When was the last time you wrote a full sentence in cursive? If you answer, “On the SAT,” then you’re not alone. In many ways, the current crop of standardized tests are ineffective, outmoded and irrelevant. In concept, a standardized test is an efficient and egalitarian means of evaluation. However, in practice, college admissions exams have proven to be anything but. The SAT and the ACT exam reward cultural knowledge and repetitive practice, which often equate to being white and being wealthy. In order to take advantage of the opportunities standardized testing offers, we must make sure standardized tests measure what they are supposed to: academic achievement, independent of all else, across as level of a playing field as possible.

We might be the final generation to do the cursive scribble, as the future of testing is anything but certain. Elite schools across the country, such as Wake Forest University, Bowdoin College and New York University, have gone test-optional. Brandeis made this move for the 2014 admissions season, according to a July 24, 2013 piece by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. As fewer schools require applicants to take admissions exams, standardized testmakers are widening their audience from the college admissions market to high school students at large. These writers remarket the SAT and ACT as tests intended to measure the efficacy of high school curricula, according to an April 5 New York Times article. 

The main criticism levied against standardized tests is that they are unfair. In the case of the SAT, this objection is justified. In 2003, the Harvard Educational Review published a study which found racial bias against black test takers in the SAT. In 2010, researchers — also of the Harvard Educational Review — repeated a similar study and came to the same conclusion. These researchers found that the test made references and used language which favored white culture. For example, some questions on the SAT assumed knowledge of white pop culture or history and were difficult to answer without this assumed “common knowledge.” Thus, black students might score lower, not because of inferior intelligence or test preparation, but rather because they do not enjoy white privilege. This presence of racial bias, intentional or not, undermines the egalitarian premise of standardized testing. These controversial findings damaged public opinion of the SAT and of standardized tests in general. 

While the ACT has not been as widely criticized as the SAT, it has racial bias issues of its own. In 2007, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing found that when other factors — such as grades and family income — were equal, white students scored higher on the ACT than any other racial group. Also, Asian Americans took more academic classes on average than any other racial group, but white students still scored higher on average. The Center attributes some discrepancies to the use of colloquialisms and idiomatic language, such as “ball and chain” to describe a spouse and “straight from the horse’s mouth” to refer to information directly from the source. This language favors students who grew up speaking English, and, just like on the SAT, makes the exam a test of both American cultural knowledge and academic achievement, rather than just the latter as it should be.

Current standardized tests are also biased by socioeconomic class. As Alfie Kohn, author of “The Case Against Standardized Testing,” argued in an April 6 letter to the New York Times, scores on today’s college entrance exams often reflect students’ economic status. One reason for this correlation is that wealthier families can afford to hire private tutors or sign their children up for test preparation classes where they learn specialized tips for standardized test taking and they practice with old SAT and ACT questions. In addition, students who work to help support their families — as many students from lower-income families must — have less free time to prepare for large exams. These factors combine to create a gap in preparedness that widens alongside the socioeconomic divide.

Test anxiety is also an issue for many and contributes to unfairness in standardized testing. A Feb. 10, 2013 Washington Post article on how to curb test anxiety pegged up to 20 percent of students as suffering from severe test anxiety. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, the leading causes of test anxiety are fear of failure and lack of preparation. The effects of test anxiety on actual performance are hard to measure, but it adds extra stress to the experience of standardized testing for many. Since test anxiety does not affect everyone equally, it is a contributing factor to unfairness, especially in large exams like the SAT and ACT.

The standardized test is not a lost cause, and we should not eliminate them from the admissions portfolio as Kohn and others suggest. At the core, admissions exams still represent an objective and a potential for an egalitarian measure of achievement. Unlike grade point averages, which are affected by hundreds of variables and are measured differently by different schools, measuring standardized test scores is inherently simple and universal. There can be no favoritism; the Scantron does not care if you are black, white, rich or poor, where a teacher might. 

Likewise, an underprivileged, inner-city student does not have access to the same extracurricular opportunities as a wealthy, suburban one. Even if they did, they would not have the resources to employ private coaches or tutors to push him forward. Is it fair to judge students’ worthiness off of extracurriculars alone? Call me when every high school has an equestrian team. 

In order to realize the potential that standardized tests have as a part of the admissions portfolio, we must level the playing field so that they better reflect the abilities of the students who take them. State-sponsored free tutoring for a college entrance exam would go a long way to pushing it toward its egalitarian potential. Students would be able to devote time to the same material, and the uniformity of the test would keep the state cost of tutors low and their impact high. I am not naive enough to think that this would completely level the playing field, but it would be a step in the right direction. Students who have to work to support their families would still be at a disadvantage in terms of free time for studying. Also, similar to the public-defender system, state-paid tutors would be overworked and generally less high-brow than private ones. As anyone who’s ever been represented by the state in court could tell you, though, it is a lot better to have someone on your side than to go it alone.

We must have independent organizations carefully examine test questions and test them on control groups for racial bias in any form. The purpose of a standardized college entrance exam is to measure academic performance universally and equally. If we reach a point where the Scantron truly does not care who a student is, then this egalitarian measurement will once again deserve a spot in application folders across America. If not, the future of cursive is doomed.