It was easier, after all, to say the SAT was at fault for black or Hispanic underperformance than to place the blame on the unions that dominate municipal public schools, or troubled parents. The fact that striving families scraped together cash for SAT cramming courses also fuelled the campaign against the test. California offers the most gratuitous example to date of blaming the SAT messenger. Mr Atkinson has said that the test is bad for minorities. The SAT is said to have hindered Hispanics, who have not won places proportionate to their share of the population.
Blacks also seem to be falling short in the California college contest - but then so are whites.
And to the equity-obsessed, a measure that acknowledges some are more able than others is intolerable.