The pandemic is forcing the cancellation of the ACT and SAT and putting college applicants’ health at risk! More than 88,000 students successfully tested for the ACT at more than 1,100 sites on July 18, while adhering to COVID-19 public health guidelines and social distancing guidelines and procedures for the health and safety of examinees. Around 1,400 examinees (at approximately 21 sites) were not able to test.  Additionally, two asymptomatic students subsequently tested positive for COVID-19 and could have exposed all of the other examinees.

Requiring high-stakes standardized testing, and tying it to merit aid, is the problem. While over 1300 colleges and universities have waived standardized admissions tests, many still require them for merit aid. College admissions tests are not an accurate reflection of the contribution a student will make to an HBCU, nor are they based on the curriculum taught in high schools. They DO tell us more about the socioeconomic status of the families sending youths to the school than they say about the school itself. The SAT and ACT have tended to favor the economically advantaged students; ones whose parents can afford to pay for costly test preparation. By adhering to testing requirements during the pandemic

• Wealth could become a more central determining criterion for admission, reinforcing the unnecessary barriers and complications that particularly confront racially minoritized and low-income students in college admissions. The Varsity Blues investigation into college admissions fraud highlighted this scandalous inequality. It resulted in the recent indictments of dozens of people, including parents and college coaches and famous actresses in an alleged nationwide conspiracy that facilitated cheating on college entrance exams and the admission of students to elite universities 
• Several students, including first-time test takers, are being forced to expend time and money preparing for multiple canceled tests. 
• The inability to test or re-test could bar already marginalized student populations from matriculating at an HBCU, particularly an elite one. 
• Students will be potentially exposed to Covid-19, under increased pressure to meet looming deadlines from HBCUs. 

HBCUs have  an opportunity to suspend the requirement for high stakes standardized testing during the Covid-19 crisis, at a minimum.  

• More than half of U.S. colleges and universities will be test optional for the 2021 first-year applicants, including Bennett College.
• To determine merit aid recipients, HBCUs can rely on GPA, a practice Bennett already has in place.
• HBCUs have a responsibility to consider the health of its potential applicants, many of whom come from marginalized communities at higher risk for contracting Covid-19. We simply do not know enough about the longterm effects of the virus to require applicants expose themselves to it.  
• For the long-term, HBCUs can devote time to fully evaluating test-use policies and practices. They can consider college admissions that do not rely on historically biased tests which have been shown not to be accurate indicators of an applicant’s academic potential, as many other places of higher learning are already doing. They can also examine the impact of College Board selling the data of test takers to help big name colleges and universities encourage students who are not likely to be admitted to apply, only to be rejected later, as reported by the Wall Street Journal in November 2019.

Continuing the requirement of high stakes testing during a pandemic-induced global crisis will impact the physical and mental health and financial resources of the student populations applying to HBCUs. Students with HBCUs high on their list of colleges and institutions may opt to apply to test-optional schools only. HBCUs may lose the value that comes from the ability to draw on a more diverse applicant pool.