Senate Bill S5521

                                 BILL NUMBER:  S5521

 TITLE OF BILL :  An act to amend the education law, in relation to
prohibiting college learning assessment exams in colleges in the state

 PURPOSE :

The purpose of this bill is to stop the administration of the
collegiate learning assessment exams before they are standardized
college exit exams, Such exams can be used as a discriminatory
mechanism and can be misleading in assessing student academic
attainment will lead to job discrimination based on test score.

 SUMMARY OF PROVISION :

Section 1(a): Adds a new section 208(b) to prohibit collegiate
learning exams. Under this law, the board of regents is prohibited
from instituting or allowing the College Learning Assessment (CLA)
exam from being given at SUN? and CUNY campuses or at independent
colleges and universities that receive Bundy Aid.

Section 1(b): Discontinues college aid: Independent colleges and
universities shall forfeit state aid if the institution requires
student participation in a collegiate learning assessment (CLA) exam.

Section 1(c): Where a college requires student participation in a
              

collegiate learning assessment (CLA) exam and state aid has been
distributed pursuant to article one hundred twenty-nine of this
chapter, such college shall return the full amount of state aid by the
end of the state's fiscal year in which the collegiate learning
assessment exam took place.

Section 1(d): For colleges that administer a collegiate learning
assessment (CLA) exam and do not receive aid pursuant to article one
hundred twenty-nine of this chapter and or forgo such aid, their
collegiate learning assessment scores shall be filled with the
commissioner and such information shall be compiled and made available
to the public via the department's web site.

Section i(e): Defines the term 'collegiate learning assessment' as a
standardized testing initiative in higher education evaluation and
assessment which uses a 'value-added" outcome model to examine a
college or university's contribution to student learning.

Section 2: This act shall take effect immediately.

 JUSTIFICATION :

At a time when college graduates are having extreme difficulties in
finding employment and are faced with paying large student loans and
at a time when the cost of obtaining a college education is negatively
impacting families across our State, a proposed new exit exam for
college students is being deployed on private college campuses and
will soon find its way to public colleges and universities.

The exit exam, developed by an offshoot of the controversial Rand
Corporation, is called the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CIA).

It is a measurement of what a student has learned while in college and
the score can be required by a prospective employer. In a society were
high-stakes testing determines losers and winners, the CLA will create
a new mechanism to discriminate against students who are not good test
takers, students who cannot afford the expensive prep classes for the
CLA, and low income students who enter college already at a
disadvantage based on the k-12 education they received.

No longer will a college degree be enough to enter the labor market.
Now employers will be able to ask for the former student's CLA score
and determine hiring prospects for that student based on that score.

One major and undisputable fact on the CLA is that SAT performance is
tied to CLA score.

So we now know that those with higher SAT scores will score higher in
the CLA exam. Resource-rich families and students who paid for SAT
preparation classes to increase their score will do the same for the
CLA exam. Those same students have had the benefits of private k-12
education or are from well-funded k-12 school districts.

As it now stands, New York State students have the worst average SAT
scores in the Northeastern United States. In addition, low income and
minority students score poorly on these exams, If the CLA is allowed
to become a standardized exit exam, it will make these students into
second-class recruits for employers. The CIA score will become a huge
obstacle to obtaining employment after college graduation.

The CIA cannot be allowed to create a new barrier for college
graduates who have worked hard for their college degrees but will be
faced with employer discrimination based on this high stakes exam.

This legislation seeks to ban the use of the CLA at all State
University of New York and City University of New York colleges and
universities. It also bans the use of the CIA by private colleges that
receive public funding from the State of New York; such as Bundy Aid.

The private colleges can issue the exam for their students if they
fore-go state funding or reimburse the state for the funding they
received the year the CLA was administered as an exit exam.

To highlight the detrimental impact of the CIA on a college graduate,
you only need to know that the CLA score for a college administering
the exam will not be made public.

Yet the score for the individual student will now be a new standard
that employers can request at a job interview.

Jim Crow laws have evolved into such practices as a CLA exam and a
score that will decide who are the financial winners in our society.
With millions of Americans unemployed and underemployed and with the
current status of our labor market, the CLA will be systematizing a
number of economic, educational and social disadvantages that cannot
be allowed to take hold in New York State.

With both the largest state supported public higher education system
in the nation and the largest municipal higher education system in the
nation via CUNY, New York can lead the way in preventing the negative
impact of the CLA on our college graduates and youth.  Employers who
complain that college graduates are not prepared for the labor market
after college graduation do not need to base their hiring choice on a
standardized exam like the CLA. It is already well known that the SAT
is not a good predictor of college performance.

Employers need to better train their human resources staff to achieve
the best possible goals for their recruitment of new employees, not
disguise their biased hiring practice through requiring college
graduates to disclose a score that will fail to show their full
potential.

At a time when minority students are becoming the largest group
graduating from high schools and entering college, it appears that in
combination with the projected reduction in the Caucasian labor force,
a new mechanism to systematically exclude prospective minority
students from the job market is being devised and implemented and
slowly rolled out, starting with private colleges.

While CIA style exit exams are used in some Western democracies, their
populations are homogeneous and those nations have not had the
American experience with institutionalized racial bigotry, biased
public policies, and outright codifying of laws that discriminate
based on race and ethnicity.

The CIA represents that greatest threat to the civil rights of
low-in-come and minority youth and their communities in the past 5o
years! It must be banned in New York State.

 LEGISLATIVE HISTORY :

A9088 of 2013 died in Assembly Higher Education,
A6828 of 2015/16 died in Assembly Higher Education.

 FISCAL IMPLICATIONS :

None to the State

 EFFECTIVE DATE :
This act shall take effect immediately.