussion is expected to continue at the regents’ meeting at UCLA in May.

Caperton expressed the hope Saturday that a significantly revised SAT might eliminate the need for a custom California exam. But in the meantime, he said, the College Board would pursue both avenues, continuing to work with the UC on a California test and pushing forward at the same time for a new national exam.

The College Board president said it was too early to outline how each section of the SAT might change, but said a revised test was very likely to cut or eliminate the analogies portion--a pet peeve of UC President Atkinson’s. In its place, the new SAT would have a section on reading comprehension, Caperton said.

The UC criticism, and that of other universities in recent years, has had a positive effect, he said.