It's an undisputed fact about standardized college entrance exams.

The students who tend to get the best scores as a group are those who enjoy racial or economic privilege or both.

That's caused many education advocates to argue that the tests are biased somehow against students

who may have great potential but fewer advantages early in life.

But here's a question.

Do tests like the SAT and ACT cause inequities in American, or do they simply make existing inequities

impossible to ignore? From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. Elite universities

are currently wrestling with these questions. Starting in the pandemic, many changed admissions

policies to consider applicants with or without test scores.

But some schools, including MIT, have reinstated requirements for those scores, in part because

testing proponents say stellar results can help an otherwise disadvantaged student rise to the top

in a way that grades alone cannot do. David Leonhardt has been covering this as a senior writer at the New York Times,

where you can find his article, The Misguided War on the SAT.

David, welcome back to think.

It's good to be back. Thank you.

Why did many schools remove the requirement for applicants to submit

SAT and ACT scores during the pandemic.

Was it strictly that these tests could not be conducted easily in a socially distanced way?

That wasn't the only reason. That was certainly part of the reason. And that really accelerated

the move away from standardized tests. But we had already seen growing skepticism toward or

hostility to standardized tests from a lot of colleges even before the pandemic. And I think there

are multiple reasons for that. One, who likes standardized tests? I still remember the anxiety

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