Students of color to UC: Drop the SAT or we’ll see you...

Lawyers representing low-income students of color demanded Tuesday that the University of California drop the SAT and ACT exams in student admissions on grounds that they illegally discriminate against applicants who can’t afford test prep classes and pose other unfair obstacles that prevent qualified students from being accepted to UC.

The letter sent to the UC regents suggested that if the university leaders don’t agree to stop using the tests, the lawyers would sue on behalf of three students, student advocacy groups and the Compton Unified School District near Los Angeles.

One of the students, Kawika Smith, 17, a high school senior in Los Angeles, said in a statement that he grew up in poverty, often homeless and with family violence that left him with emotional stress. But he was also a bright student with enviable achievements whose SAT scores were too low to compete with others hoping to get into UC Berkeley.

“My more affluent friends were able to afford private tutoring, that had costs ranging from $2,500 to $5,000 a month,” said Kawika, adding that he will instead apply to schools out of state that don’t require the admissions tests.

UC requires freshman applicants to submit the Scholastic Aptitude Test with an essay, or the American College Test with writing, among more than a dozen other admissions criteria.

“UC has chosen to ignore ample evidence that ... disparate SAT and ACT scores mirror and reinforce social and educational inequality,” wrote the lawyers from several law firms, including Public Counsel in Los Angeles that represents clients for free. “In doing so (UC) is knowingly excluding high-performing, less advantaged students from the benefits” of a UC education.

The College Board, which owns the SAT, denies the test is discriminatory — especially since it introduced a new version of the test in 2016, the company said in a statement.

The new version “measures students’ understanding of the meaning of everyday words in context, focuses only the math that matters most for students pursuing a variety of careers, and presents real-world problems that ask students to use evidence to support their solutions,” the company said, noting that it offers free practice tools and college application fee waivers.

In April, weeks after the national college admissions scandal broke, UC’s Academic Senate began to study the efficacy of the tests of math, science and reasoning, which figured prominently in the scandal when a number of parents paid large sums for stand-in test-takers to fake the results for their kids. Last month, several regents expressed frustration with how long the faculty group was taking to conclude its study, which is now expected to happen by February.

The lawyers’ demand letter comes as increasing numbers of universities across the country have ended their use of the controversial admissions tests on similar grounds. More than 1,000 universities, roughly 40% of the nation’s campuses, have dropped the requirement or made the tests optional in recent years, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, an anti-testing group that tracks those numbers.

Statistics from the College Board show that outcomes on the test vary widely by ethnicity, the letter says. In California, for example, 44% of white students scored 1200 or above on the 1600-point exams, compared with 10% of back students and 12% of Latino students.

The letter cited research showing the tests have minimal ability to predict students’ success in college; contain up to 10% of questions that are “biased against underrepresented minority groups”; and have “word-heavy math problems” that often stump math-gifted students with less-than-perfect English skills.

“Ultimately, SAT and ACT scores are but a proxy for socioeconomic status and race,” the lawyers said.

On Tuesday, Regents Chair John Pérez said that although the regents intend to wait for the faculty’s study of the continued use of the SAT and ACT, he expressed doubts about the tests last month.

“The lack of predictive value of academic success of the SAT raises concerns, as does the high correlation between scores and socioeconomic status,” Pérez told The Chronicle.

The College Board says SAT scores are “strongly predictive of college performance,” according to a validity study it conducted this year.

At last month’s regents meeting, Pérez expressed frustration with how long it was taking the Academic Senate to reach a conclusion about whether to continue using the tests.

That prompted other criticism of the admissions tests, and Vice Chair Cecilia Estolano called them “clearly flawed,” with a “discriminatory impact.” She suggested taking the matter up at the January meeting.

UC President Janet Napolitano then jumped in, urging the regents to wait until they had the benefit of the Academic Senate’s recommendations.

“Whatever we do will be a national precedent, and we want to get it right,” Napolitano said.

Another regent, Gov. Gavin Newsom, weighed in on the controversy this month when he vetoed a bill that would have replaced a California high school exam called Smarter Balanced with the SAT or ACT.

“Their use exacerbates the inequities for underrepresented students, given that performance ... is highly correlated with race and parental income,” Newsom wrote in his veto message.

On Tuesday, when attorney Mark Rosenbaum of Public Counsel released the letter he and the other lawyers sent to the regents, he said, “The governor nailed it. Now is the time for the regents to step up and do the right thing, or we’ll see them in court.”

Rosenbaum said the lawyers didn’t send a similar letter to California State University, which relies more heavily than UC does on the admissions tests: “Our assumption is that once it falls for the UC system, it’ll fall everywhere in California.”

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov