Should The SAT Test Be Outlawed?

Test Preparation
1

"It was bound to happen, and, not surprisingly in California. The University of California (UC) is being sued in state court because it requires applicants for admission to take either the SAT or ACT test. The allegation, unquestionably factually correct, is that minority students generally do poorly on standardized admissions tests and thus are not admitted in large numbers to the prestigious university, forcing them to attend other less competitive schools, endangering lifetime job prospects.

Facing political and potentially judicial pressure, UC may capitulate and make the school test optional –a task force is looking into it, and the chancellor of the Berkeley campus favors it. In my opinion, doing that would be a big mistake: arguably America’s greatest public university would be rejecting what historical experience suggests is very good predictive indicator of the likely collegiate success of students. Why? Because it produces a student body whose ethnic/racial composition does not comport with that favored by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and current progressive notions of distributive justice. Moreover, it is an attempt to judicially undermine the voters of California, who constitutionally mandated two decades ago in a amendment modeled after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 that California public institutions shall not use race, sex or ethnicity criteria in admission decisions (Proposition 209)." …

https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardvedder/2019/12/16/should-the-sat-test-be-outlawed/#3a540ff13dd8

2

Isn’t the truth that the vast majority of students, regardless of income or race or ethnicity etc do not attend prestigious schools? You don’t have to attend a “prestigious “ school to succeed.
The issue we have isn’t standardized testing - it’s the mess that K-12 education is in poor areas in our country.

3

There have always been people who can’t meet the qualifications who complain. Perhaps, they would be better served by studying for the test especially now that there are good to excellent free services available online. Placing folks into categories based on whatever is the norm, takes away from those who fall into the category and can meet the bar.
If you want to go to these prestigious U’s, you need to have the grades and the stats. The SAT is the only factor which can compare candidates across the board.

4

ACT also. But just because they are convenient does not make them the best measures to compare applicants across varying high schools. Indeed, both UC and Harvard found that achievement based tests (SAT subject, and AP for Harvard) are better predictors of college performance than SAT or ACT (which they found worse than HS GPA). But with the SAT and ACT having incumbent status, using the other tests tends to create barriers against those from less advantaged backgrounds, where they may not know that the other tests may be useful.