Six years ago I wrote a blog post entitled The SAT Meets PC" about the emerging trend of eliminating standardized tests as an admission requirement at selective colleges and universities.
The move was apparently motivated by the fact that the test scores of those the universities wanted to give preference to were not scoring high enough on the standardized tests and those they wanted to reject were scoring too high.
The trend gained momentum over the succeeding years (particularly in 2020 as Covid disrupted the education sector) until almost all top colleges got rid of the SAT or ACT requirement in what they argued was in the interest of more diversity, equity and inclusion.
In my previous blog post I pointed out the absurdity of all of this in that the use of standardized aptitude and assessment tests like the SAT or ACT were introduced to begin with in order to identify talent and aptitude in the first place.
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?
It appears that the pendulum is now swing back the other way.
In 2022, MIT reinstated the SAT/ACT requirement.
Last week Dartmouth said they were bringing it back as well.
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| Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/dartmouth-reinstates-satact-scores-drawing-attention-role-standardized/story?id=106987409 |
This week Yale announced it is considering reversing its position on the SAT.
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| Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-14/yale-weighs-bringing-back-sats-after-dartmouth-mit-reversal?embedded-checkout=true |
I know something about the subject of standardized tests. I have taken more of them than most people on this earth.
I have taken the PSAT, SAT, ACT, LSAT, the Multistate Bar Exam and the CPA exam.
Some argue that standardized tests are racist. However, they do not appear to be racist when it comes to Asian students, many of which have been brought up in families that have far different cultures than most Americans. Many parents of these students also only speak English as a second language. How is it Asians score even better than Whites on the SAT/ACT?
In fact, a recent study found that Asian students who had parents who did not graduate from high school scored higher on the SAT than Black students who had parents with doctorate degrees.
A final analysis compares the SAT scores by ethnic group across each of the nine levels of parental education: no high school, high school, vocational training, associate’s degree, some college, bachelor, master degree, PhD professional, PhD scholarship. Earlier, I have examined 8 data sets and found that the black-white IQ gap increases when education level increases, consistent with the hypothesis that more education does not reduce the IQ gap. This pattern was replicated in the SAT scores, for both years. The asian-white gap maybe increases with education level, but not the hispanic-white gap. It is striking that asians with parents who did not complete high school score 100 points above blacks with PhD parents.
Asian students with parents who did not finish high school also had SAT scores about the same as White students with parents who had college bachelor's degrees.
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| Source: https://humanvarieties.org/2023/08/06/a-remarkable-correlation-between-iq-and-sat-scores-across-ethnic-groups/ |
Standardized tests are designed to assess whether you have the abilities to succeed in college, law school, medical school and the like or the knowledge for professional certification. They have been used over years because most of the studies I have seen (and these studies were well known before 2018) suggest that there is a strong correlation between those that do well on those tests and those who successfully complete the coursework. The correlation is also better than high school grades in predicting future higher academic success.
Why is Dartmouth bringing the SAT back?
Dartmouth explains that their own research has shown that the SAT does exactly what it was designed to do when it was first designed---identify talent across a broader spectrum of society and also predict college success.
From Dartmouth's explanation about its research study on the reversal of the SAT policy.
...High school grades paired with standardized testing are the most reliable indicators for success in Dartmouth's course of study. They also found that test scores represent an especially valuable tool to identify high-achieving applicants from low and middle-income backgrounds; who are first-generation college-bound; as well as students from urban and rural backgrounds. It is also an important tool as we meet applicants from under-resourced or less familiar high schools across the increasingly wide geography of our applicant pool. That is, contrary to what some have perceived, standardized testing allows us to admit a broader and more diverse range of students.
In that the pendulum on the SAT looks to be in the early stages of swinging back you might want to read in full what I wrote about six years ago when political correctness started to overtake merit and common sense.
It also provides you with some helpful perspective and context on why the standardized tests were instituted in the first place in order to level the playing field in favor of talent and away from privilege.
Isn't this what equity is supposed to be about?
The SAT Meets PC (originally published August 9, 2018)
After World War II aptitude tests gained increased favor with both business and education due to their wide use in processing hundreds of thousands of military recruits into the right roles in the War effort. For example, my father was only a high school graduate at the beginning of World War II but he was assessed with high intelligence and trained as a cryptographer. He told me that he was one of the cryptographers who passed the top secret message to drop the atomic bomb.
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. The use of standardized tests like the SAT allowed college admissions to be democratized and merit based.
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 not have 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.
