Actually, I made that up. But I did not make up this headline from an article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education: “Study Finds Link Between SAT Scores and Freshman Grades.” Or this one from the press release of the journal, Psychological Science, that is publishing the new study: “Do SAT Scores Help or Hurt in Decisions About Who Will Do Well in College?”

Inside Higher Ed reports that the study, conducted by a team at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, led by psychology professor Paul Sackett,

is based on three large datasets, including one of more than 143,000 students at a diverse group of 110 colleges and universities. Another dataset looked at information from 41 institutions, while yet another looked at data from University of California campuses. The data covered SAT scores (from before and after the introduction of the writing test and various other changes), socioeconomic status, and academic performance in the first year of college (which is the measure the SAT was designed to predict).

The key finding was that SAT scores combined with high school grades were predictive of first-year academic success for all socioeconomic statuses. Further, the SAT adds predictive accuracy on top of grades for all groups, the study found.

Critics who believe the SAT is “unfair” are, of course, not persuaded. They point out that the study was funded by the College Board, although they have provided no evidence that the Board violated its contractual obligation to keep hands off the research or its conclusions. “Whether or not there is an actual conflict of interest,” one critic observed, “the appearance of a conflict is inevitable.” The implication seems to be that organizations should never fund research to evaluate the safety or effectiveness of their products, for no one will ever believe the results.

The Chronicle reports another odd criticism, this one from Robert A. Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, an organization built on claiming that the SAT isn’t fair. “The College Board consistently focuses its funded research on first-year grades,” he charges, “because they know that that is the time in an undergraduate’s life there will be the highest correlation in test scores, and make their tests look best.” The SAT, of course, is designed to predict only first year grades, and the College Board’s claims that it helps predict only first year grades, and thus it hardly seems nefarious that it funds research exploring what The Chronicle gingerly calls a “link” between SAT scores and first year grades.

Schaefer (“Bob Schaefer,” in Inside Higher Ed‘s friendly treatment of his objections),  had another curious criticism, claiming that “it was wrong to draw conclusions on the impact of the SAT on low-income students by looking only at those who take the test and who enroll in college.”

Schaeffer also cited the experience of colleges that have dropped SAT requirements and have almost uniformly reported that they then attract more applicants from minority and low-income groups. SAT and ACT requirements “deter many low-income and minority students from ever applying,” he said. So the way to promote the enrollment of such students is through “eliminating that hurdle,” not describing the SAT as fair to all groups.

It apparently doesn’t matter whether or not the SAT is in fact “fair to all groups,” as the new study demonstrates. The study’s lead author, Prof. Sackett, no doubt exasperated, replied “that he couldn’t analyze the predictive value of the SAT for students who never took the test.”

A key finding of the new study is that the SAT predicts first year grades with equal accuracy for all applicants, regardless of their socio-economic status. Another, equally important finding of the study, as IHE reports, is that

[t]o the extent the colleges are more likely to admit students from higher socioeconomic groups (which the study does not dispute), that is because those students are more likely to apply. The study found that the socioeconomic status range of enrolled students mirrored the range in the applicant pool.

The “barrier” blocking access to higher education for students with low socioeconomic status is that they don’t apply. Perhaps one of the reasons they don’t apply is that a generation of reformers demanding fair tests have told them they don’t do well on the tests, that the tests discriminate against them. This “barrier,” in short, closely resemble equally ephemeral “barriers” alleged by those who believe “structural inequality” is pervasive throughout American society. As I discussed here, for example, a speech by President Obama to the NAACP in 2009 mentioned “barriers” nine times.

The president recognized that “the barriers of our time” are “very different from the barriers faced by earlier generations.” He knows, that is, “that prejudice and discrimination are not … the steepest barriers to opportunity today.”

What then are the “steepest barriers”? You guessed it:

The most difficult barriers include structural inequalities that our nation’s legacy of discrimination has left behind; inequalities still plaguing too many communities and too often the object of national neglect.

The “structural inequalities” specifically mentioned by the president were

• an unemployment gap;

• a health and health insurance gap;

• a prison incarceration gap;

• an HIV/AIDS gap.

He could, of course, have listed more “structural inequalities,” such as various academic achievement gaps (reading and math scores, SAT scores, high school and college graduation rates, etc.), but his list is sufficient to confirm that “civil rights” today has nothing to do with eliminating discriminatory “barriers” that treat people differently because of their race.

If they reflect discrimination, it is discrimination without any discriminators.

Add to that list of “barriers” a test that accurately predicts first year college grades.