Lani Guinier, a name I heard in a while, has an article in Salon about how the SATs keep out poor, minority students from Ivy League schools. The article needs a good edit, but makes some interesting points.

If we can agree that the SAT, LSAT, and other standardized tests most reliably measure a student’s household income, ethnicity, and level of parental education, then we can see that reliance on such test scores narrows the student body to those who come from particular households. Then we must decide how to ensure that we open the admissions doors to a greater diversity of students—not just the ones from privileged backgrounds. I want to make it clear that I am not talking about affirmative action here. The loud debate over affirmative action is a distraction that obscures the real problem, because right now affirmative action simply mirrors the values of the current view of meritocracy. Students at elite colleges, for example, who are the beneficiaries of affirmative action tend to be either the children of immigrants or the children of upper-middle-class parents of color who have been sent to fine prep schools just like the upper-middle-class white students. The result? Our nation’s colleges, universities, and graduate schools use affirmative-action-based practices to admit students who test well, and then they pride themselves on their cosmetic diversity. Thus, affirmative action has evolved in many (but not all) colleges to merely mimic elite-sponsored admissions practices that transform wealth into merit, encourage over-reliance on pseudoscientific measures of excellence, and convert admission into an entitlement without social obligation.