Rising numbers of teens who do not declare their ethnicity on college prep tests might be missing out on thousands of dollars in education aid set aside for minorities.
"If students are not indicating their race or ethnicity when they register to take a test, where those results might end up benefiting them in terms of scholarships, they are doing themselves a disservice," said Brian O'Reilly, executive director of the SAT program at the College Board.
Results from exams such as the PSAT are used to determine who gets National Achievement Scholarships, given to high-performing African-American students, and recipients of the National Hispanic Recognition award, given to exceptional Hispanic high school students.
But if qualifying teen-agers do not identify their race on the PSAT - as 6.2 percent of test takers neglected to do in Maryland last year - they will not be eligible for the funding.
"The number of students [not responding to the race question] is rising significantly in Maryland and around the country," said Maryland's Assistant Schools Superintendent Ronald A. Peiffer, who worries the trend will affect not only scholarships but also the state's ability to track progress.
"If this continues," Peiffer said, "it will make it more difficult to have a good sense of what performance gains, if any, we're making with African-American and Hispanic students, who typically lag behind."
In Maryland, the number of students not identifying their race on last year's PSAT more than doubled from the year before, to 1,134 students. There was a similar increase nationally.
It's a growing concern for school administrators who see their multiracial populations increasing, and there is still no category for mixed-race teens on test forms.
Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools have to separate test scores by race to identify subgroups of poorer-performing students.
More than 100 students in Howard neglected to indicate a race on the most recent PSAT.
O'Reilly said that not identifying race on tests could hide students from colleges trying to achieve more diversity.
The College Board sells the data it collects on tests such as the SAT and PSAT to colleges, which use the information for recruiting.
But Susan Graham, the founder of the Florida-based Project Race, a group that lobbied for the change in racial data collection by the U.S. census, says racially based scholarships and student targeting are not good.
