SAT Declines Due to Affirmative Action Bans  

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

This study uses SAT score data from IPEDS and a difference-in-differences model to investigate the impact of affirmative action bans on SAT scores. The findings show that affirmative action bans not only fail to produce an increase in SAT scores at the most selective public degree-granting institutions, but they remarkably produce a decrease. This has both moral and intellectual implications. It is well known that proponents of affirmative action have been losing state level-fights for racial diversity since California in 1995. However, this research suggests that detractors of affirmative action bans have also in some sense lost. These findings leave the detractors in a morally and intellectually precarious position. The loss of racial diversity has gone hand-in-hand with a decline in meritocracy, one of the lynchpins in the conservative argument in favor of affirmative action bans. Because of this lose-lose situation, we are left to consider if anyone truly benefits from affirmative action bans.

Author

• David Mickey-Pabello, University of California - Los Angeles