From the October 2, 1996 Daily Report Card:
-> *7   CASE CLOSED:  PRELIMINARY SAT GENDER RULING
->    An agreement has been reached among the U.S. DoEd, the
-> Educational Testing Service and the College Board to address
-> charges filed by the National Center for Fair and Open Testing
-> (FairTest) that the Preliminary S.A.T. is gender biased.  In
-> response to 1994 allegations by FairTest, a new multiple-choice
-> section that measures writing skills will be included in next
-> year's PSAT.
->    "We're satisfied that adding the test of written English
-> will improve the disparity that we have noticed between the men and
-> women," said Norma Cantu, the DoEd's assistant secretary for civil
-> rights.
->    FairTest charged in 1994 that the PSAT, a test used to
-> determine semifinalists for the National Merit Scholarship
-> program, discriminates against females (AP/WASH POST, 10/2).  "As a
-> result, millions of dollars more in scholarships should go to the
-> young women who earned them through their superior academic
-> performance," said Pamela Zappardino, executive director for
-> FairTest.  Zappardino's group has monitored the National Merit
-> awards for the past decade and found that every year "girls make up a
-> higher percentage of test takers, but a disproportionately smaller
-> number of semifinalists were girls.  Girls are being
-> screened out at the semifinalist level," according to Zappardino.
-> Specifically, the complaint waged by FairTest asserted that
-> use of the PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test for
-> entry to the scholarship program violated Title IX of the
-> Education Amendments of 1972 because more males than females,
-> relative to the population of test takers, have been identified as
-> Merit program semifinalists on the basis of their PSAT/NMSQT scores,
-> explains a DoEd press release.  Title IX prohibits
-> gender-based discrimination in educational programs and
-> activities offered by recipients of federal funding.  The College
-> Board and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation co-sponsor the
-> PSAT/NMSQT, and the test is developed, administered, and
-> scored by ETS.
->    The College Board and ETS denied allegations in the
-> complaint.  Neither were found by the Office of Civil Rights to
-> have violated Title IX.  The DoEd press release states that "the
-> Resolution Agreement reflects a prior decision by the College
-> Board and ETS to expand the PSAT/NMSQT by adding a writing skills
-> component and it expedites implementation of the expanded test to
-> October 1997."
->    FairTest tells a different story.  From their press release:
-> "The Education Testing Service and College Board have effectively
-> admitted what FairTest and the ACLU charged -- their college
-> admissions exams are gender biased and inaccurate -- by accepting
-> this settlement and agreeing to overhaul the Preliminary SAT."
-> (10/1)  According to the release, FairTest is "highly skeptical" that
-> the companies "that have produced biased exams for decades will
-> suddenly correct the flaws in their products."  They promise to
-> monitor both test-makers and the DoEd's settlement.
--- PCBoard (R) v15.22/M 10
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