Merit Scholarship Testing Attacked as Unfair to Girls

Girls are not getting their fair share of National Merit Scholarships and would win more of the awards if high school grades as well as test scores were counted, a group critical of standardized tests said Tuesday.

Boys generally outscore girls on the qualifying test to become National Merit semifinalists, just as they do on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and other standardized exams.

But FairTest, a group also known as the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, said girls perform better in class than boys. It said high school grades should count just as much as the test scores when the 15,000 National Merit semifinalists are chosen each year.

Cost Increase Cited

The sponsor, the National Merit Scholarship Corp., said that would drive up the cost of administering the prestigious award program and reduce the amount available for scholarships.

Sarah Stockwell of FairTest called the National Merit Scholarship Corp.’s reliance on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test to select semifinalists “extraordinarily irresponsible” and said it costs women “millions of dollars each year.”

Marianne Roderick, a senior vice president of the National Merit Scholarship Corp. in Evanston, Ill., said 63% of this year’s National Merit semifinalists are boys.

Boys make up the same proportion of this year’s 1,300 California finalists, Roderick said.

“It has been true over a number of years that boys outnumber girls by about 60-40, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less,” she said.

She defended the use of the standardized test to select semifinalists. “The merit program is open to more than a million youngsters who enter it each year, and we have no quotas regarding boys or girls or ethnic origin or anything else,” she said.

Using the test “is the best method we have found to date to make entry to the program available . . . at a relatively nominal fee,” she said, adding that switching to some other method of selection would drive up administrative costs.

Other Elements in Choices

Once the 15,000 semifinalists are chosen, the National Merit Scholarship Corp. does look at their high school grades, extracurricular activities and achievements in whittling the field down to 6,000 winners who receive scholarships ranging from $250 to $8,000.

Last year, among the 6,146 who got scholarships, 62% were boys, Roderick said.

The group said it also suspects that minorities are not fairly represented among the ranks of the National Merit winners, despite special awards earmarked for black students.

Many colleges compete in recruiting National Merit winners, and some fund their own scholarships through the National Merit program. Corporations and the National Merit Scholarship Corp. itself provide the other scholarships.

The Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, also called the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, is essentially the same as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, although it is scored on a different scale. In selecting semifinalists, the verbal score counts twice as much as the math score.

The overall qualifying score varies from state to state; one-half of 1% of each state’s graduating seniors are chosen.

Last year, when the national average for the Class of 1987 was 906, boys averaged 935 and girls 878.

‘Male-Oriented’

The Cambridge, Mass.-based FairTest said the tests’ multiple choice format seems to favor boys because research suggests they are more adept at guessing and male characters are featured more often in test questions than females, making the questions more “male-oriented.”

FairTest also said SAT scores do not accurately predict women’s actual grades in college.