The New York Times dropped a bombshell last weekend by admitting the leftists’ war on standardized tests such as the SAT was “misguided” after the paper has cheered for it for years (see here and here).
For decades, leftists have waged war against standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT as part of college admissions, claiming these tests are racially, economically, and even gender “biased” against black and brown children and girls, have little predictability for a student’s future success, and are the root cause of persistent academic performance gaps among students of various ethnic groups.
One of the loudest opponents of standardized tests is teachers unions. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, claimed in a tweet: “Standardized testing doesn’t help kids learn, and it doesn’t help teachers teach.” Her claim was self-serving because she and the unions have vehemently rejected any objective measures that demonstrate how much the union-controlled schools have failed American children.
Leftists’ relentless attacks on standardized tests finally paid off. By 2022, responding to the Covid-19 pandemic and the nationwide racial reckoning sparked by George Floyd’s death, more than 1,700 American colleges and universities, including dozens of elite ones, had dropped SAT and ACT scores from their college admissions processes. Leftists claimed such a move would make college admission more “equitable,” benefiting black and brown children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Yet, a couple of years into this experiment, some, including college administrators, began to wonder if the war on standardized tests was “misguided.” David Leonhardt, a longtime Times reporter on higher education, wrote
