SAT administrator axes tool to help boost low-income students

Driving the news: The College Board is discontinuing use of the tool, called Landscape, it announced this week.

• The organization has scrubbed much of the information about the tool from its website, posting a note on Tuesday that says Landscape was "intentionally developed without the use or consideration of data on race or ethnicity."
• The College Board didn't reference any of the Trump administration's moves specifically, but said the change comes "as federal and state policy continues to evolve around how institutions use demographic and geographic information in admissions."

What they're saying: The College Board declined Axios' request for a follow-up to the initial statement.

Zoom in: College admissions officers used Landscape to view applicant data related to schools and neighborhoods, among other factors.

• A user could enter an applicant's address and high school, gaining further insight into the neighborhood a student is from, such as median family income and crime rate.
• Racial demographics were not included.

According to The New York Times, Landscape has been under review by Students for Fair Admissions, the anti-affirmative action group which pioneered the lawsuits against Harvard and the University of Carolina-Chapel Hill that led to affirmative action's dismantling two years ago.

• Edward Blum, founder of Students for Fair Admissions, told the Times that "any tool that allows admissions offices to consider race by proxy is a legal and reputation risk."

Catch up quick: Attorney General Pam Bondi in July warned schools in a memo against using "unlawful proxies" for race.

• Those proxies, Bondi wrote, include geography or admissions essays about hardships.
• The U.S. Education Department later announced it would require universities to report racial demographics on applicants to "ensure race-based preferences are not used."

By the numbers: A 2022 Brookings Institude study of Landscape found that while the tool marginally increased admissions offers for students from disadvantaged neighborhoods and schools, it did not increase the actual enrollment of these students.

• That's except for cases where the colleges and universities used the tool to inform financial aid offers.
• Following the Supreme Court's move to end affirmative action, data has shown that the enrollment of Black and Hispanic students has decreased across graduate and undergraduate programs.

The bottom line: The Trump administration has used its power to pressure institutions it perceives to have diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, including schools, hospitals, and corporations.