<p>FWIW, the UC study is far from being the only study worth mentioning. For one, the UC study was based on a pool of 50,000 applications. Despite its obvious bias and ulterior motives, the College Board has sponsored many studies. Here’s a small description of a study that coincided with the start of Atkinson’s crusade. </p>
<p>"SAT I scores of African-American and Hispanic students have lagged significantly behind the state average. According to the state Department of Education, the 2001-02 average verbal score for African Americans was 426, while the average verbal score for Hispanics was 431. The average math score for African Americans was 427, with Hispanics scoring 447. Whites had a 530 average verbal score and a 544 average math score. Asian Americans had a 488 average verbal score and a 554 average math score.</p>
<p>Because of these disparities, a huge controversy continues regarding the worth and usefulness of the SAT I. The College Board has funded studies that have sought to discover whether the SAT I is a reliable predictor of success in college. The most comprehensive such study was conducted by the University of Minnesota. Released in 2001, the study used the meta-analysis technique to evaluate more than 1,700 other studies covering more than one million students.</p>
<p>The study found that the SAT is not only a good predictor of freshmen grade point averages, but also predicted GPA during later years in college, as well as study habits, persistence, and degree attainment. </p>
<p>Further, the study found that the SAT predicted the success of students in college regardless of gender or race and was not simply a measure of test-taking ability. Despite such findings, critics of the SAT I have been working to undermine the exam.</p>
<p>In 2001, UC president Richard Atkinson called for the eventual elimination of SAT I scores from consideration in the UC admissions process. Atkinson portrayed the SAT I as -an ill-defined measure of aptitude or intelligence." Atkinson claimed that the test was perceived as unfair and that its results ?can have a devastating effect on the self-esteem and aspirations of young students." He implied that the SAT I blocked African-American and Hispanic students from entering the UC system.</p>
<p>In reality, the SAT is not the greatest barrier to the UC for most African-American and Hispanic students. Rather, it is the failure to take the required college-preparatory curriculum." </p>
<p>And, on the subject of income versus performance:</p>
<p>"In the public’s mind, the SAT is often viewed as an indicator of general student performance. But it is at best a crude measure of such performance. Unlike the California Standards Test or the Stanford-9, which test almost all students, or the NAEP, which tests scientifically representative samples of students, there is no control over who takes the SAT. The percentage of California high-school seniors taking the test has increased from 30 percent in 1972 to 52 percent in 2002. Since SAT test-taking populations vary from year to year, using SAT results to say something definitive about general student achievement is problematic. Indeed, the College Board warns that, “Since the population of [SAT] test takers is self-selected, using aggregate SAT I scores to compare or evaluate teachers, schools, districts, states or other educational units is not valid.” </p>
<p>This is not to say that revisionists are correct in their claim that drops in SAT scores have been caused by the increase in the number of test takers from minority and low-income groups. As PRI’s 2002 report They Have Overcome: High-Poverty, High-Performing Schools in California explains, children from minority and low-income backgrounds can excel on standardized tests as long as they are getting effective classroom instruction. Thus, the real culprit for the decline in SAT scores is not the demographic change in the test-taking population, but the lower-quality public schooling received by those taking the test."</p>