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Two years ago the State of New York took a decisive position on test disclosure. It insisted on immediate action on full test disclosure. A sensible scheme of phased applicability would have been more fruitful. By giving 4 or 5 months notice for radical change to organizations that had hitherto operated on much longer test development leadtimes, New York disrupted the orderly conduct of testing programs like ours.

Its actions caused increases in applicant fees that probably would not have been undertaken on the initiative of testing organizations alone. The 1979 New York law produced substantial technical problems and some areas of unintended encumbrance and intrusion. Several of these problem areas were modified in 1980 in a cooperative effort in which our organization took an active part.

Over time full analysis of the impact of disclosed testing on test results must await research that can be performed only after several years of disclosed testing.

In no small measure the New York act has worked reasonably because of the prudent regulations and sensible enforcement procedures of the New York Education Commissioner and his staff.

Indeed, as the various test programs adjust to disclosed testing, there is a greater risk that ill-advised regulations and enforcement procedures will emanate from the State educational bureaucracies than there is a probability that substantive provisions of a New York-type law would, themselves, prove intolerant if enacted in another State.

There is little question that to date New York has effectively preempted the national testing issue. It has acted, in effect, to set a national standard for many test programs. As Pennsylvania has done in the area of agricultural product standards and as New York itself has done in the insurance law field, it has established a de facto national standard.

New York has done this by providing a powerful impetus to increased test disclosure nationwide. That impetus has come by virtue of the need and desire of test sponsors to maintain testing opportunities for New York students and schools, as well as from the momentum of public opinion arising as test disclosure increased scrutiny of the underlying soundness of admission testing. Testing organizations like ours have discovered that, on balance, test disclosure promoted public confidence in the integrity of the test instrument and the testing process. It became symbolic of our public accountability. Indeed, openness has helped us in our quality control efforts.

As other States have considered test legislation in the last 2 years, nearly all have deferred to the New York law and experience as reference points. Most have concluded that the considerable progress toward national test disclosure made by programs like ours, steadily joined by a growing list of major test sponsors, had obviated the need for State-by-State regulation.

In many instances, test sponsors have accelerated their commitment to openness in order to show good faith and thus eliminate a need for potentially burdensome regulation. During this past year's sessions there was support in several State legislatures for lesser included variants of the New York law.

One such bill is still under active review in California, another due for renewed consideration in the next session in Minnesota. Florida considered such a law in this year's session. In each of these cases, more than trivial support for legislation, none of it as yet enacted, came from education committee members and members on the legislative floor only after acceptance of provisions significantly less harsh than New York law or H.R. 1662.

Legislature study of varied problems of developing and producing tests led to reduction in the demand that every test form immediately be disclosed, so long as a substantial right to disclosed testing was preserved for those desiring that service.

Careful analysis of the need for research and technical information about tests led legislators to modify, eliminate or focus the "dragnet" style research filing requirements of the New York law.

Oregon, a State with an effective consumerist base, provided strong legislative support, still short of that needed for passage, for the 190 amended New York law. But, none of the many States evidencing strong interests in testing law has ignored the experience of the past 2 years.

None has sought to limit prematurely the self-regulating effort evident in most parts of the national testing community. While every State legislative proposal given serious consideration in 1981 has reflected the progress that has been made in the last year or two, H.R. 1662 has remained materially unchanged from its H.R. 4949 progenitor, drafted in 1979 after the New York law was enacted and before its effect produced radical changes in the procedures of many testing programs.

State legislators have learned that when it may be possible, indeed useful, in testing for admission to one career or profession may not be so for another. They have come in some measure to accept the differences in the character of tests and of their use in admission processes.

The Congress should avail itself of records, memoranda, and other products of hundreds of hours of State hearings that have taken place in the year since last we spoke of these matters in this hearing room.

I respectfully request that if the Congress is to consider a national testing law that it not disregard the major changes, both voluntary and coerced, that are so rapidly taking place in the admissions testing environment. As long as no State adopts a conflicting law, rather than a lesser included law, New York will provide a national standard admission testing law.

Steadily, many testing organizations voluntarily and by coercion are adopting national test disclosure policies. The forces that are getting them there should be allowed a bit more time to take effect.

If, in a year or two, the progress hitherto made toward voluntary openness in admission testing has not been maintained, or if in that time conflicting State laws and regulations have actually been enacted, the Congress might then consider a preemptive Federal testing act.

We will be pleased, at that time, to assist in the effort.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Bruce Zimmer follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF BRUCE ZIMMER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LAW SCHOOL ADMISSION COUNCIL, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The Law School Admission Council is a nonprofit educational association whose members are the 171 law schools approved by the American Bar Association. Directly and through our operating corporation, Law School Admission Services, we provide a wide array of services and publications related to law school admission. Our most administratively and operationally complex program is carried out by our own corporation. It is the Law School Data Assembly Service, the national system of gathering and distributing academic and biographical information for the law school admission process. By virtue of our substantial effort to render diverse academic records readily comparable, this system has been instrumental in encouraging the consideration and evaluation of applicant academic records in the admission process. Each year, information concerning 100,000 people from 3,000 colleges applying

Bruce I. Zimmer

Testimony before Subcommittees

of House Committee on Education and Labor July 21, 1981

Page 2

to over 250 law schools is collected, processed and communicated through this system. Our many other varied activities aimed at the support and improvement of the law school admission process are described in Appendix B. The

We

Law School Admission Test is another valuable component of the national law school admission program. contract with the American College Testing Program and Educational Testing Service for the development of the Law School Admission Test. The test is administered under the auspices of our operating corporation, Law School Admission Services. On behalf of the Council I wish to thank this Committee for the opportunity to present our views and to respond to your questions.

Proposed testing legislation has impact upon a large number and wide variety of test sponsors, testing agencies, and test score users, as well as upon test-takers. No one can speak for all members of any of these categories. We speak only for ourselves and for the test-using law schools that are our members. No other test sponsor or test agency speaks for us. The Law School Admission Council does not support added legislation to regulate educational testing agencies or test use. We are not persuaded that there remain problems which demand legislative remedy, or that the asserted benefits of such legislation would outweigh the detriments of additional regulation of an educational community already burdened with extensive regulation. Further, the impact of voluntary and responsive actions of testing organizations is steadily becoming more apparent to our consuming and evaluating publics and especially to our critics. The recent record of test programs like ours may or may not document a need for some forms of regulation of

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Bruce I. Zimmer

Testimony before Subcommittees

of House Committee on Education and Labor

July 21, 1981

Page 3

educational testing. We welcome study of this question.

We support the continued oversight of Congress in this matter. But we do not think a case for Federal admission test legislation has as yet been made.

The idea of federal testing legislation is not in itself unthinkable. Under certain potential circumstances a national law could preempt conflicting, confusing and oppressive state enactments. One appropriate and coherent scheme of regulation would be preferable to many uncoordinated and burdensome schemes. Indeed, our own research has led us to conclude that a sound model preemptive act could readily be developed. stances we face today suggest that enactment of a federal test law in the near future would be premature and probably unnecessary.

But the circum

The national debate on testing for higher education admission has come a very long way in the four or five years that testing bills have been receiving serious attention from state legislatures and from members of Congress and their staffs. The environment in which testing programs operate has changed dramatically since July 1979 when New York enacted a test disclosure law to become effective at the start of 1980. At different rates, many testing or

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commitments to openness in their testing The Law School Admission Council has offered test disclosure for

all of our tests throughout the United States and throughout the world, other than some very limited special administrations, since the New York law took effect. The New York test law did not permit us to continue our historic method of making scores comparable from test-to-test, and still disclose every

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