I have to admit, there's nothing in this article that is inaccurate:
Six University of California chancellors unanimously decided on Wednesday to end their campuses' participation in the National Merit Scholarship Program, a move they believe will result in a fairer evaluation of all students for other merit-based scholarships and a more level playing field on which underrepresented and low-income students can compete.Starting in fall 2006, UCLA, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz will redirect the money once provided for National Merit Scholarships to fund other merit-based scholarships such as the Regents Scholarship Program and the campus-based Chancellor's Scholarship Programs...
The decision was made following a recommendation by the Academic Council of the UC, challenging the use of the PSAT as the preliminary eliminator of students, rather than part of a comprehensive evaluation of all PSAT participants...
"This decision in no way indicates that we don't value academic merit at the University of California. The issue is how academic merit is defined," said UC Provost MRC Greenwood, the highest ranking academic officer in the UC system.
They're absolutely right, and perfectly free to redefine academic merit. Given the concerns they've listed about the PSAT, it's obvious that their definition of academic merit is related to ethnicity, because they've decided it's "unfair" of the PSAT to "discriminate" against minorities. I assume at this point they are going to tweak their definition of academic merit until they obtain what they consider to be the appropriate number of underrepresented applicants, and they are going to have to do so using methods that don't produce a score gap.
Oh sure, I'm putting it way more bluntly than they ever would, but this is what UC is doing. They're also perfectly free to do it, and perfectly free to produce research supporting their claim that high school grades, and not test scores, predict performance in the UC system. Let's hope they do, because their dislike of the PSAT is so out of proportion to the amount of money involved that it's hard not to assume they're just making a meaningless stand to impress the anti-testing crowd. I wouldn't be so suspicious if UC officials were making more substantive criticisms of the NMSQT system (such as the type I've made before), instead of just harping on how it's unfair of us to expect certain underrepresented folks to do well on tests.
(Find previous PSAT-related articles here.)
Posted by kswygert at July 18, 2005 05:29 PM