LOS ANGELES _ The University of California is violating state civil rights laws by requiring applicants to take the SAT or ACT, standardized tests that unlawfully discriminate against disabled, low-income, multilingual and underrepresented minority students, two lawsuits filed Tuesday allege.
The lawsuits, filed on behalf of the Compton Unified School District, four students and five community organizations, demand that the 10-campus UC system eliminate the testing requirement. Any decision by UC to drop the tests _ as some prominent UC officials themselves are urging _ would play an outsized role in the future of standardized testing in the nation because of the size and status of the premier public research university system.
"Rather than fulfilling its vision as an 'engine of opportunity for all Californians' and creating a level playing field in which all students are evaluated based on individual merit, the UC requires all applicants to subject themselves to SAT and ACT tests that are demonstrably discriminatory against the State's least privileged students, the very students who would most benefit from higher education," one of the lawsuits states.
The lawsuits allege that UC's testing requirement violates the California Constitution's equal protection guarantees and bans on discrimination by state educational and civil rights laws.
In a letter to UC officials in October, lawyers for Compton Unified and others threatened litigation if UC did not immediately end the testing requirement. The university declined to comment at that time.
The suits were filed Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court after the groups failed to reach a resolution.
Officials with ACT and the College Board, which owns the SAT, have sharply disputed allegations that their tests are discriminatory. They said that differences in test scores reflected social inequities in access to quality education, not their exams. They argue that their tests are predictive of college performance and offer a uniform yardstick that allows colleges to compare students across a range of states and high schools.
"The ACT test is not discriminatory nor biased," ACT spokesman Ed Colby told the Los Angeles Times in October. "Blaming standardized tests for differences in educational quality and opportunities that exist will not improve educational outcomes."
College Board spokesman Zachary Goldberg said at the time that the organization would continue to work with UC officials to promote student success but said the letter "contains a number of false assertions and is counterproductive to the fact-based, data-driven discussion that students, parents and educators deserve."
Critics, however, say the exams are an unfair admission barrier to students who don't test well or can't afford to pay for pricey test preparation.
The voluminous lawsuits detail the findings of numerous studies that show that scores are strongly influenced by family income, parents' education, and race and that high school grades are the strongest single predictor of college performance.
The suits also detail the history of UC and the SAT, citing documents that show university officials have questioned the use and fairness of the tests for decades but have chosen to use them anyway.
The lawsuits were filed by Public Counsel, a Los Angeles pro bono law firm, and other attorneys on behalf of Compton Unified, Community Coalition, Dolores Huerta Foundation, Little Manila Rising, College Seekers, College Access Plan and Chinese for Affirmative Action.
The other plaintiffs are four students who have high GPAs and resumes reflecting accomplishments but who could not afford quality test prep and failed to secure high scores on the SAT. The students have a history of disabilities, are not native English speakers or are underrepresented minorities.
Two better alternatives to the SAT, the lawsuits assert, are Smarter Balanced, a standardized test given to all California 11th graders that tests mastery of the state's Common Core high school curriculum; and the University of Texas system, which guarantees admission to campuses based solely on high school grades.
Research has shown that Smarter Balanced predicts college performance as well as the SAT and ACT but with far less discriminatory effects on disadvantaged students.
The UC Academic Senate, which determines the system's admissions requirements, is currently studying whether to drop the testing requirements and plans to issue its recommendations to the regents early next year.
"We understand the pressures ... particularly when so many of our young folks might be affected by the way in which we provide access to UC," Eddie Comeaux, co-chair of the Senate task force on standardized testing, earlier told The Times.
"But whatever we decide, we want to get it right and we want to be able to use evidence to support whatever direction that we decide."
Mark Rosenbaum, a Public Counsel attorney, said students could not wait.
"The SAT and ACT are hurting young people throughout California, students with stellar records in school," he said.
Bob Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, said national momentum was growing to drop testing requirements, with more than 1,000 universities across the nation making them optional _ including the University of Chicago, George Washington University and the University of San Francisco.
"Today's lawsuit against the University of California Board of Regents meticulously documents how the ACT/SAT test score requirement discriminates against low-income, historically disenfranchised minority, and disabled undergraduate applicants," he said in a statement. "The complaint's data and arguments should persuade not only leaders of the University of California but their peers at many other institutions to eliminate reliance on biased and inaccurate standardized exams."
