Post-Affirmative Action, Fund Prep For Standardized Tests

We don’t need to engage in an acrimonious, pick-a-side fight over race and culture in America, though you wouldn’t know it from reading much media coverage. Gnawing at the communal cheese that is victimhood, commentary responding to Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College wrongly suggests that people who support ending the usage of race in college admissions are racists. The other side of the debate praises the end of racism against Asians and whites.

We need a toned-down conversation that focuses instead on helping all applicants meet the same standards.

It benefits the whole society if we stop the bickering and instead work to help those in poorer schools to earn higher grades and score better on standardized tests. Not all students, with or without help, will qualify for Ivy League schools or other highly selective institutions. But providing the resources – such as tutoring – to get students to work to their maximum ability, whatever that is, will prove far more helpful than what we’re seeing now. 

Experience has taught me that, for a host of reasons, achieving this aim is far from simple. Learned helplessness and the perniciousness of well-intentioned racism are real.

While I was serving on the board of the Northeast Prelaw Advisors Association (NAPLA), a topic closely related to this one arose. In 2020, some NAPLA board members wanted to draft a statement to the American Bar Association in support of dropping the LSAT requirement, suggesting that the test was racist. My response: Isn’t it racist to assume that African Americans and Latinos are incapable of meeting a higher standard? Why can’t we use some of our funds or work on raising separate funds to help struggling college students meet a higher standard? Assuming that they can’t make it is condescending.

I recall an awkward silence.  

The original cause of low-performing schools may well be redlining or other race-based policies of the past. Regardless, in the present, we still have to face poor outcomes for many students. We can’t change the past, but we can focus on fixing that. 

Perhaps creating, say, a 503c to raise and distribute funds for the cause could be a start. This could be for SAT, ACT, LSAT, MCAT, or other standardized-test preparation. Such a plan provides a road to success as opposed to the pothole-riddled underpass of victimhood we have been traveling. Coincidentally, it also provides us with a way for both sides to put up or shut up.

The Right complains that progressives do not want a truly equal playing field because they do not want to relinquish the political tool of grievance. If that’s true, then progressives will not work to help minority students achieve. Truths can reveal themselves.

From the Left come cries about Trumpist, racist white Americans being unwilling to level the playing field; colorblindness, progressives argue, is an impossible ideal. But with the shackles of discrimination gone, one could argue, we can equalize things more. Making sure that all students, regardless of zip code, can get SAT or other standardized-test tutoring is a worthy goal.

But conservative whites, progressives might say, would never work to uplift minority Americans. Well, if that’s true, would this not be an excellent way of exposing such racism? If conservative whites really do want to keep nonwhite Americans down, they will not donate to or promote any organization – governmental or private – that works to reduce academic skills gaps. Hoist them on their own petard.

What about the supposed racism manifested in standardized tests? Back in 2000, Jacqueline Fleming wrote in The Journal of Negro Education that “Standardized tests have been used to impede the social progress of Africans and African Americans for at least two centuries.” Up to that point, there was a lot of truth to that claim. As we see in current commentary, the situation is presumed to be same or even worse today. What is omitted from this narrative is the reality that, as Abigail Thernstrom emphasizes, “Blacks are more likely to earn a college diploma than whites with the same twelfth-grade test scores.” Are flagship and Ivy League schools the only pathways to economic prosperity? Hardly – and how snobbish to suggest that this is so.

French historian Marc Bloch once remarked that “nasty facts destroy lovely theories.” If I am wrong, let the facts bear that out. If not, all our children benefit. That’s a win for everyone.