This will be hard (but not impossible!) for the Regents to Ignore

From the Editorial Board of the NY Times: Seven years ago, the University of California system appointed an 18-member committee to study the use of standardized tests in its undergraduate admissions. The committee included professors from all 10 campuses and a range of disciplines. They spent a year studying the issue and published a 225-page report full of evidence and recommendations. 

The committee concluded that scores on the SAT and ACT, the main standardized tests for college admissions, did a better job measuring student readiness for college than high school grades. High test scores were particularly good at finding talented students from low-income families and underrepresented minority groups. For these reasons, the committee recommended the system continue to require applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores.

The university’s leaders disregarded the report. A few months after its release, early in the Covid-19 pandemic, the system’s Board of Regents voted to stop using the tests in undergraduate admissions. Initially, the university planned to make the submission of SAT and ACT scores optional, as many other colleges did during the pandemic. Almost immediately, though, the University of California began refusing to accept SAT or ACT scores, even from students who wanted to submit them. The policy was known as “test blind.” University leaders wrongly claimed that it would make admissions fairer and more equitable.

The results have been terrible... More than half of entering Berkeley students who took a math placement test incorrectly answered basic questions... Reading and writing skills have also deteriorated, and professors say they must spend time teaching elementary skills. “After the SAT was dropped, I got students who could not write a sentence,” said Janet Sorensen, an English professor at Berkeley...

Hundreds of faculty members describe the situation as an emergency. More than 1,500 science and mathematics professors, including the chairs of more than 60 departments, have signed a letter asking the university to reinstate the test requirement. More than 700 humanities and social sciences professors have signed a similar letter... So far, the university’s leaders are ignoring the faculty’s plea for urgency. They instead plan to appoint a new committee to study the issue over the next year, saying they need more time to understand the data. This delay could lock in the current policy until 2029 because students tend to take the SAT and ACT during junior year of high school. 

The university’s trustees, known as the regents, have the final word. When they next meet, on July 14, they should have the courage to admit they made a mistake six years ago and reverse it... Even Janet Napolitano, who was the university president in 2020 and recommended a test-blind policy then, now favors its reversal. “It was a worthwhile experiment,” she told us, “but as the results come in, it is increasingly clear that the experiment needs to be revisited.”

...When the regents meet this month, they will face a choice. They can acknowledge their error and restore the test requirement, or they can adopt a classic bureaucratic dodge and appoint yet another committee to study a problem that has an evident answer.

Full editorial at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/opinion/university-california-sat-testing-admissions.html.