Standardized tests can include unintended biases. Anytime there is a cultural difference, there will be vocabulary differences including subtle meaning differences that can skew responses in standardized testing. I haven't looked into the details, but it makes sense.
I've looked into the details.
If standardized tests are biased against blacks, they would underpredict the success of socially boosted blacks in college, and they don't.
There were some concerns about racial bias in the 70s, with examples and counterexamples (examples of questions that blacks would easily get, but that whites would have difficulty with). I remember one specific question, "given this sentence, which choice (a,b,c,d) would be an appropriate next sentence?" and the question read: "Elton just got a new LD." and the correct answer was "He showed it to his fox." (Note that this was late 70's culture references.)
The racial biases are a concern for the SATs, they have guidelines that work to remove them, and have succeeded.
This was addressed, and modern tests are engineered to avoid this type of bias.
I'm not sure what the right answers are. Having several years of not using standardized test scores should help give more data on what does and doesn't work in admissions.
We have *tons* of data on this, dropping standardized tests for several years is not necessary. DEI guidelines have been applied by numerous institutions over the past several decades. We absolutely know the answer here.
Should an admissions office use all the available data to generate the best possible calculation on a potential student's probability of success? That might include standardized scores, grades, data on the school they come from, their economic conditions, and their race and ethnicity.
And then there's the question of whether they want to be completely fair. There's a good argument that minorities are disadvantaged by generations of discrimination, so efforts to reverse that are still needed. Whether college admissions is an appropriate place to work towards that goal or not is a matter of debate.
The problem is that you are not trying to solve inequality, you are trying to solve inequity.
Blacks are under-represented in successful societal positions such as doctors, lawyers, legislators, business owners, and so on, and this has been touted as evidence for discrimination - strong discrimination at all levels and at an intensity that is difficult to relate to observed reality.
You're assuming that discrimination at the college level is something that should be fixed, when in fact there is no discrimination evident in the tests and in fact you should be looking further back.
Inequity is a multivariate problem based on several factors, one of which might be predjudice. Other variables might be a) preponderance of single-parent families, b) black-on-black violence, c) poor nutrition (probably related to poverty) leading to lower IQ, d) legacy discrimination such as red-line neighborhoods, e) cultural disadvantages ("acting white" is disparaged, smoking is encouraged, being tough and violent is encouraged, f) teenage pregnancy, and so on.
A multifactoral analysis can tease out the various reasons for inequity and can place a value on the relative "strength of effect" of each factor. Then we can look at how each factor works, address the factors in major order, and ask for success measurements.
I have a list of potential solutions that we can try; for example, it might be useful to have a public relations campaign (in a like manner of the "don't do drugs" campaigns) against being a single parent.
I never, ever, post my suggestions or even talk about it to people, because it goes against the narrative. Stating certain pure facts is considered racist, and no one wants to hear about the potential for solutions.
Not enough blacks (proportionally) have college educations. The solution is to lower the standards.