As part of preparing for the fall semester, I was reading through a backlog of articles concerned with educational equity and opportunity in higher education and started to become depressed.

The strategies used to maintain the status quo are complex and they can, if approached as a monolith, seem undefeatable – see How Elite Schools Stay So White. 

Then I found in today’s New York Times A Surprisingly Simple Way to Help Level the Playing Field of College Admissions. The article states that “White, Asian-American and affluent students commonly take the SAT more than once, but disadvantaged students are less likely to, and it’s holding them back.” 

The article argues that one of the simplest policies we could adopt is encouraging disadvantaged students to take the test early and more than once.