The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Wednesday, the shelling continued in Beirut despite UN efforts towards a cease-fire, and Pres. Bush said there would no change in relations with Cuba until it changes its ways. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Charlayne Hunter-Gault is in New York tonight. Charlayne.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: After the News Summary, we go first to the issue of what to do with aging [Focus - Housing Dispute] high rise apartment buildings for the poor. Kwame Holman reports. Next, we have a documentary [Focus - New Refugees] on the world's newest refugees, the Turks from Bulgaria, then a debate [Focus - Grading the Test] about bias and the Scholastic Aptitude Tests or SATs and finally we have a Penny Stallings essay about the comeback of the roller coaster [Essay - Scream Machine]. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: A UN cease-fire resolution stopped the shelling in Beirut today but not for long. After a relatively quiet morning, Syrian and Christian guns opened up on residential areas on both sides again this afternoon, once again sending residents to underground shelters. In Damascus, Syria, a coalition of Muslim factions met to plot their strategy against the forces of Christian Gen. Michel Aoun. At the State Department in Washington, a spokesman reiterated support for the UN resolution.

RICHARD BOUCHER, State Department: First of all, I believe we've made clear many times to all sides in the fighting that there can be no military solutions of the problems of Lebanon. This applies to all parties in the conflicts. The UN Security Council's statement of last night goes to the heart of the matter and it has our full support. The senseless bloodshed there has gone on for far too long and it must cease. We urge in the strongest terms that all parties abide by the council's call for a total and immediate cease-fire.

MR. LEHRER: Gen. Aoun said he was ready to accept the cease-fire if Syrian forces would lift their blockade of the Christian areas. There was no direct reaction to the UN resolution from Syrian and Muslim forces. Charlayne.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Poland was thrown into a new round of political turmoil today when Solidarity defied the ruling Communist Party and nominated Lech Walesa as the country's next prime minister. The move, supported by two small non-Communist parties, increases the prospect of a non-Communist government in Poland for the first time in 45 years. Together the three parties hold 57 percent of the seats in Parliament.

MR. LEHRER: Fidel Castro must change the system before the United STates can normalize relations with Cuba. Pres. Bush delivered that message today. He spoke in Miami at a political rally for a Republican Congressional candidate.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Some day I'd like to see improved, yes, normalized, relations with Cuba, but that cannot be and it will not be as long as Castro violates the human rights of his own people, as long as he almost alone in the entire world now swims against the tide that is bringing sweeping change and democracy and freedom to closed societies all around the world.

MR. LEHRER: The White House said Pres. Bush will announce his anti-drug program September 5th on national television. It will be Mr. Bush's first prime time address to the American people since he became President.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The second test flight of the controversial B- 2 Stealth bomber was cut short today because of problems with an oil pressure indicator. The aircraft was scheduled for a three to four hour test flight out of Edwards Air Force Base in California, but an Air Force spokesman said it returned early because of minor concerns about the indicator. The $530 million bomber is the most expensive war plane in history.

MR. LEHRER: Recession watchers received good economic news today. Monthly figures on industrial production and housing starts were both up. The Federal Reserve said industrial production rose .2 percent in July, following declines in May and June. The Commerce Department said new housing starts were up .8 percent in July.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Finally tonight some news for the moonstruck. At precisely 8:23 PM Eastern Time, the moon and the earth will meet in shadow, creating the first total lunar eclipse visible in North America since 1982. The nocturnal dance is expected to last five and a half hours. That's it for the News Summary. Still ahead, what to do with aging high rises for the poor, the fleeing Turks of Bulgaria, bias and the SATs, and an essay on roller coasters. FOCUS - HOUSING DISPUTE

MR. LEHRER: A housing story is first tonight and for a change it is not about the scandal in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This one is about those high rise apartment buildings years ago to house low income families. In many cities they became such havens for drugs, crime and disrepair they were demolished. Kwame Holman reports on the challenges to such plans in Newark, New Jersey.

MR. HOLMAN: April 19,1988 a six hundred unit public housing high rise was dynamited in Kansas City, Missouri. In July that year three high rises were destroyed in Boston's Mission Hill Public Housing development. Last May in Providence, Rhode Island it took two dynamite blasts a wrecking ball to fell an apparently sturdy Hartford Park Public Housing high rise. But when the 13 story Scudder Homes Buildings were blown up in Newark. New Jersey two years ago it was to be the start most massive destruction of public housing high rises in the Nation. The verdict in Newark and the other cities was that high rise buildings are the wrong way to house the poor, especially families with children.

MAYOR SHARPE JAMES, [D] Newark, New Jersey: This whole problem started with crime running rampant, drugs running rampant, families being held in hostage, children being raped, fire and police personal refusing these units. We had to do something and everything I have said has been the lifestyle in high rises in Newark.

MR. HOLMAN: This is the Christopher Columbus Homes Public Housing Development in Newark. The Newark Public Housing Authority proposed to demolish these high rises and 31 others, some 5700 apartment units in all. Tenants say living in Columbus Homes can be nerve racking.

MARY STALEY, Columbus Homes Tenant: You are nervous. One afternoon I stepped of the elevator and a boy got shot right there in the lobby just as I come off the elevator and it seems like there is nothing being done about it.

MR. HOLMAN: A 1984 report by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development singled out the Newark Housing Authority for managing its housing poorly. The Authorities critics say its performance has improved only marginally since then. Newark City Council Member says the Housing Authority is deliberately disinvesting in the high rises that it wants to demolish.

DONALD TUCKER, Newark CityCouncil: It become difficult for the tenants to deal with staying in Columbus Homes when the Housing Authority pulls back basic services such as janitorial services, such as police services. What happens is that they are creating an environment which in fact is going to create an exodus by the tenants primarily based on deplorable conditions that exists.

MR. HOLMAN: Ethel Brown heads the Tenants Council at Columbus.

ETHEL BROWN: Columbus Homes Tenants Council: Those empty buildings over there as far as I am concerned is good structures. They have been empty now for I would say about 80. We had no crime when it was those buildings. We had no crime then but as soon as they empties the buildings that is when our crime started coming in.

MR. TUCKER: They are dealing with their own in ability to do an effective job so what they intend to do is to blow up the evidence and that is to blow up the units.

MR. HOLMAN: The Newark Housing Authority says once the high rises are demolished most public housing tenants will be moved into new Townhouses.

MAYOR JAMES: Every unit that was built low rise still looks good ten years later, 20 years later, 30 years later. Still looks good and people still proud to call it home.

MR. HOLMAN: By most accounts Public Housing tenants are split on the demolition issue. Many fear the crime and dilapidation others want to stay because the high rises are home. This is the Kruchmer Development where the Newark Housing Authority wants to demolish three high rises. John Walker is President of the Tenants Council.

MR. WALKER: Some tenants don't want to leave because it is their roots. They have been here you know all their lives. They don't want to leave but under the circumstances they are forced to leave.

MR. HOLMAN: Community Activist says that instead of moving people out of the high rises people should be moved in.

VICTOR DE LUCA, Community Activist: If there are structures that are sound and no one is saying, no one has said that these buildings are in danger of falling down. All they are saying is that they don't work. What we are saying is don't we have the creative talents to make them work. There has got to be ways. There has to be architects and managers and engineers that can make these buildings work.

MR. HOLMAN: De Luca and other critics of Newark's demolition plan say public housing high rises like these in New York City when tenants are screened and adequate services and security exists. They also say eliminating public housing is wrong in Newark a City with a homeless population estimated between six and twelve thousand and a City where thousands wait to get into subsidized housing. 20 percent of Newark residents are classified as poor. Those who oppose demolition of the high rises claim renovating them would cost less than the Housing Authority Plan to build new townhouses.

MR. TUCKER: The units do not have to be torn down in order to be made livable. We have hired experts, housing experts, who are national in scope to in fact develop a plan and to certify based on existing appropriations what can be done with Columbus Homes.

MAYOR JAMES: Totally wrong. Everyone knows that the figures are there. To rehabilitate the high rise units all of us have the same report. It runs about $70,000 to $80,000 per unit to put people back in the high rise. We have built already and Councilman Tucker were there. You can buy a module house for $48,000. Three bed room, living room, dining room. pride, ownership and put a person in it.

JOHN WALKER, KRETCHMER TENANTS COUNCIL: The kind of houses I have seen I don't like them anyhow. I don't think they are strong, the look prefabricated. have little match box bed rooms. You can hardly hang pictures on the Wall. I don't like them.

MR. HOLMAN: The dispute over the fate of the Public Housing Buildings ended up here in Newark Federal Court. I an a suit housing advocates charge the demolition plan violates federal civil rights and housing laws. The Judge in the case ordered the sides to go to mediation. Meetings have been going on for months. Harris Davis is lead Attorney for the low income housing coalition which brought the suit.

HARRIS DAVID, Lawyer: It is reducing housing stock for poor people the overwhelming percentage of whom in public housing and on the Housing Authority waiting list and homeless are racial minorities?

MR. HOLMAN: The Newark Housing Authority declined to be interviewed on the specifics of the law suit but Major James dismisses the claim the demolitions past or future segregate minorities.

MAYOR JAMES: They have been relocated. Tenants from Columbus Homes based on their own requests. I get letters every day saying please get me out of here. I have a drawer full of them and they have been relocated all over the city. You know this is Newark 1989 you can live in any neighborhood.

MR. HOLMAN: But the biggest problem may be where these buildings are located. Like many Urban Public Housing Developments the Newark High rises sit on valuable intercity real estate and pressure to turn that land over to private developers is growing.

MAYOR JAMES: You are talking about two to three million dollars of development going on, talking about new housing. talking about more police, mounted police, talking about a cleaner city. We are talking about an open door for builders to come into the City of Newark.

MR. HOLMAN: In fact private developers already have been promised the rights to the land that would be cleared by the demolition of Columbus Homes. Housing Activists say the demolition plan is designed to move the poor and minorities off of prime land.

MR. DE LUCA: The land that they built the public housing was land that no one wanted. Now Newark is a place to invest and the land where public housing is along the railroad tracks and highways and along the riverfront is land that developers want. They want to change the character and nature and economic levels in the City of Newark.

MR. HOLMAN: But Mayor James says the lawsuit over the demolition plan endangers federal funding for any public housing in Newark.

MAYOR JAMES: The longer we procrastinate the longer we debate, the longer we fight the federal dollars will go to Chicago will go to Washington, will go to New York. The best plan is one that we have now and go forward.

MR. HOLMAN: Leaders of the Anti demolition group say even if the law suit fails they have scored a victory. In the past demolition of public housing has gone unchallenged.

MR. DAVID: Unless we begin to address and immediately solve this crisis of homelessness and lack of affordable housing for low income people I can't imagine what it is going to be like in 5, 10 or 20 years in this country unless we turn this situation around.

MR. HOLMAN: Meanwhile the secret court ordered negotiations over the demolition plan continue and sources tell the Newshour a compromise is being worked on that will allow substantially less high rise demolition and more renovation than the Newark Housing Authority wanted.

MR. LEHRER: That compromise is expected to be announced tomorrow in a New Jersey Federal Court. FOCUS - NEW REFUGEES

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: We turn next tonight to documentary report Ethnic Turks fleeing from the die hard nationalist policies of communist Bulgaria. Over the last 3 months an estimated quarter million people have abandoned their generations old homes in Bulgaria. They have set off the largest stream of refugees to escape from Europe since World War II. These new refugees are Muslims fleeing a campaign of ethnic persecution designed to rid them of their Turks and religious identities. Our report by Peter Marshall of the BBC begins on the Turkish Bulgarian Border.

MR. MARSHALL: In less than 2 months 150,000 people all from the Turkish minority population of Bulgaria have left their homes and jobs and fled the country.

REFUGEE: We had to runaway from this operation. Yesterday the police came they gave us three hours they said gather your things.

MR. MARSHALL: And now it has come to this. All their possessions all they could gather dumped in cattle trucks. This what remains of the World they have left behind. They clutch the newly issued passports which got out of Bulgaria the land they were born which now denies their very identity. Five years ago the Bulgarian Government announced that all of its 9 million citizens would have Bulgarian Slavic names. For the 13 percent whose ancestors were Turkish this was when the terror started. Restrictions of their language and religion followed.

REFUGEE: Some of the conditions are unspeakable. You can't go out, you can't talk about anything in your own language. You utter a Turkish word in fear and you look around to see if any one heard you.

MR. MARSHALL: The Turkish Government has said that it will take all the refugees who want to come. A quarter of million have applied for passports to get out of Bulgaria. Another million could join them. While most go straight to relatives who have arrived in previous less dramatic waves of migration for many a tent in a border camp like Erdnay will be the first residence in the Home land. Jimal and his wife Misami are doctors from Rasgrad in Northern Bulgarian. Jimal is one of those who led protests against name changing. He was jailed. This year with distribution of pass ports he was told to leave the country. He refused and was beaten up. Now he has relented.

DR. JAMIL: I would like to have continued living in Bulgaria. I have got to big houses, land. I could have lived there if only my name. my rights, schools, mosques weren't banned.

MR. MARSHALL: Do you consider yourselves a Moslem?

DR. JAMIL: I have never been to a Mosque it was banned but yes I am Moslem.

MR. MARSHALL: So at the camps there is a process of education. Lesson in Turkish language and culture and in Islam. In Bulgaria such gathers are illegal everything Turkish is being suppressed. The over riding emotions a confusion at what has gone before and a rising anger.

REFUGEE: I'll never go back to Bulgaria I will only return with a gun.

MR. MARSHALL: The Turkish Government long criticized on its own record on human rights and with its popularity plummeting suddenly has an issue to unit the nation. At a huge rally in Istanbul they were even calls for Military action against Bulgaria. While the Turkish Government isn't about to send a task force it has launched forays with undiplomatic language. Turgut Ozal Prime Minister of Turkey in one of his loser moments made reference to Bulgarian pigs.

PRIME MINISTER OZAL: You have seen there are young girls coming from out of Bulgaria and the Bulgarian Soldiers have made antics with those girls, young girls.

MR. MARSHALL: They raped them?

PRIME MINISTER OZAL: Yes.

MR. MARSHALL: And that is happening?

PRIME MINISTER OZAL: I mean it is happening today. I mean this century.

MR. MARSHALL: The eternal flame to the dead heros of Bulgaria. Between these countries the iron curtain remains. On this side in the Bulgarian Capitol Sofia it is no surprise that the official government view is different. This is one of the repressive of all the communist states. Elsewhere it may be the age of Glasnost and Perestroika but here not matter what they claim the clamps are down as tight as ever. Nationalism., patriotism are played for all they are worth. Beneath them the memory of 500 years under Turkish domination under the Ottoman Empire. Here in Bulgaria the five Centuries of Ottoman rule are a reference point. The dog days under the most brutal yolk as the Government puts it must never return. So this seems to be the Polite Bureaus lines. Only by rebuilding the National identity, by denying the religion and even the names of the biggest minority the ethnic Turks can Bulgaria escape its past. In a predominately Moslem Village in the South of Bulgaria a family home is cleared for the last time. They are among the latest to head for Turkey and the seven villages in this area half the population has emigrated. That is in 8 weeks. Most of the rest plan to follow. There is no hint here of their wooed by the Turkish Government of succumbing propaganda. These people know the reality of life in Bulgaria as a Moslem and Ethnic Turk and they want to get out.

REFUGEE: My brother's brother in laws died 15 days after being released from the police station.

PETER MARSHALL: The nearby city of Kerjali is 70 percent Moslem. Four years ago tanks were sent in to quell demonstrations against the government's policy. Many were killed. Now half the population has gone to Turkey, and the rest are waiting for passports. Meanwhile, they've stopped work. This has crippled the local bus system, disrupted the mining industry, and much of commerce. It's the same across the country. At this shirt factory, they've lost 1/3 of production because workers have left. They're now trying to import labor from Vietnam and China. Some Bulgarians are being told to forego their annual holiday to help out in such cases. Others volunteer, but the loss of the ethnic Turks is felt most keenly on the land. Bulgaria is traditionally agricultural. Because of the labor shortage, the tobacco crop, which is vital, is in trouble. So people are being asked to do two jobs. Some of these crop pickers are from local hospitals. Others are waiters from a local hotel.

MR. MARSHALL: Why are you doing this?

WORKER: [Speaking through Interpreter] This belongs to the people. We can't let it rot. This is a sort of national wealth and we have to take good care of it.

MR. MARSHALL: There are few dissident voices. Last November at Sofia University, a group in support of glasnost was born and all but strangled instantly. Now Prof. Chavdar Kiuranov is one of the few still willing to speak out against the government's intransigence over the Turks.

PROF. CHAVDAR KIURANOV, Sofia University: The solution would be a real understanding between the Turkish minority and the rest of the Bulgarian people in spite of the fact that now there's a kind of chauvinistic wave raising among a part of the Bulgarian population and this wave is not coming from below.

MR. MARSHALL: It's coming from the top.

PROF. CHAVDAR KIURANOV: That's what I think.

MR. MARSHALL: And at the top in the Politburo, they're not backing down. Their attitude now is one of resignation to the Turks' departure.

ANDREI LOUKANOV, Bulgarian Politburo: Well, they must have their reasons. We have spoken to them. Certainly we have heard different views and we may hear many more. Everybody has his reason.

MR. MARSHALL: Do you not think that your government might have made a mistake?

MR. LOUKANOV: If you mean that by opening our border, we've made a mistake, I would disagree with you.

MR. MARSHALL: No, I don't mean that. I mean by your policy towards these people.

MR. LOUKANOV: After all, what we've done is open the border for every Bulgarian citizen to leave short, long period, to settle abroad, to come back, and that is something that has been done in accordance with our commitments under the Vienna accords.

MR. MARSHALL: At the border the desperate procession goes on. Up to 5,000 a day are leaving. Those without rail tickets or road transport cross on foot. Rumors that the government will soon revoke the passports or close the borders have increased the urgency, and all the time, the state feigns incomprehension. Our government licensed interpreter, Christina Basayeva, personifies this. She apparently saw it as her duty to tone down or mis- translate the Turks' grievances. Via Christina, a beating became a simple insult. A killing was translated as an arrest. So why, Christina, are the Turks leaving?

MS. BASAYEVA: I don't know. Really, I don't know.

MR. MARSHALL: You don't like Turks very much, do you?

MS. BASAYEVA: What does like or love mean? I mean, in the civilized world in the 20th century you can't like or hate a nation. Well, I can't forget what lies behind us and as we had a very eventful history, Bulgaria spent 500 years under Turkish domination, and this is a thing which I can't forget.

MR. MARSHALL: These people are leaving behind all that history, the half millennium of enmity. Out of hell, with all possessions in a hand cart, Turkey is far from a bastian of freedom and democracy, but they'll risk the uncertainties there. Better they feel than Bulgaria, a country which would crush their faith, their culture, their selves. FOCUS - GRADING THE TEST

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Next tonight the controversy over standardized testing. In just a few days, incoming freshmen around the country will be getting ready to start their college years. No matter where they are, one common bond links the nation's 1 1/2 million freshmen. Their new status was determined in large part by standardized tests. But there's a growing debate over the fairness of such tests. Recently we joined that debate with four experts with four experts with very different views on the subject. A short note: Technical problems forced us to lose our connection to Chicago before the segment was completed. We started with a background report by Correspondent John Merrow.

MR. MERROW: For millions of American high school students, it's become a rite of passage, three tense quiet hours sitting in a classroom, filling in little boxes. It's called the SAT, the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Last year, more than 2 million high school students took the SAT or its Midwestern counterpart, the ACT, the American College Test. It's not their first standardized, machine scored multiple choice test by a long shot. Kids start taking these tests early in grade school. A hundred million standardized tests are given each year to students from kindergarten through high school. That's two and a half tests per student per year. And critics say that these tests are becoming too important in determining what gets taught, who gets promoted, and who graduates. Twelve states won't promote children from grade to grade unless they pass a standardized test. Twenty-four states have standardized graduation tests and the federal government uses SAT and ACT scores to rank states. Many college admissions committees use SAT and ACT scores to determine who gets in. What do standardized tests measure? The SAT is supposed to measure aptitude, specifically, how well a student will do in his or her freshman year in college, but critics have long charged that the SATs are culturally biased, in favor of middle and upper middle class kids, most of whom are white. The latest charges are that the SATs and the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Tests, or PSATs, are biased against girls. National Merit scholarships are awarded on the basis of PSAT scores, and critics say questions about sports, the military and business generally favor boys. 15 percent more boys got the answer correct to this analogy question involving dividends and stockholders. The correct answer is [C], dividends are to stockholders as royalties are to authors. The SAT was created in an effort to make the selection process fairer to allow college entrance committees to make accurate judgments about students from different backgrounds and schools, but intensive coaching has been shown to boost scores, giving clear advantage to families that can afford the $600 tuition that these students paid. The criticism of testing mounts but so far no one has provided a credible alternative, so fair or not, standardized testing is increasingly important in schools.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: We take up those questions of the fairness of standardized tests and whether they are overused. Here to debate the issues are Gretchen Rigol, Executive Director of the Admissions Testing Program of the College Board, the organization that sponsors the SATs, John Katzman, founder and president of the Princeton Review, an SAT preparations service that coaches thousands of students each year. He's also author of a book called "Cracking the System, Revolutionary Techniques for Scoring High on the PSAT and SAT," James McMenamin, Dean of College Relations at Columbia University, where he oversees the university's admissions staff, and Denise Carty-Bennia, Chairman of Fairtest, a research and advocacy group that promotes testing reform. She joins us from Chicago. And first to you Mrs. Carty-Bennia. You believe that the tests are biased, right?

MS. CARTY-BENNIA: Yes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Can you give me some examples.

DENISE CARTY-BENNIA, "Fairtest": Well, we know overall that the tests are flawed in terms of the language they use, the speededness of the tests, as well as some of the culture references.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is it just gender bias, or are there other biases that you feel are built into the test?

MS. CARTY-BENNIA: No, there's also obviously racial bias, what we call cultural bias in the test as well. We've had examples where something such as minuet is to dance as beret is to bolar, clarinet is to sympathy, chariot is to wheel, sonnet is to poem, and gown is to petticoat.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And why is that culturally biased?

MS. CARTY-BENNIA: These are the words of the upper middle class in America primarily. This is not the language that inner city minority youth speak and clearly not the language that is necessary to succeed in college.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: We'll come back in a minute. Let me just get Ms. Rigol to respond to that. How do you respond to [a], the charge that it is biased racially, culturally, and in terms of gender?

GRETCHEN RIGOL, College Board: Let's think a minute about that question. What we're saying, the question on dividends, and royalties, and so forth, are we saying that young women or black students or Hispanic students aren't up to knowing about finance. It seems to me that maybe a hundred years ago we thought that women should not know those things, but I find it rather appalling that we don't think women should be able to cope with subjects like that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, before we go any further, Ms. Carty- Bennia, how about that?

MS. CARTY-BENNIA: We're not saying that women shouldn't know about that or that minorities shouldn't know about that. What we're saying is that this is the real world of 1989 and that there are still significant gender and racial gaps in our society with respect to exposure to that kind of language and it is simply not the kind of language that is necessary to succeed in college and, in fact, the scores that are reflected produced by this kind of language on the test make it impossible for many many women and many minorities to even gain admission to college, much less the college of their choice.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Ms. Rigol, is it your view that the test is not biased at all?

MS. RIGOL: The SAT is not biased. There are differences between men and women, but those differences, the difference between the scores between men and women on average, but those differences reflect some very real differences in the academic preparation and the academic expectations of young women. We take tremendous care to make sure that the tests have no bias in them. This involves reviews by individuals from all over the country from all different backgrounds, what we call sensitivity reviews. We also do statistical checks routinely before we put questions into the tests to make sure that they don't have any kind of even unintentional bias.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How do you explain the fact that women score consistently lower than men in the math part of the test then?

MS. RIGOL: Well, the largest score difference is in math. There's only a very small difference in the verbal section. And in math, one of the differences is that women take fewer math courses, particularly the higher level courses. Women also take fewer courses in chemistry and in physics and in some of the other sciences.

MS. CARTY-BENNIA: I hate to interject but that's very misleading on your part, Ms. Rigol. We know perfectly well that even when you control for SES, even when you control for curriculum --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: SES?

MS. CARTY-BENNIA: Socio Economic Status. And even when you control for curriculum, there are still inexplicable gaps in the performance of men versus women and in the performance of minorities versus non-minorities.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Inexplicable gaps?

MS. RIGOL: Almost all tests of mathematical ability, particularly the higher level tests that are given to students in high school and above show gaps between male and female scores, that this is not a phenomenon that is just something that we've seen on the SAT.

MS. CARTY-BENNIA: What is the phenomenon on the SAT, however, is that the gap has remained consistent and in fact, at the higher end, that is to say where you are talking about women and men who have the most economic opportunity in our society, the gap is even larger, even when you control for the same math curriculum, and with other tests, that gap is almost now indistinguishable.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Ms. Rigol.

MS. RIGOL: I don't quite understand the reference to almost indistinguishable. There are a lot of factors involvedin all of this. I don't think we know everything, but I think the first thing we have to do is we have to get all of the young women in this country to recognize their potential and to start taking a more demanding program. And I think we need to start at a very early age.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Let me just go briefly to Mr. Katzman. You coach students to pass this test. I mean, where do you come down in this argument?

JOHN KATZMAN, Princeton Review: We walk in as outsiders. We've worked with thirty or forty thousand students in the past couple of years and we're delighted if the SAT is good, we'd be delighted but it just isn't. That argument just doesn't hold water. It's very nice to say --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Which argument?

MR. KATZMAN: The argument that we test questions carefully to make sure the test isn't biased. The SAT is primarily used as a predictor of success in college. It is telling colleges that women will not do well, whereas, in fact, women do do well. They have better grades than men. So whatever factors are going on here, whatever else is going on, the SAT is telling you something that's wrong. The National Merit Awards, the largest scholarship program in the country, is primarily based on the PSAT and SAT, it is telling women that they have twice as much merit as women.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And so you're saying that you believe based on what your work has been that the tests are biased.

MR. KATZMAN: Absolutely are biased.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. McMenamin, you are a college administrator. Where do you come down on this?

JAMES MC MENAMIN, Columbia University: The SAT is not the most important part of the admissions process. Grades in 10, 11, and 12 relative to the high school curriculum and to the quality of the schooling is going to be the most important factor in most admissions decisions.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So are you saying that Ms. Carty-Bennia shouldn't be so concerned about it or what, about the bias aspect?

MR. MC MENAMIN: There's a lot of concern about the SAT because it's an unusual experience for high school students. It's a control situation. A lot of people see the SAT tests because of that and for other reasons as the single most important thing in admissions and the fact is that it isn't.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, what do you do at Columbia? Do you adjust for the possibility of bias in any way?

MR. MC MENAMIN: We look for signs of excellence and that may or may not include an SAT result as part of our interpretation of excellence.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why do you do that? Do you do that because you think there is some bias in the test?

MR. MC MENAMIN: We know that there is reasonable predictability of success in higher education and demanding curriculum with the SAT. It is not as strong a predictor as high school grades, so that what you might find in the college's results like Columbia is in a given year 40 to 45 percent of the high testers, young people with SATs over 1400, would be denied in our process. You would find a lot of people who are reasonably successful testers who would form the middle group of the student body, people who would test between the low 1200s to the high 1300s and you would always find a number of people at Columbia who would test between the 900s to below the 1200s. That would be almost a quarter of our class because we look at so many different factors that tell us about excellence in a student.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: We're going to have a problem in Chicago in a minute, so I just want to go back to Ms. Carty-Bennia. Do you think it's possible to construct a test that eliminates bias, gender and race, or do you think that these SATs should be eliminated altogether?

MS. CARTY-BENNIA: Well, I think the answer to that question is simply do we need them. I think Mr. McMenamin has just clearly said high school grades are a better predictor of performance in college. It is unclear to me what the SAT interjects into that process, except to eliminate a large number of racial minorities from consideration at those schools that use SAT cutoffs in terms of screening the applicant pool initially and even considering their application, why use it at all?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So your bottom line would be that the SATs should be eliminated altogether, and that grades and other factors from high schools should be the determining ingredients for college admission?

MS. CARTY-BENNIA: It's clearly a much better predictor at this stage.

MR. MC MENAMIN: If I could just come in for a second.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Let me just get Ms. Rigol to respond. What do you say to that?

MS. RIGOL: Probably what Jim was just going to say, that there is tremendous variation in grading practices around the country and there has been tremendous grade inflation. Most people don't realize that of the million students who graduated last year who took the SAT, their average grade point average was a high B. I mean, there are hundreds of thousands of students with straight A records coming out of our schools, and so the SAT is a common yardstick which helps the admissions people put all of this information into perspective.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So, Ms. Carty-Bennia, this is probably your last word. I mean, you just do not accept the idea that you use the SAT as one of a number of ingredients?

MS. CARTY-BENNIA: What we know is that a number of schools, a number of colleges and universities in this country, use the SAT as a cutoff, that is to say, if you get a score above it, you are considered for admission, and if your score falls below their cutoff, you are not considered, and we consider that a misuse of a highly flawed test.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Thank you. Mr. McMenamin, is that happening at colleges, and does it happen at Columbia?

MR. MC MENAMIN: We have some students at Columbia who are unusual people, fantastic people with personal strength and a very strong academic record who have very weak SAT scores, and I say very weak, sometimes in a very small number of cases, high 800s, low 900s.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So how do you find out about that without having the tests cut them off?

MR. MC MENAMIN: Well, they don't cut off. We're talking about people who have been admitted in this case. You look for other information that the SAT is going to tell you something that there's a problem with preparation here, that this student might encounter difficulty, but you might find other evidence that will tell you this is an unusual person who by virtue of their performance and their competitiveness will outperform the SAT. That will happen.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Katzman, I know that you only do test preparation, but do you have any response to that?

MR. KATZMAN: Sure. First of all, that's all well and good at Columbia, where you will look past bad SAT scores. But at for instance the University of California, the University of Texas, or the National Merit scholarship, it is a cutoff and it's point blank if you don't get the number, you're out. With black women scoring 250 points worse than white men, that strikes me as pretty flawed. If you take poison and water it down enough, it doesn't hurt you.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Ms. Rigol, do you have a response to that?

MS. RIGOL: I think what we ought to be focusing on is that black women are taking a solid academic program much less frequently than white women and I think we need to pay attention to what's going on in schools and what we're advising women to do, but the issue about cutoffs by the way is very often misrepresented. Many institutions will have one method of getting in which is a combination of grade point average and test scores and in a way it's a check against grade inflation, that if you have a certain grade point average, you only need a very low SAT score. If you have a lower grade point average, then you need a higher grade point. So it's not always that the SAT is used in isolation.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Katzman, what kind of improvements are you with the kind of -- I don't know what your procedures are, perhaps you could briefly explain -- but what kind of improvements are you able to bring about in test scores by virtue of the kind of coaching that you do?

MR. KATZMAN: The Princeton Review is a six week course preparing high school students for the SAT. Our average student walking in is scoring about 1000, which is about 100 points better than the national average. Walking out, he's scoring 1150.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How?

MR. KATZMAN: Which is 150 points better and the way we do it is very small classes grouped by ability and a real focus on the SAT, itself. Lots of people talk about the test but no one ever looks at it. We look at it a lot. We spend $1/4 million a year looking at it. Every single test given we send up to 40 teachers in to gather data.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But what are you teaching? Are you teaching substance, or are you teaching ways to take the test? That's what I'm trying to determine.

MR. KATZMAN: It would be nice. We're teaching what the test measures and what we have found that to be has nothing to do with intelligence, has nothing to do with the ability to do college level work, has nothing to do with anything in the high school curriculum. It's basic math skills, arithmetic, adding and subtracting fractions, fourth grade stuff, and it's basic vocabulary, and that's what's on the SAT, plus it's a great deal of test taking skill, test wiseness, and so we teach that too. The Princeton Review then teaches some vocab and reading skills, some basic math skills, and a great deal of test wiseness.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. McMenamin, how do you evaluate programs like Mr. Katzman in terms of what it does --

MR. MC MENAMIN: Very difficult to evaluate the programs because there has not been an exhaustive scientifically reliable study on Mr. Katzman's course or that versus a placebo effect. There has been a survey done by Mr. Whitlow at Harvard that is a survey that establishes there is very little difference between someone who themselves prepares very assiduously for the exam versus the assiduous preparation that Mr. Katzman provides his students.

MR. KATZMAN: The reason there's been no study is that the college board has consistently refused to participate in a study with us. We offer every six months to do a national study and they refuse.

MS. RIGOL: That's not true. We have offered. You have a letter, you have letters from both Don Stewart and Greg Anrig, presidents of the college board.

MR. KATZMAN: Turning me down.

MS. RIGOL: No. Offering to do a third party, a research study, and all the data be available.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Let me invite you all to settle this after the program. Let me ask you this, Ms. Rigol, if he can teach methods of how to take tests, he says a large part of this is just taking tests, what is really being measured in this test if he can teach it in six weeks?

MS. RIGOL: Every student who takes the SAT should be prepared, should know what the test is going to have on it, and that's the reason we publish this booklet Taking the SAT, and in Taking the SAT is a lot of the same information that is often included I know in various publications that others produce about the SAT, things such as the fact that the SAT is arranged from easy to difficult. That's not a secret. It's right here in Taking the SAT and we make 4 million copies available, things such as you get credit for every single one you get correctly so that for sure, everybody should have the basic test taking strategies and to have practiced on at least one test so that they know what the experience is going to be like. Before we lost Ms. Carty-Bennia, you heard what she said about eliminating the tests altogether and you responded to that to a certain extent. But if there, if you could make changes in the SAT that would make it less culturally biased, less gender biased, if you accept that argument, what kind of changes would you like to see, Mr. Katzman, what kind of changes do you think could be done?

MR. KATZMAN: First of all I don't see any reason that the SAT should be a multiple choice test. The sorts of reasoning to be measured on multiple choices is pretty shallow. The SAT, as major tests in other countries, should be an essay test. The skills don't see the SAT as a snapshot of how well educated you are. It's a goal. If the colleges said to students we want bald students, they would shave their heads. If they said we want kids who are good at the SAT, they'll become good at the SAT.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What's your reaction to that briefly, Mr. McMenamin, and how you would like to see it changed if it should be changed?

MR. MC MENAMIN: I'm in favor more for changes in society. I'm in favor more for women to be encouraged in the quantitative areas, for schools to be more equitable in the opportunities that they provide. I'm more on the side of the SAT being more of the messenger than the cause for anything that is unequal.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Ms. Rigol, the last time the college board made major changes in the SAT was 1974. Are you contemplating any changes as a result of this debate?

MS. RIGOL: Certainly not as a result of this debate. We are constantly looking at the test and ways to change it and improve it and meet needs better and we are in the midst, have been for the last three years, of a very intensive evaluation of the test. We are, I'm sure it probably will come as no surprise, looking at the possibility of an essay component. We're looking at the possibility of open response math questions. Down the road, we probably see some kind of computer adaptive testing which gives all kinds of possibilities.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But you're not contemplating getting rid of it?

MS. RIGOL: I think colleges and the members of the college board, which are colleges and high schools in the country, do want some kind of a national standard.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Well, on that note we have to leave it. Belatedly thank Mrs. Carty-Bennia in Chicago who's already left us, Mr. Katzman, Mr. McMenamin, and Ms. Rigol, thank you very much all of you for being with us. ESSAY - SCREAM MACHINE

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight some August evening words about roller coasters from Essayist Penny Stallings.

PENNY STALLINGS: Why do we do it? Why do we stand in line, pay our hard earned money tohave our wits scared out of us on the roller coaster? Okay, sure, not all of us do it, and plenty of those who do have youth as an excuse. But then there are the rest of us, purported grown-ups who are supposed to know better, and yet here we stand summer after summer telling ourselves this is for the kids, the last time, subjecting ourselves to an experience that's something like being dropped in a cuisinart. Today America's undergoing a roller coaster renaissance, with amusement parks all over the country spending millions of dollars to attract more screamers than ever before. This is one of the monster coasters that opened this season, the Great American Scream Machine in Jackson, New Jersey. In the coming long hot days of summer, over a million people will come here to be plunged 20 stories downward, wrenched around hairpin curves at 70 miles per hour, and turned upside down seven hair raising times. By simulating real danger, roller coasters provide the illusion of mastering a great challenge. For 2 1/2 minutes, everyday demons are blanked out by a mini vision of the apocalypse. Coasters pander to the primitive. Their impact is visceral. They zap the cinesis and make the heart race. They're exhilarating, gravity defying. They're the essence of cheap thrills. The invention of the roller coaster and other mass entertainments like the movies set in motion the debate between elitist taste and popular culture that continues to this day. The virtue of the intellectual versus that of the sublime, the sensational and the unreal. In that the roller coaster is profoundly American, like the hotdog, which along with the roller coaster was born right here in Coney Island a hundred years ago. In those days, Coney was a magic city, an escapist fantasy for the hordes of immigrants and working stiffs of New York's mean streets. Over a million a day came to stroll its boardwalks, thrill to its side shows and to ride this rickety vibrating mountain range of steel. Like Coney Island, roller coasters have had their ups and downs since then. They and other thrill rides fell out of favor in the '60s and '70s, rejected for more respectable, family oriented entertainment, the theme park, Disneyland and later Six Flags and Great Adventures replaced the earthy symbolism of places like Coney Island with sterile, technological perfection and presexual obsessions. They were clean, wholesome and more regimented than West Point. But eventually even Disneyland succumbed to the call of the wild. It built its own coasters but called them by different names, the Matter Horn, Space Mountain, and most recently Splash Mountain, the highest flume ride in the world. Now when it seems the everyday word holds all sorts of hidden terrors, it makes a kind of cockeyed logic to take on one we can control, if only for 2 1/2 minutes. Yes, you too can get instant relief from urban anxiety. Just keep your arms and legs inside the car and stay seated while the coaster is in operation. Are you ready? Here we go. RECAP

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Once again, Wednesday's main stories, a United Nations call for a cease-fire failed to end the violence in Lebanon, Pres. Bush said the U.S. would not normalize relations with Cuba until Fidel Castro allows more freedom for his own people, and this evening, Lech Walesa was nominated as a candidate for Polish prime minister by Solidarity lawmakers and two non- Communist parties. The two groups make up a majority in Poland's Parliament. Walesa said he would accept the nomination to end the Communist Party's monopoly on power. If Walesa can form a government, it would be the first non-Communist government in the Soviet bloch. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Charlayne. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.