ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- The NAACP is criticizing college entrance exams as unreliable and unfair to minorities and is appealing to American colleges to stop using the tests as the primary factor in admissions.
At the same time, the NAACP says that until colleges reduce their reliance on such exams, states have an obligation to provide money to help minority students prepare for the SAT and the American College Test.The stand was contained in a resolution adopted by the civil rights organization's board last month.
At a news conference Friday in Los Angeles, the NAACP said it will announce its campaign to de-emphasize the standardized tests and to help minority and low-income students prepare for them.
A program in California that provided money for test preparation courses for about 30,000 low-income high school students was held up as an example for other states.
Jay Rosner, director of the Princeton Review Foundation, the nation's largest SAT preparation company, said that the NAACP stand "is a cutting-edge kind of position."
"They are the first large organization of their type not only to criticize the test but to encourage minorities to do better on the test. It is really a positive, two-pronged approach that I think is what's called for these days," he said.
Rosner said the end of affirmative action programs in many states has made the reliance on test scores a more acute problem.