The Academy Rethinks the SAT

[Elderberry]

WSJ 5/28/2026

University of California faculty say that when tests were dropped, student learning fell.

Six years ago, in the 2020 year of progressive pandemic madness, the University of California led the Ivory Tower movement to drop standardized tests as an admissions requirement in the name of equity. The experiment has been a failure, as more than 750 professors in STEM disciplines across the UC system now admit in a cri de coeur to reverse course.

“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” the professors write in an open letter to the Board of Regents signed by seven of nine chairs of UC math departments.

The Board of Regents in May 2020 moved to scrap the university’s SAT/ACT requirement on the spurious rationale that tests discriminate against minorities. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who appoints most regents, had claimed the tests exacerbate “the inequities for underrepresented students,” even though a faculty senate report found otherwise.

More: https://archive.ph/A3t55#selection-959.0-959.335

[massadvj]

This is not really about the SAT. It is also only partly about DEI. It is mostly about the fact that the demographics are killing higher ed and the only way academe can survive is to stop requiring the kids to take math. Otherwise, they'd have to fail 20 percent or more of the students.

Before I retired, the university where I taught came up with a course called "Women in Math" so students could take something non-quantitative in order to meet their common core math requirement.

That is how bad the cognitive decline in American youth has become.

[Wingnut]

SInce the late 60's early 70's academic liberals have embraced the newest shiniest crackpot idea.  Our town built a new Middle school that had no walls to define classrooms.  It was an "Open Concept" learning environment. 

It was so disruptive to learning that after two years they spent millions of dollars to build rooms with walls and doors  and convert it to a normal school with classrooms.  I know shocking, right!

Around the same time the high school implemented Modular scheduling and an open campus.  Open campus allowed students to leave the building at any time to do whatever High school students do when they are allowed to be free and not attend class!  They even put in a designated smoking area outside near the Football stadium.  Supposedly to keep the students from lighting up in the bathrooms or leaving the school grounds to light up a butt.

[DefiantMassRINO]

In the 1990s, Mass implemented standardized testing (MCAS) in response to failing public schools.  Business leaders and college admissions professionals were complaining that high school graduates were entering college or the workforce as functional illiterates.

In response, the state implemented MCAS - not to measure student performance but as a measure of public schools' performance.

The MCAS helped the state identify academically underperforming schools so the state could intervene.

Then, in the 2020's, the kids were so overwhelmed with test anxiety, and the teachers unions were so overwhelmed with being held accountable, that the state removed the requirement of passing MCAS to graduate highschool.

Adults are harming children by holding them to low or no expectations.

D.E.I. is racist and classist to presume that poor urban minority children are not capable of achieving at the same level as upper middle-class suburban white children.  D.E.I. is an admission of failure of Dems' identity politics and policies.

The Dem system is to let Government decide who gets to be more equal than the rest.  That is an afront to the principles of our nation's Founders.

Personally, I found the A.C.T. to be a more balanced exam (covered greater number of subjects) than the S.A.T., back in 1988/1989.

Standardized tests are a valuable empirical measure of academic institutions' performance.  Teachers' unions don't want to be accountable for having to fulfill and implement learning standards.  If there's no standardized testing, nobody will know if a specific school system, a specific school, or a specific teacher is failing at their jobs.