California universities using SAT for admissions are violating civil rights, lawsuit claims

CBS News ^ | December 10, 2019 | Li Cohen

[C19fan]

The University of California is being sued for requiring incoming students to take the SAT and ACT. The lawsuit claims that the tests have a well-known "discriminatory effect" and "exacerbate the inequities" for underrepresented students.

The lawsuit says the University of California (UC) is legally obligated to provide equal access to all students. The SAT and ACT, the lawsuit says, "reflect demographic and socioeconomic characteristics like family income, parental education and race" instead of measuring "academic ability or mastery of curriculum." The College Board, the organization behind the SAT, released a 2019 assessment of the SAT/PSAT in California that found 45% of white students scored 1,200 or above, while 12% of Latinx students and 9% of Black students got the same score. Parental education levels were also directly related to student scores — only 21% of test-takers whose parents did not receive a high school diploma met SAT benchmarks while 77% of those whose parents have graduate degrees met benchmarks.

[super7man]

University of California (UC) is legally obligated to provide equal access to all students

They DO provide equal access, to those who perform well in HS, have proper extracurricular activities (PC part) and perform well on a standardized test such as the SAT.

I do not know that the cut off is for the SAT score is at UC but it is a lot higher than 1200.

The SAT is a normative to balance out differences in the lives of the applicants. It should be taken into account with other things within the application. It should not be eliminated but it should not be the end-all of the application.

[TXnMA]

"To be fair, much of the academic failure in certain groups is cultural, but I don't know how one can sue a toxic culture for its role in making kids shun the behaviors that lead to success."

Accurate assessment...

[ActresponsiblyinVA]

For every candidate chosen due to affirmative action, a candidate is rejected because of their race.

[napscoordinator]

If California schools don’t like the SAT’s then they can take them out of admission board consideration. Weird they fell they have to sue.

[Mr. Jeeves]

To the extent that modern liberal arts curriculums are designed to create Socialist activists, the complainers are 100% correct: why should they be refused a chance at a valuable looters’ credential simply because they lack intelligence? :)

[Wuli]

The ENTIRE problem, such as it is, for “minority” students applying for college is not in the colleges use of aptitude exams like the SAT and others.

The problem for such students, if an exam like the SAT is a problem for any one of them, rests with the high school they attended. Either that high school provided them with an education that did not adequately prepare them college, or when they attended high school they failed to apply themselves as best they could for what their school had to offer.

Everyone claiming they seek to improve “minorities” chances for getting into college, need to quit the misdirection. They need to work with the high schools and not try to lower the standards to get into college.