I posted the same question to AI about the period between 1980 and 2020. Just not seeing a lot about the power of teachers' unions yet.
Between 1980 and 2020, the push to eliminate or de-emphasize the SAT was led by a mixture of advocacy organizations, high-profile university leadership, and grassroots education coalitions. Their efforts gradually shifted the college admissions landscape from universal testing toward the modern "test-optional" model.
The primary forces driving this movement during those four decades included:
1. Advocacy Groups (The Groundwork)
FairTest (The National Center for Fair & Open Testing): Founded in 1985, FairTest was the centralized backbone of the anti-SAT movement. Led by public education directors like Robert Schaeffer, the non-profit aggressively campaigned against the test, arguing that it was a poor predictor of college success, was culturally and socioeconomically biased, and favored wealthy students who could afford expensive test preparation. They meticulously tracked and promoted colleges that dropped the test requirement to prove the feasibility of a test-optional system.
2. Influential Higher Education Leaders
Richard C. Atkinson (President of the University of California System): In February 2001, Atkinson delivered a groundbreaking speech recommending that the massive UC system completely drop the SAT I requirement. A cognitive psychologist by trade, he argued that the test did not align with high school curricula, focused too heavily on vague notions of "inherent aptitude," and forced a destructive commercialization of test prep. Because UC was the largest single consumer of the SAT, his public denunciation sent shockwaves through higher education and legitimized the test-optional debate for selective, public universities.
William Hiss (Bates College): As the Dean of Admissions at Bates College, Hiss led the school to go test-optional in 1984. Over the next few decades, he published influential, long-term studies demonstrating that there was virtually no difference in college graduation rates or GPAs between students who submitted SAT scores and those who didn't, providing the movement with critical empirical data.
3. Professional Educational Associations
National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC): In 2008, NACAC released a landmark report urging colleges to reconsider their reliance on the SAT and ACT. The report highlighted fears that standardized testing created barriers for low-income and minority students, prompting a significant wave of liberal arts colleges to eliminate the testing mandate over the subsequent decade.
4. Early-Adopting Institutions
Prior to 2020, a steady stream of individual universities stepped up to challenge the status quo. Following early leaders like Bowdoin College (which went test-optional in 1969), schools like Wake Forest University (2008) and the University of Chicago (2018) made waves by dropping the requirement, proving that elite, highly selective institutions could maintain high academic standards without the SAT.
By the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and forced widespread test-center closures, the decades of groundwork laid by these individuals and groups made the sudden pivot to a near-universal test-optional model a smooth and logical transition for over 1,000 universities.
