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Screened out
The author of "Motherless Brooklyn" spotlights five terrific novels overshadowed by their film versions.
By Jonathan Lethem
[10/18/99]

Reviews
"Plainsong" by Kent Haruf
An understated novel about life in the High Plains shines with a sophisticated optimism.
By Maria Russo
[10/18/99]

Ivory Tower
Application blues
A high school senior tells admissions officers, "If you don't want stupid answers, don't ask stupid questions."
By Lucas Hanft
[10/18/99]

Baseball must die
Joe Morgan's book argues that the national pastime is headed for a disaster. But that might not be such a bad thing.
By Andrew O'Hehir
[10/15/99]

Reviews
"Paisley Girl" by Fran Gordon
In an inventive and funny first novel, a terminally hip young heroine bears the blemishes of what may be a terminal disease.
By Laura Morgan Green
[10/15/99]

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Striving to stay alive
With the disavowed Strivers program, the Educational Testing Service tried to rebuild a failing business and badly damaged product -- the SAT.

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By Claire Barliant

Oct. 18, 1999 | Among the half-million teens who struggled through the SATs a week ago, it is unlikely that many had any idea of the scandal being frantically swept under the rug by the makers of the seminal college entry exam. On Aug. 31, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that the Educational Testing Service was conducting research for a project that would factor students' socioeconomic background into their SAT scores. Using 14 different categories, including family income and parents' education level, each student would be given a predicted score that colleges could then compare to the student's actual score. Students scoring 200 points higher than predicted would be labeled as "Strivers" -- i.e., kids who despite difficult circumstances still demonstrate scholastic potential. The ETS was creating two versions of the Striver program: one that was race-blind, and another that made students' race and ethnicity integral to the equation. The race-blind model would be especially useful in states such as California and Washington, which bar affirmative action preferences at public schools.

Although the Journal put the story in the B section, the next day several newspapers in major cities picked up the story, fomenting a minor scandal in admissions circles. ETS promptly issued a press release stating that the Journal's story was "misleading," and that "there is no product, program, or service based upon the Strivers research." However, the company was too late. Within a week, Strivers was being hotly debated in editorial pages nationwide. And by Sept. 4, the conservative New York Post had condemned the program, declaring that it "gives minorities extra points solely because of the color of their skin" -- which, they concluded, was "horrific."

Also Today Application blues A high school senior tells admissions officers, "If you don't want stupid answers, don't ask stupid questions." By Lucas Hanft

In the midst of all this Sturm und Drang over the racial dimensions of college admissions, few voices in the debate ventured to speculate on ETS's underlying motivation for developing the Strivers program. Although at many colleges the SAT remains a primary admissions criterion (along with high school grades), this hasn't protected ETS financially. Last year, more than 2 million high school students took the SAT, the largest number so far. Everyone paid the same fee, $23.50, so nonprofit ETS raked in at least $47 million in fees alone. Despite this apparent windfall, the organization is struggling. Last year, 57 employees were fired by ETS, and another 58 budgeted staff positions remained unfilled. Non-salary benefits have been cut, and cost reductions have been made in the computer-based testing program. By June 30 of this year, ETS still had an operating deficit of $7.7 million. And, in an internal newsletter dated Sept. 16, this deficit was called "encouraging news"; the company hopes to break even by fiscal year 2001. Evidently ETS is flailing; like many companies, it may hope that improving its product will increase sales and profits.

Recent studies on the efficacy and fairness of the SAT have not improved ETS's prospects. Originally envisioned as a tool of our democratic meritocracy, the SAT has been attacked as a biased, inaccurate tool of academic measurement. Not only do white and Asian males tend to do substantially better than females, Latinos and African-Americans, but the test does not accurately predict students' long-term academic performance. There are already 284 colleges that do not require SAT scores from would-be freshmen, and every year a few more schools drop the admissions mandate. Such trends leave the future of the ETS looking increasingly precarious.

A Strivers program would have made the test more attractive to the many schools that have dropped the SAT because of its racial and gender bias. It also would have appealed to state schools scrambling to target promising minority students -- without the costly and time-consuming process of searching through applications individually. For ETS, this would have been a major boon, in terms of both money and reputation.

So why did ETS retreat so hastily as soon as it came under the press spotlight?

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