College Board discontinues tool used by schools to racially discriminate

The College Board, a nonprofit association centered around assisting schools and students during the admissions process,  announced on Tuesday it has ended a tool that provided demographic information about schools and neighborhoods to universities.

Landscape’s information allowed colleges and universities to make assumptions about students during the admissions process using data about the income level of a student’s school or neighborhood, effectively allowing schools to use these statistics as a proxy for race. College Board cited evolving federal and state policy in its decision to shutter the program.

“Since 2016, Landscape has provided consistent information about high schools and neighborhoods to help colleges understand more about where students live and learn,” College Board wrote of the decision. “As federal and state policy continues to evolve around how institutions use demographic and geographic information in admissions, we are making a change to ensure our work continues to effectively serve students and institutions.”

Landscape “was intentionally developed without the use or consideration of data on race or ethnicity,” but the data it provided allowed schools to make assumptions in an effort to diversify their student bodies.

Despite the Supreme Court ruling in 2023 that schools could not use race as a factor in admissions decisions, several schools have found ways to sidestep the ruling by using other proxies for assuming race, such as using a student’s location and income level, encouraging students to discuss their race in application essays, using recruitment tactics that target certain areas based on demographics or muddling language to target “underrepresented” groups. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Education (ED) under the Trump administration have made it clear that even proxies for race are forbidden under the Supreme Court’s ruling and the Civil Rights Act.

ED’s Feb. 14 memo outlining how the administration will enforce the affirmative action decision was recently blocked by a federal court, though the department has still been able to open dozens of investigations based on the Supreme Court ruling.

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