Harrison Bergeron said:
Can someone honestly answer this question - it was always my impression that the point of standardized tests was to level the playing field. How would an objective test / assessment harm "diversity?"
It is going to be really scary when medical schools drop the MCAT or licensing requirements for "diversity."
What is the public interest in having unqualified people in powerful positions? Is it a public good to have inferior people in charge of public safety issues whether doctors, attorneys, airline pilots, firemen, etc.?
They have realized such assessments consistently show those of African descent to be at the bottom.
So you have to either accept that Blacks score lower than Asians and Whites on such tests....and that this is most likely related to genetically inherited IQ.
Or that these tests themselves are basically discriminatory. They are either framed in a way that helps Asians and Whites score higher or some other kind of structural disadvantage that hurts Black Americans...like that Asians & Whites must be able to afford expensive test prep and Blacks can not.
Obviously entertaining genetically heritable IQ as a reason is simply a non-starter and anathema to modern egalitarian ideology. So the tests must be structurally racist and the problem.
[The average score on the LSAT varies vastly by race. Research by Aaron Taylor, Executive Director of AccessLex, a center for legal education excellence, shows that the
average score for white and Asian test takers is 153, while the average for Black test takers is 142 and for Latinos is 146]https://www.npr.org/2020/12/22/944434661/already-behind-diversifying-the-legal-profession-starts-before-the-lsat#:~:text=The%20average%20score%20on%20the,and%20for%20Latinos%20is%20146[The class of 2020 averaged a score of 523 of 800 on the math section of the SAT, slightly below the College Board's college-readiness benchmark score of 530. The College Board predicts that the average SAT test taker will earn less than a C in their first-year math course.
The average scores for Black (454) and Latino or Hispanic students (478) are significantly lower than those of white (547) and Asian students (632). https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/12/01/sat-math-scores-mirror-and-maintain-racial-inequity/Brookings, channeling the new orthodoxy, just comes out and says it:
But Black and Hispanic or Latino students routinely score lower on the math section of the SAT a likely result of generations of exclusionary housing, education, and economic policy which too often means that, rather than reducing existing race gaps, using the test in college admissions reinforces them.