
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 16, 1994                   TAG: 9402160087
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

SCHOLARSHIP TEST BIASED, ACLU SAYS

Girls are denied their fair share of National Merit Scholarships because the qualifying test is biased, the American Civil Liberties Union charged in a complaint filed Tuesday with the Education Department.

The complaint was filed by the ACLU's Women's Rights Project on behalf of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. The center, known as FairTest, is a Cambridge, Mass.-based organization that is critical of standardized testing.

It charges the Educational Testing Service and the College Entrance Examination Board with violating U.S. education law that bars recipients of federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex. The board sponsors the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test-National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test,and ETS administers it.

National Merit semi-finalists are chosen on the basis of the exam. Other factors, including the Scholastic Assessment Test, school record and letters of recommendation, are used to pick scholarship winners.

Surveys done by FairTest show that boys account for about 60 percent of the National Merit Scholarship semi-finalists and winners.

The College Board said it had not seen the complaint, but that on the basis of FairTest's news release, it considered the charges without merit.

- Associated Press

by CNB