Like nearly all other major American institutions, the College Board has been captured by “progressives” who want to use it to advance their notions of the good society, driven by the obsession with diversity. It has recently unveiled an admissions tool called “Landscape” for use by colleges that want a diverse student body (rather than one with the best students).
In today’s Martin Center article, Graham Hillard writes about this.
A slice:
Yet even if mismatches of this kind were not a factor, one would still be wise to doubt Landscape’s appropriateness. The reason is that the tool encourages thinking that should have no place at the admissions table. Baked into Landscape’s logic is the idea that Bill would have had Leigh’s ACT score if he had been given her advantages. But, of course, that proposition is unfalsifiable. We can neither observe nor test it. More than that: It takes for granted the demeaning notion that Leigh’s achievements are a mere function of her environment. Landscape doesn’t and can’t say anything about the hours she put in or the seriousness with which she approached her work over the course of many years.
Hillard concludes that the College Board is merely providing a work-around for colleges intent on continuing to indulge in racial preferences notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s ruling that the practice is unconstitutional. No doubt about it.