College Admissions Tests Opened to Public

“Calling standardized admissions tests ‘imprecise and open to potential misinterpretation and misuse,’ Governor Carey announced yesterday that he had signed a bill requiring the services that administer the tests for colleges and graduate schools to open their examinations to public scrutiny for the first time. The law will allow students to see their graded tests and the correct answers and thereby confirm the grading.”

The New York “Times,” July 15, 1979, said: “The admissions-tests bill was the subject of intense lobbying by testing services and college and university administrators, who opposed it, and from student, parent, educator and consumer groups, which supported it. . . . Although the law applies only to tests given in New York State, it will have a major effect nationwide by making the validity studies and actual tests and answers—which have been closely guarded secrets—widely available.”