UC Berkeley’s ban on standardized tests produces failure — as predicted

“The Task Force does not recommend that UC make standardized tests optional for applicants at this time.”

That was the conclusion of a special task force appointed to study in 2020 whether the University of California (UC) should get rid of the SAT and other tests as criteria for admission.

The purpose was blatant, and unconstitutional: To expand the number of black and Latino students at elite public universities, even though Proposition 209 banned the use of race in admissions.

The universities were under pressure from the Black Lives Matter movement. And they were eager to comply.

So then-UC president Janet Napolitano overruled the experts, and got rid of standardized testing in UC admissions.

The result: Disaster, just as predicted.

As UC Berkeley math professor Zvezdelina Stankova has noted, students are showing up at UC Berkeley — supposedly the finest public university in the nation — without basic math skills.

Instead of studying calculus, students find themselves taking remedial classes to learn fractions and middle-school algebra.

By the end of college, they might just have the math skills they should have had as freshmen.

Professors have to waste their time with students who never should have been admitted in the first place.

Ironically, getting rid of the SATs meant that the brightest and most accomplished black and Latino students could no longer be sure of getting in.

Once the admissions criteria were broadened, almost to the point of absurdity, there was no way for the best applicants to shine.

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Napolitano now admits she is having second thoughts.

Not everyone agrees. One student, writing in the UC Berkeley student newspaper The Daily Californian, argued that standardized testing is a form of white supremacy.

“Computer science students are failing like never before, math skills are at a historic low and professors are spending valuable class time reviewing middle-school material,” the author admitted.

But she argued: “Historically, standardized tests have been a weapon against people of color, and that reality cannot suddenly cease to exist.” She added that standardized tests were “a white supremacist tool to segregate people of color from public education.”

Clearly, someone failed AP US History.

Standardized tests are not perfect. But without them, universities must rely on murkier criteria.

High school grades, for example, are unreliable in an era of runaway grade inflation.

An inflated GPA spells doom for a student who will struggle in college.

Bring back the SAT — and common sense to higher education.