Perhaps the most commonly cited barrier to African American
students being chosen by the most competitive colleges and universities
for admission into science and engineering programs is their
performance on standardized college entrance exams, namely the SAT and
ACT.
Indeed, the average African American SAT score is approximately 200
points lower than that of White and Asian students, according to
findings cited in a recent study by Dr. Reginald Wilson of the American
Council on Education. In 1996, only 4,415 African American high school
students had SAT scores of 1200 or above.
According to both ACT and SAT administrators, the major reason for
the gaps in standardized test scores is the difference in course loads
taken by students. African American high school students tend not to
take the more rigorous college preparatory math and science classes
that would prepare them for standardized tests, often because they are
discouraged from taking those courses.
Yet, another issue was pointed to by U.S. Secretary of Education
Richard Riley in discussing the poor showing all American twelfth
graders made in the latest international comparison of math and science
knowledge. Riley said that 28 percent of high school math teachers and
55 percent of physics teachers nationwide have neither major nor minor
credentials in these subjects. This is even more true for teachers in
schools that serve mostly African American and Hispanic students, where
large percentages of teachers often teach “out of license,” or out of
their field of academic training.
For those reasons, many programs that focus on what is known as the
“pipeline” often begin with teacher education and science enrichment of
middle and high schoolers.
For current high school juniors and seniors, however, scoring well
on entrance exams is, for all intents and purposes, a must for entrance
into the most prestigious science; math, engineering and technology
(SMET) institutions. This phenomenon persists even though the SAT only
claims to be a predictor of first-year grades, not of overall college
success.
Many of the most prestigious institutions — Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford, and California Institute of
Technology (Caltech), for example — claim that they do not base
admissions decisions solely on SAT scores. Even so, it is rare for a
potentially successful student with less than lofty scores to be
noticed — let alone get admitted — by one of these schools.
