. . .And New York

Less secrecy for the SAT

New York has scheduled a stiff high school graduation competency requirement for 1981 seniors, but there was more concern in the Empire State last week about another kind of testing--admissions exams for colleges and graduate schools. The issue: Should the questions and answers on these exams, which are traditionally wrapped in secrecy, be released for public scrutiny? Yes, said New York's Governor Hugh Carey, who signed a state law requiring that, as of next Jan. 1, the tests be made public 30 days after students learn the results. No, said most of the national testing groups, including the Princeton, N.J., Educational Testing Service, which administers the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test, given annually to 1 million high school seniors.

The reason for opposition? According to Robert Cameron, testing director of the College Board: "We do not have an inexhaustible supply of new questions." ETS spends two years preparing each version of its 145-question SAT; some 21 different versions of the SAT are used annually. As long as copies of the test are hidden away in the files of ETS, they can be reused for approximately three years. "But," notes Cameron, "once you disclose a test, it must be discarded." New York's new law will force makers of standardized tests to offer new examinations throughout the U.S., for once the cat gets out of the bag in New York, test makers must assume it will slink across state lines.

Opposed by many of the state's educators, the Carey decision was a victory for student and parent groups backed by Ralph Nader, who has encouraged "truth in testing" campaigns in California, Colorado, Texas, Ohio and Massachusetts, as well as New York. Carey's move gave Nader his first signal victory, and last week Nader called the decision a "turning point in the national campaign to subject the testing industry to public scrutiny," adding, "ETS has been judging the worth of students for years. Now the students are getting a chance to judge the worth of ETS." The legislation also requires testing organizations to submit to government agencies any studies of how validly their tests measure aptitude. Naderites expect to use the data to scrutinize the impact of race and family income on test scores.

In the wake of Carey's decision, ETS warned that extra research expense would lead to price increases of $4.75 for New York students, who now pay $8.25 to take the SAT. In addition, the frequency of makeup test days and special testing sessions for the handicapped may be cut. There was also opposition to the new law from the American College Testing Program and the Law School Admission Council, whose admissions tests are now subject to New York's new statute, as are medical-and dental-school tests and the Graduate Record exams.

The sharpest reaction came from representatives of the nation's 125 medical schools and 60 dental schools; administrators of these schools' tests announced last week that, rather than tell all in New York, they would no longer test in New York State. "There is a limit to the number of relevant questions that can be used in the Medical College Admission Test," insisted Dr. John Cooper, president of the Association of American Medical Colleges. The approximately 5,000 New York students who annually apply to medical schools and the state's 1,000 would-be dentists received small comfort from New York Education Commissioner Gordon Ambach, who had opposed the disclosure bill. Advised he: "Travel outside the state to take the tests."

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