[BrenBarn]

There is a real doozy of an issue bured in there, which was reported when it originally happened but I felt it never got the public censure it deserved:

> But the vote went against the UC Academic Senate’s own Standardized Testing Task Force, which said use of test scores could actually boost admission rates for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and school districts.

The UC actually commissioned a faculty panel to investigate whether requiring test scores undercut the changes of disadvantaged students, and the panel found the opposite effect, and yet the administration got rid of the tests anyway. This is the clearest indication to me that the policymakers are entirely concerned with image and symbolism and not with any actual attempt to help anyone. They did the exact thing that their own people told them would hurt the very people they were ostensibly trying to help.