Several years ago, Michigan thought it had the answer to a long-standing problem with a standardized test designed to measure academic proficiency in high-school seniors — cash. As student participation in the optional test waned, the state offered a $2,500 scholarship for high performance on the exam as an incentive to participate. Where the state saw inducement, however, the ACLU saw bias and recently filed suit, raising useful questions about the value of Michigan’s test and similar tests nationwide.

This practice of awarding money based solely on standardized test scores is common. One of the best known is the National Merit Scholarship program, which uses the Preliminary Standardized Achievement Test (identical to the SAT) as its only critera for selecting semi-finalists. In its suit, the American Civil Liberties Union cites statistics that minorities are under-represented among scholarship recipients. It is not the first to question the fairness of a test that notably favors students who come from affluent backgrounds, who attend better high schools and who can afford supplemental education and coaching.

A similar suit was brought in 1989 against New York state, which used the SAT as its only factor in awarding the Regents and Empire Award to high schoolers. Girls applying for the scholarship consistently had higher grades than their male counterparts, but had lower SAT scores, so they received fewer scholarships. Sharif v. New York State Education Department (1989) ruled that other factors, such as grades, must be used in determining recipients, and, as a result, girls now receive 51 percent of the Regents Awards.

On the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) test, more than 70 percent of students in wealthy school districts passed, while in the poorer inner cities, often fewer than 10 percent of students passed the test. Worse, evidence showing a correlation between performance on standardized tests and future academic success is often inconclusive and hotly contested.

Awarding money to students exclusively for high scores sounds good in theory, but in practice it tends to bar those who cannot afford a superior education and have not had a strong learning environment at home — factors beyond their control. Rewarding some students for these factors has the effect of denying others and widening the achievement gap among students.

This does not mean that standardized tests should be scrapped altogether, but they should not be the sole decision-maker when distributing much-needed scholarship money. Other factors, such as extracurricular activities, class rank and high school transcripts need to be taken into consideration so as to judge the performance of the student in relation to their particular school setting.