That.. did not last long. In my opinion it was a disastrous thing to even attempt. There is really no way to judge a random person's ability to learn, or even address the act of learning, without a standardized test. The ACT and SAT will always need work as culture changes, but throwing it out in search of restorative justice is extremely unwise.
> throwing it out in search of restorative justice is extremely unwise.
I see this claim a lot, but it seems partially true at best. As per the article and conversations with friends in admissions departments, the testing requirement at many elite schools was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.
However, the debate over how tests impact disadvantaged students may be why "many schools continued their test-optional policies even as the public health crisis eased" as per the article, so you're partially right that it probably played a role in why some schools have dragged their feet. (Contrast to schools like MIT which also dropped their testing requirement during the pandemic but reinstated it more quickly afterwards.)
I think what was more prevalent was a "unequal outcomes can be explained away by this standardized test" and then we got a chance to experiment with it and learn new data.
Agreed that an across-the-board change to admissions policies like this is an opportunity to test the thesis, although the pandemic had many other confounding impacts that may be hard to isolate.
Still, I don't know anyone who works in higher ed admissions who wants to get rid of standardized testing for "restorative justice" reasons. Rigorous schools need to be able to ensure they don't admit students who have no hope of graduating and competitive schools need to winnow down the number of applications to a number that they can actually review.
My impression is that the objections to standardized testing typically come from groups outside universities like the NEA, FairTest, teachers unions, parents, activists, etc.
