“School’s Out for Summer”
Alice Cooper
During the nearly ten years that I have been writing Ethical College Admissions, it has generally been my plan to go on hiatus during the summer, thinking there would be no news and no readers during the summer months. The exception was the three years that I wrote a weekly column for Inside Higher Ed, and to my surprise I found there was plenty to write about.
A couple of weeks ago I planned to write one more post and then shut down for the summer, but didn’t have a topic in mind. One of the interesting things about writing this blog is the ebb and flow of topics. One day I have nothing, and the next day too many possible topics. That happened in this case.
Following my keynote address at the Pennsylvania Association for College Admission Counseling conference in Hershey on June 20, my friend and loyal ECA reader Barbara Conner, Director of College Counseling at Foxcroft School, asked if I planned to turn the keynote into a blog post. My initial reaction was no, but a couple of days later I rethought that, and ended up producing two posts based on the speech. One appeared last week in Inside Higher Ed, and I believe the other will appear next week as my final post before taking the rest of the summer off (unless a major issue comes up that I can’t avoid addressing).
Within a day of the publication of last week’s post, several readers contacted me with suggestions for possible topics. I’m going to respond with two shorter posts this week, and save the other for the fall.
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Here’s the first:
In the last post I asked whether it is time to rethink the college admissions process, and I used the rise of test-optional and test-blind admission as an example of an area where old assumptions are being questioned. Afterward I received an email from ECA reader and occasional correspondent Jay Rosner, the Executive Director of the Princeton Review Foundation.
Jay wrote to suggest that the term “test blind” be replaced with “test free.” He pointed out that the University of California system started using “test blind” as an analog to the financial aid use of “need blind,” but that UC Berkeley has moved to use “test free” to describe its policy. He argued that “test free” more accurately captures the spirit of the policy, in that “test blind implies that the test scores are there and available for admissions and just not ‘seen,’ while some test-free colleges request that scores not be submitted at all.”
He added, “I happen to prefer the liberation implication for test free. Tests have constricted and skewed the admissions process for a long time, and their absence in admissions frees admissions officers to focus upon the broader band of skills, experiences, and other factors beyond those required to fill bubbles quickly and accurately, and not get distracted by a problematic sense of contrived linear comparability.”
I like the substitution of “test free” for “test blind.” I think it’s a better description of the change in testing policies. I also happen to have an affinity for the word “free,” especially at a time when “free to be you and me” is endangered by those who decry judicial activism except when it serves their purposes. (Forgive the political commentary.)
Jay Rosner also offered several other arguments for the substitution in his email and a followup email.
One is sensitivity for how the term “test blind” might be perceived by the sight-impaired community. “In checking with the sight-impaired community,” he wrote, “I found that some were bothered by test blind, while others were not, but there’s no need to make the former uncomfortable even if it is a minority position in that community.”
I think he’s right. I might disagree if “test blind” was the only, or even the best, language to describe the testing policy adopted by the UC system, but it’s not.
Jay’s second point has to do with the origins of college admissions testing, particularly the SAT. He stated, “The SAT, the grandparent of all the admissions tests, was developed by Carl Brigham, a eugenicist, specifically as an instrument to prove the superiority of the white race. Test developers disclaim this heritage in eugenics, but bubble-test results tedn today to parallel past results.”
He stated that he would likely have a friendly quibble or two with what I write. I’m going to have a friendly quibble with him on this point.
His interpretation of the intent of the origins of testing is certainly plausible, but I am not convinced. Brigham and many of his contemporaries in lots of fields were eugenicists, and today they look profoundly ignorant. But I think that the connection between the eugenicist beliefs of Brigham and his contemporaries and the origins of admissions testing is more tenuous, more complex, based on two separate flawed assumptions.
The first flaw is the belief that it is possible to devise a multiple-choice test that can measure intelligence. Today we know that intelligence is a complex concept, with many varieties. At best admissions tests measure imprecisely one kind of intelligence, and what they can’t begin to measure are qualities such as motivation and perseverance that are far more important to an individual’s success.
The second flaw was a belief in a form of the “rational person fallacy.” All of us are prone to that fallacy. In its simplest form it says that if I believe something, then surely any rational person would believe the same thing. That’s obviously a dangerous belief.
The more odious form of that fallacy is that our belief system or cultural norms should be normative, that it is our duty to make those different from us resemble us because we are “right” or the model of God’s creation. The best example of that is Christian missionaries trying to convert those they considered “savages.” That same intellectual arrogance was at the root of eugenics, the belief that it is possible to create a race of pure and perfect human beings–that coincidentally look a lot like us. There is no such thing as either pure or perfect when it comes to human beings.
Jay Rosner’s final point was that the term “test free” has an unanticipated and ironic consequence. He wrote, “The mere existence of test free has led to high-level reps from both the College Board and ACT recently actually being quoted as favoring test-optional admissions! Who would have thought?...Self interest just might have something to do with their dramatic shift in position.”
I suspect he’s right. Test-optional policies are a threat to a world where admissions tests are ubiquitous and worshiped, but if your livelihood depends on the testing industry, then a world that is test-optional sounds pretty good compared with one that is test-free.
I appreciate Jay Rosner’s thoughts and correspondence. And unless I forget and revert back to being a creature of habit, out with test blind and in with test free.