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Commentary By Robert VerBruggen

The SAT at the Crossroads

Education Higher Ed, Education

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