Business used the tests after the War for hiring for management positions based on whether someone had the aptitude to succeed rather than simply focusing on a college degree. It was the same reason that the Armed Forces used aptitude tests. Quite simply, in those days only 1 in 10 went to college. If someone did not attend college it most likely had nothing to do with their ambition or intelligence. They simply did not have the financial resources to continue their education.
The use of standardized tests leveled the playing field. It did not matter if your father wasn't a bank president or you did not go to a boarding school. It only mattered if you had the smarts to succeed.
Interestingly, a Supreme Court case in 1971 (Griggs v. Duke Power Co.) ruled that jobs-based aptitude tests were potentially discriminatory as they could cause "disparate impact" when used by employers to assess and predict the performance of workers for promotion and advancement. As a result, a college education became the "default" for determining who would get on the management track and college became the only ticket for future advancement. High school graduates were left out in the cold no matter what their abilities might be.
The use of the SAT and ACT tests began being used extensively in college admissions decisions for similar reasons after the War and their importance grew after the Griggs decision. Admissions into the Ivy's and other top schools that were historically based on family connections and the East Coast boarding school they attended became democratized through the use of standardized tests.
Using a standardized test that measured one's aptitude for college work leveled the playing field. It allowed schools to find overlooked talent who may not have had all the advantages of the prepsters on the East Coast. It did not matter if you hailed from Michigan, Montana or Mississippi and did have had the same access to a quality high school education that the affluent had. The SAT showed whether you had the ability to do the work. The SAT also allowed admissions officers to objectively compare a student from the Choate School with students from Chillicothe, Ohio and South Central LA.
You can therefore argue that standardized testing has been one of the biggest factors allowing deserving, overlooked people to be recognized and receive opportunities to get ahead in the military, business and education over the years. This led to millions being elevated in their class status in the United States.
In fact, it would be difficult to point to anything else that has had a bigger impact on improving class mobility and opportunity for deserving people over the last 75 years.
Therefore, I find it interesting that more and more colleges are dropping the SAT and/or ACT as part of their admissions process.
The University of Chicago announced last month that it was dropping the requirement. Chicago joins over 1,000 other colleges and universities that have eliminated the standardized test in their admission decisions.
What is interesting is that the argument for doing so is to "enhance diversity".
That seems particularly ironic in that standardized tests were introduced in order to "enhance diversity" in the first place. They were introduced to identify talent and aptitude without regard to anything else--family background, wealth, race, religion or gender.
We now have to get rid of these tests to do the same thing they were introduced to do?
Standardized tests are not just a big topic at the university level. They are also under attack in New York City where they are used for admission decisions for the city's top high schools.
The reason?
Too many Asians are scoring well and too many Blacks and Hispanics are scoring poorly.
52% of admission offers to New York City's elite high schools for 2018 went to Asians.
4% to Blacks.
6% to Latinos.
27% to Whites.
This is not fair according to New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio because Blacks and Hispanics make up about 70% of the city's school population but they are only getting 10% of the spots in the elite high schools due to their standardized test scores.
On the other hand, Asians make up 13% of the school population but got 52% of the spots.
Accordingly, DeBlasio has won approval to get rid of the standardized test and allocate spots in the elite high schools so that Blacks and Hispanics get somewhere close to 50% of the admission offers.
All in the name of diversity.
Of course, if the NFL determined who made their rosters with similar thinking they would no longer consider 40-yard dash times or how much an athlete could bench press. They would also allocate a set number of roster positions to those that played in the Ivy, Patriot and Mountain West conferences and cut back those who played at Alabama, Ohio State or USC.
All in the name of diversity.
Of course, there remains the question as to whether putting individuals in positions where they are in over their heads is really in their best interest.
Well-regarded African American economist Dr. Thomas Sowell argues that affirmative action programs aimed at promoting diversity actually do more harm than good for minorities. After all, it easy to see that putting someone in an NFL game that is ill-equipped could hurt them. It is harder to see that in college or high school admission decisions.
Minority students admitted to institutions whose academic standards they do not meet are all too often needlessly turned into failures, even when they have the prerequisites for success in some other institution whose normal standards they do meet.
When black students who scored at the 90th percentile in math were admitted to M.I.T., where the other students scored at the 99th percentile, a significant number of black students failed to graduate there, even though they could have graduated with honors at most other academic institutions.
We do not have so many students with that kind of ability that we can afford to sacrifice them on the altar to political correctness.
Such negative consequences of mismatching minority students with institutions, for the sake of racial body count, have been documented in a number of studies, most notably "Mismatch," a book by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., whose sub-title is: "How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It."
A law professor at the University of Pennsylvania named Amy Wax was recently placed on probation and prohibited from teaching required first year courses because she questioned the wisdom of the school's affirmative action program. In doing so she stated that she had never seen a black student rank in the top quarter of the class and only rarely in the top half. She claimed that almost all black law students gained admittance due to diversity mandates.
Penn's law school dean refuted Wax's claims. However, he produced no data to support his claim that "black students have graduated in the top of the class" at Penn Law.
Wouldn't that be relatively easy to do considering the amount of data that a law school typically compiles for accreditation purposes and for the annual law rankings that are done by US News and others?
The Dean's defenders state that he cannot release that data due to privacy concerns. That is nonsense. We are talking about aggregate data. I would like to see the class rank distribution and graduation rates for all admitted minority students at Penn for the last 10 years.
Is Professor Wax right or wrong in her assertion? If wrong, the discipline is warranted. However, if she is right doesn't Penn owe everybody an explanation and shouldn't more research and thought go into whether its affirmative action programs are helping (or hindering) minority students?
In the meantime, the SAT has met PC (political correctness) and ability seems to be losing in the name of diversity.
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