Give students HOPE, but with new rules

Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue wants to kill two birds with one stone.

Bird one: the abysmally low average SAT score of the state’s high schoolers, which, at 984, recently ranked dead last in the nation.

Bird two: a lottery-funded HOPE scholarship program that may run annual deficits as large as $250 million within the next four years.

Perdue’s stone: Make the SAT part of HOPE eligibility.

Perdue argues that by setting a minimum SAT requirement (somewhere around 1000) he will force students to take the test more seriously.

“The SAT is a solid predictor of collegiate success,” wrote Perdue in a Monday column that appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“More that 80 percent of HOPE scholars who score lower than the national average on their SATs lose their scholarship after their freshman year by failing to achieve a B average...For our scholars to succeed we need to increase their SAT scores,” he wrote.

At the same time, 57 percent of Georgia high school seniors were eligible for HOPE last year, a ridiculously high number. The fund is paying out more than lottery revenues will sustain.

In recent months, debate began to swirl about how to save the fund. Some proposed making the scholarship need-based. Others suggested raising the existing 3.0 GPA requirement.

Perdue’s SAT proposal claims to solve the problem by reducing by 40 percent the number of HOPE-eligible seniors.

Opponents say that the SAT is culturally and racially biased. Any attempt to link HOPE eligibility and SAT score would disproportionately affect black students. White students score on average 1035, while black students average 852.

If Perdue’s 1000-score minimum had been in place in 2001, only 1,500 black students in the entire state would have qualified. The proposal’s detractors are already threatening to challenge any such measure in court.

I agree with Governor Perdue that SAT scores in this state are an embarrassment. Steps must be taken to raise them. I also accept that the high number of HOPE-eligible students simply are not monetarily sustainable. Assuming HOPE is to remain a merit-based scholarship, eligibility requirements must be raised. But is an SAT requirement the best approach? No.

While I do not believe the SAT is an inherently racist test, one cannot ignore that black students, for whatever reason, make on average lower scores than whites. Thus tacking on a blanket requirement would be unfair.

Nor should the state simply increase the existing GPA requirement.

This would only invite further grade inflation and lead more grossly unprepared students to lose HOPE during their freshman year of college.

To solve this problem, I propose creating a variant of the Freshman Index now used by the University System of Georgia in undergraduate admissions.

The Freshman Index adds one’s SAT score to one’s high school GPA multiplied by 500. This formula weights GPA more heavily than a student’s SAT score. A low SAT score does not automatically disqualify an admissions candidate because higher GPA could compensate.

A “HOPE Index” could be formulated in a similar fashion. In addition to SAT and GPA, a third variable could be added that would give credit to students who take college-prep classes rather than follow the easier tech-prep track.

The HOPE Index number needed to qualify for the scholarship would be based on the amount of money in the fund. Using modeling and forecasts, the state would have to fix a standard for each high school freshman class, so that students would have a constant target to shoot for.

Instituting an index accomplishes several objectives. It gives students a reason to take the SAT more seriously, but at the same time minimizes the test’s racially or culturally biased elements.

The state can raise requirements, but in a fairer way that gives students more leeway in the way they meet them. While an index approach is not perfect, its incarnation in the Freshman Index is widely accepted as a fair standard for comparing students.