This is a destruction of the American meritocracy. The goal of standardized testing is to create an equitable comparison across diverse student bodies, but instead we are breeding low levels of social mobility. And since the divisions of income are still coinciding with race, we have a gap of diversity in our college admissions. To heal this, we create band-aids in admission practices and others which we continuously have to defend in the courts.
So, College Board is doing the right thing. In reality, most colleges knew that the essay was the least effective success indicator of the test. They realized that grading mass essays can be a very unreliable metric. The only thing that could improve this could be to get rid of the SAT all together. I mean, it’s not like it’s a good predictor of college success anyway.