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Standardized tests can identify bright kids from disadvantaged backgrounds—if that’s what colleges want to use them for.
It took but a few short years for standardized testing requirements to die.
Among schools accepting the Common App, the share demanding test scores dropped from 55 percent to 5 percent between 2019 and 2021. It was still at 4 percent this most recent school year, long after the COVID emergency that set off the trend. Federal surveys of college administrators depict a similar extinction-level event. They also show that nearly a quarter of non-open-admission colleges were entirely test-blind in 2022, meaning they ignored test scores even if students submitted them.
Yet maybe, just maybe, the tide is turning. This year, we’ve seen a parade of elite schools announce they’re mandating test scores again, including Yale, Dartmouth, and Brown.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Dispatch (paywall)
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Robert VerBruggen is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images