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Education

California State University system signals it will scrap SAT, ACT requirement

January 28, 2022 3:30pm

Updated: January 28, 2022 3:30pm

California State University trustees strongly indicated they will permanently remove the SAT and ACT standardized testing requirements for admissions during their board meeting Wednesday.

Not one trustee present voiced opposition to the recommendation by an advisory council to drop the tests, reported the Los Angeles Times.

The CSU Admission Advisory Council, which was comprised of faculty, students, top administrators and enrollment experts, determined the assessments were not as strong an indicator of college academic performance than high school GPA. It also argued their removal would eliminate bias, like unequal access to test prep and wide disparities based on race.

“The issue of SAT and ACT testing has overwhelmed students and families for a long time,” trustee Diego Arambula said, according to the L.A. Times. “To see that a GPA alone actually has better predictive power makes it abundantly clear to me that if we can clear this all off of the plates of young people and their families who are already going through such stressful times right now ... it’s in the right interest of our communities.”

Although there seems to be significant support to abandon the use of standardized tests as a litmus for university admissions, “this is not without opposition,” CSU trustee Julia Lopez was quoted saying in an article published by EdSource.

“There are people who would like it to remain the way it was, and there will be people who will want to argue that this is actually reducing the quality of instruction,” she explained. 

 Lopez said the system would should be prepared to justify the shift and demonstrate that moving away from the standardized model is what’s best for students and the education system. 

The Cal State system, which educates 477,000 students on 23 campuses, had already suspended the testing requirements for the 2022-23 academic year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Testing companies have been hit too as lockdowns shut down in-person testing, but continue to defend their exams as rigorous and valuable for admissions officers. The College Board announced its SAT will be simplified and digital by 2024.  

The decision would bring the CSU system in line with more than 1,800 colleges and universities who have dropped standardized testing requirements for admissions, including the University of California system, which scrapped theirs in 2020.