紐時賞析／美大學理事會 撤下尋找弱勢優秀生的工具

美國最高法院2023年對大學招生平權法作出裁決後，引發民衆抗議，如今爭議再起。（紐約時報）

College Board Cancels Tool for Finding Low-Income High Achievers

美大學理事會 撤下尋找弱勢優秀生的工具

When the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in college admissions in 2023, many universities began looking more closely at socioeconomic status to admit more diverse classes without considering race.

聯邦最高法院2023年禁止大學招生援引平權法後，許多大學開始更仔細地考量社會經濟地位，以在不考慮種族的情況下錄取更多元化的學生羣體。

Scores of schools turned to a tool created by the College Board, which administers the SAT exam, to identify promising high school students from disadvantaged neighborhoods and schools.

數十間學校轉向使用由大學理事會開發的一個工具，用來識別來自弱勢社區和學校的有潛力的高中學生。

Last week, the College Board quietly notified schools that it was eliminating the tool, called Landscape. The board provided little explanation for its decision.

上週，大學理事會悄悄通知各校，將取消這個協助識別弱勢優秀學生的線上儀表板Landscape。理事會對此決定沒有多作解釋。

The move comes at a time when the Trump administration has stepped up its attacks on diversity efforts in education, and less than a month after the White House said it would be on the lookout for schools using “hidden racial proxies” to seek out minority applicants.

此舉發生在川普政府加強攻擊教育多元化措施之際，且距白宮表示將監控使用「隱性種族代理指標」來尋找少數族裔申請者的學校不到一個月。

It is unclear whether Landscape was being used for that purpose. The tool was an online dashboard where college admission officers could enter an applicant’s address and high school, and see a wealth of data on the community where the student lived, including median family income, the percentage of single-parent households and the crime rate. Racial demographics were not included.

目前尚不清楚Landscape是否被用於這個目的。該工具是一個線上儀表板。大學招生人員以輸入申請者的住址和高中，查看學生所居住社區的各種數據，包括家庭收入中位數、單親家庭比率，以及犯罪率等。不包含種族分佈數據。

Landscape had been under review by an anti-affirmative-action group, Students for Fair Admissions, whose lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill resulted in the Supreme Court ruling. The decision by the College Board to withdraw the tool seemed very likely to be related to the defensive posture that many schools are adopting in response to the conservative assault against the use of race in college admissions.

Landscape一直受到反平權法組織「學生公平入學」的審查。該組織對哈佛大學和北卡羅來納大學教堂山分校提出訴訟，官司一路打到最高法院。大學理事會決定撤銷這個工具，很可能與許多學校防禦保守派對招生時納入種族因素的攻擊有關。

The College Board has removed much of the information about Landscape from its website, and posted a note saying that the tool was “intentionally developed without the use or consideration of data on race or ethnicity.”

大學理事會已經從網站移除了大部分關於Landscape的資訊，並發表聲明指出，該工具「開發時蓄意未使用或考量種族或族裔資料」。

Edward Blum, founder of Students for Fair Admissions, said that Landscape had become the focus of mounting legal, public and media scrutiny. “Any tool that allows admissions offices to consider race by proxy is a legal and reputation risk,” Blum said in an email.

「學生公平入學」組織創辦人布倫表示， Landscape日漸受到法律、輿論與媒體的嚴密檢視。他在電郵中說：「任何讓教務處透過代理方式考量種族的工具，都存在法律與聲譽風險。」

Among those who have pushed for a class-based approach to increasing college diversity, however, the withdrawal of Landscape seemed misguided.

然而，對於那些推動以社經階層爲基礎來提升大學多元化的人來說，撤銷Landscape之舉顯得搞錯方向。

“It is race-neutral and its use is perfectly legal,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute.

非營利組織進步政策研究所「美國認同計劃」主任卡倫柏格表示：「這個工具是種族中立的，其使用完全合法。」

文／Stephanie Saul and Dana Goldstein 譯／國際中心