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That's one of the reasons why thoughtful blacks in higher education like H. Patrick Swygert, president of Howard University, aren't willing to jettison the SAT. He's adamantly opposed to "any abandonment of standardized tests that would carry with it the implication that we just can't meet the mark." He doesn't think the SAT by itself is an adequate measure of students' potential (nor do I). But it is an important indicator of how well prepared they are for demanding college work. As a consequence, Howard (where my dad taught for 40 years) has been raising its admissions standards. The average SAT score of incoming freshmen has gone up from about 900 to 1062 in the five years that Swygert has been president. Yet Howard is attracting more applicants than ever, welcoming 1,432 freshmen this year, the largest incoming class in decades. Swygert insists there's only one way to ensure that the opportunities created by the civil rights movement won't be slammed shut again: by meeting the same standards as everyone else. "We can't let those openings be constricted because we somehow either failed to make the cut or were viewed as being unable to make it," says he.
What I hear in those words is an appeal to black pride and determination as we fight to attain the elusive commodity that economist Glenn Loury once described as "equal respect in the eyes of one's fellow citizens." It's going to require, among other things, installing tougher classes, especially in math, sciences and literature, and making sure our kids take them; better teachers; changes in study habits; and above all else, a new burst of self-confidence. We've got to believe that even at their most bigoted, whites never came up with a test blacks couldn't ace, including the SAT. We've got to make second-class scholarship--and low test scores--as intolerable to us as second-class citizenship used to be.