Scholarship Criterion Challenged: Critics Charge Sex Discrimination

Charges of sexual bias in a $2.2 million federally funded undergraduate scholarship program have kindled debate among science educators and others about the use--and misuse--of standardized tests in gauging the abilities of future scientists. The scholarships were awarded solely on the basis of such a test. According to a report by the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest) in Cambridge, Mass., male high school students won 75 percent of the 471 college scholarships awarded in 1993, the first year of the National Academy for Science, Space, and Technology (NASST) program in the United States Department of Education. This was so even though young women earn higher grades in science and math than young men in both high school and college, FairTest says. The reason more men than women won, FairTest says, is that the award relied on scores earned on the math portion of the American College Testing (ACT) assessment exam, a test the organization says is biased against women. The exclusive use of a standardized test for awarding the scholarships--one for each congressional district--was mandated by the legislation creating NASST. NASST was established to support students who choose science and math majors in college; winners commit either to attend graduate school or to go to work in a related field, one year for each year of scholarship support. "The real shame of this program," says Cinthia H. Schuman, executive director of FairTest, "is that, at a time when we should be encouraging young women to go into math and science, we're sending the wrong message that test scores are valued more than the actual demonstration of promise in these areas." Defenders of the ACT and other standardized tests acknowledge that there is a difference between the scores of male and female students. They insist, however, that the bias revealed is not an indictment of the tests, but instead is an accurate reflection of discrimination in classrooms and in society. "According to the National Science Foundation, 76 percent of our college graduates in engineering; mathematics; and physical, life, and computer science are males and 24 percent are females," said Thomas Saterfiel, vice president of the research division at ACT, in a statement. "These percentages are just what we see in the awarding of the new NASST scholarships." "There's bias," adds Kelley Hayden, a spokesman for ACT. "There's no doubt about it. But the bias is in the classroom--it's in the society, really. You still have reports about how teachers call on boys more than girls in classes, for example. So, it's just an extension of that." Hayden also says the tests are designed to predict how students will perform in their freshman-year college courses. As such, he says, the ACT has a predictive validity of 95 percent for both males and females. The tests were never intended to be used as the sole criterion for such scholarship awards, he adds. "Our test scores should not be used alone to make high- stakes decisions," Hayden says. "They should be used in conjunction with other information, such as class grades, recommendations, and other work that the students do." Most critics agree on this point, but some go further, saying that standardized tests simply are not a valid way to predict how students will perform in science careers. "This test is a flawed indicator," Schuman says. "Not only is it biased against girls, it also does not reflect the kind of skills that we are looking for in students. It doesn't measure a student's ability to write or think creatively or do a science experiment." FairTest has written to members of Congress who serve on the education committees, asking that the law be rewritten before any further funds are appropriated for NASST. Meanwhile, the Clinton administration, while praising the aim of encouraging students to pursue science and math careers, has moved to neutralize the program. Officials are supporting instead another effort with similar goals called the National Science Scholars program, authorized in 1990. Under that program, which provides for broader selection criteria, 861 students showing promise in science fields won undergraduate scholarships this year. "Congress stipulated in the law [that created NASST] that the department select one scholar per congressional district based on national test scores," said David A. Longanecker, assistant secretary for postsecondary education, in a statement. "The department implemented the law as authorized by Congress. The National Science Scholars program, in existence for several years, requires at least one female winner per congressional district. For this reason, the Clinton administration supports the National Science Scholars program and has not requested any further funding for NASST." Without funding for the current fiscal year, the NASST program has effectively ended, according to Stephanie Babyak, an Education Department spokeswoman. Even without the bias charges against NASST, she says, the programs are largely duplicative in purpose. Critics of standardized tests say they are inherently biased against women, at least partly because they reward characteristics thought to be shared by more men than women. "Nobody has ever come up with one single cause for the gender gap," says Schuman. "Rather, a number of issues have been pointed to, primarily dealing with the format of the test. Somehow, the emphasis on speed and guessing does not allow girls to display their real abilities." In 1989, the Center for Women Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., published The SAT Gender Gap by Phyllis Rosser, a study that sought to document inequities in the SAT, administered by the New York-based College Board. According to Leslie R. Wolfe, executive director of the center, Rosser did an item analysis of one of the SAT tests and found that there were 24 questions on which either men or women did substantially better. Of those, 22 favored men, she says. Rosser's study also directly contradicts test-makers' claims that the exams predict the success students will have in college, according to Wolfe. "The only purpose [of the SAT and the ACT] is to predict first-year college grades," Wolfe says. "In both cases, they fail to do so for women. The SAT underpredicts women's first-year college grades. So, you have women who earn higher grades in their first year of college than their SAT scores would indicate." She adds: "High school grades are still the best predictor of college success." Test-makers counter that they have worked hard to eliminate bias and have been largely successful--although some residual inequity does remain. They say that the tests are based on the courses students take and mirror students' participation and success in those courses. "The test is a curriculum-based test," says Hayden at ACT. "If you've had, for instance, algebra, you'll score in a certain range. But if you've had trigonometry, you'll score higher. And if you've had calculus, you'll score higher." About 5 percent more boys than girls take those courses, Hayden says, and in a heavily math-based science like physics, for example, about 11 percent more boys enroll. Hayden also makes the point that criticizing the ACT for rewarding speed and guessing cuts both ways. "The English portion of the test requires you to move just as quickly as the math portion does, and it's all multiple choice, too," Hayden says. "But the girls do a lot better than the boys on that. Why? Because they know that stuff better." Critics are unmollified by such arguments from test-makers. "They have responded by blaming the victims and blaming the schools for low SAT scores on the part of women," says Wolfe. "However, we have shown that even those women with the highest grades, sitting in the same high-level math classes in high school with boys, and getting higher grades [than the boys], are still getting lower SAT scores." "The problem with tests like the ACT and the SAT," says Schuman, "is that, even when you match for a student's socioeconomic background, their parents' educations, the courses taken, and the grades received, the gap between the sexes does not entirely close." Some science educators are more willing to give credence to the test-makers' view. "The testing services have gone out of their way to take gender and race out of the test-taking," says Paul Saltman, a professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego. "I assume that those tests were not designed with a gender bias. "But what isn't unbiased," says Saltman, who has also been active in reforming science education in local school systems, "is the environment in which young women grow up in elementary and secondary schools with respect to how science is taught to them, how they perceive science, and how their peers respect girls who are going into science." Saltman says the bias in the test does speak to cultural problems more than it does to test-design flaws. "It tells me that it's not hip, if you're a girl, to be a scientist," he says. "It's easier to be a male nerd than a female nerd, if you want to look at it that way, in terms of the psychosocial values we place on these things. "It's crazy to worry about whether you fix the exam," Saltman adds. "What has to be fixed is how we do science education."

Scholarship Criterion Challenged: Critics Charge Sex Discrimination

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of