If the Varsity Blues scandal showed anything, it was that the wealthy and well connected have all kinds of ways of gaming the system to improve their chances of college admissions. Even beyond the obviously illegal, they can pay for tutors to help with (or even do) their homework. They can hire people to write their college application essays. And even if they are not wealthy, students who lack academic ability can always benefit from grade inflation or by dint of a quietly less challenging curriculum.
The one area where such undeserved and artificial advantages are minimized, and only merit can shine through, is standardized testing.
The SAT tests basic knowledge of algebra, geometry, grammar, and reading comprehension. As such, there is only one way to do well on it: One must personally possess the skill and knowledge to do basic algebra and geometry, recognize good and bad grammar, and read texts for comprehension. Something similar can be said of the ACT, which also tests for scientific reasoning.
Aside from having someone else take the test in your place, which is highly illegal and risky, there is no good way to get a leg up except to learn the material. Even if you hire a tutor, he cannot make you good at math unless you work at it yourself and learn the related concepts.
This is the great virtue of standardized testing. It levels the playing field. It allows those with the necessary knowledge to demonstrate it in a manner in which it is extremely difficult to game the system as one can in other areas through inflated grades, academic dishonesty, bogus extracurricular activities, bribes, and other devious means to which gifted students should not have to resort.
This is why the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is now restoring its requirement that applicants take the SAT or ACT. As school officials put it, scores on these tests are excellent predictors of success at MIT, especially in math.
In 2020, a task force at the University of California similarly found that SAT and ACT scores were “better predictors of success” for minority and low-income students. This makes very puzzling the California university system’s decision to disregard its own findings and scrap the SAT. Despite knowing how to tell who will succeed in college, California administrators are blocking the best avenue for poorer and less-connected students to shine in comparison to more privileged students with less ability and those who seek to attend college mostly because of social expectations.
There is a secondary concern here for students who are poorer and not especially successful academically. The worst thing you can do to anyone is admit them to a school where they cannot hack it, only to have them drop out with tens of thousands of dollars in debt and no degree. The wealthy are said to be born on third base — students dealt this horrible fate are being dragged miles away from the stadium before their game even starts. So those who trot out bogus arguments about merit being an outmoded or racist concept are doing no favors to anyone.
This fully rebuts California’s excuse for dropping the SAT, even as MIT rightly embraces it again. California has embraced the superficial position that standardized tests are discriminatory because whites and Asians score too well on them. But again, unlike grade-inflating teachers and corrupt college administrators, these tests are incapable of discriminating against students based on race. They can only discriminate against students who don’t know algebra, geometry, grammar, and reading comprehension.
California officials say they want to improve educational outcomes and college achievement for black and Hispanic students, but they evidently don’t want to do the hard work or upset the entrenched interests that have made that impossible. Gimmicks such as race-based admissions, which Democrats tried to restore in a 2020 ballot referendum, and the abolition of standardized tests just make it easier for students to lose — to wind up with no degree and tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
If California officials want to fix the problem, they should embrace K-12 education reform efforts and force the state’s dominant Democratic Party to abandon its extremist rejection thereof. The rejection of standardized testing only hurts students who know math and reading comprehension. And it will encourage students, teachers, and parents to play more silly games to get admitted to college.
