Unless the policy change results in all replaced Asians being replaced by whites, then the policy change is bad for Asians but good for whites and for non-asian minorities.

Asians sit in a peculiar spot in this debate due to their “model minority” status, a status which Asians seek to obscure by calling it a myth. Now, it may be an oversimplification of Asian Amerian academic achievement, but it’s no myth. Asian-Americans tend to test well. Good results on tests by Asian Americans are almost certainly due not to innate genetic superiority, but rather to cultural factors which lead to Asian-American students taking school more seriously and preparing for tests.

It’s pretty sad that in all the debate, we can’t even all come round to agreeing that when a culture values education and demands high achievement, and when students take school seriously and wrok hard, they do better.

Personally, I am not against colleges adopting admissions policies which place emphasis on other things besides standardized test results.

However, in cases of things like civil service promotions and state licensing exams, I think criterion-referenced testing should at minimum be a gatekeeper. Criterion referenced testing means that you are not graded versus other test takers, but on an absolute scale. I would be fine with promotions based only partially on test scores so long as the other criteria were related to performance. For example, maybe there are 10 spots and the firefighter with the 15th best test score also had multiple commendations for bravery. Arguably that’s a more deserving candidate.

But you can’t ever expand the criteria to the point where people are promoted despite failing to demonstrate sufficient content-mastery for the position they seek. You can’t for example, promote a firefighter who doesn’t understand the particular approach necessary to combat various situations involving hazardous chemicals. Such a promotion could cost lives.

Recently The University of California changed it’s admission policy for all 9 of it’s campuses.
Flooded by Asian students who tend to do better than whites on test scores and school grades, the US regents decided to downplay the importance of tests and grades in their admission policy
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/economy/ap/48683642.html
“I like to call it affirmative action for whites,” said Ling-chi Wang, a retired professor at UC Berkeley. “I think it’s extremely unfair to Asian-Americans on the one hand and underrepresented minorities on the other.”
The new policy would eliminate the requirement that applicants take two SAT subject tests and reduce the number of students guaranteed admission based on grades and test scores alone. It takes effect for the freshman class of fall 2012.

As Judge Cabranes noted, dissenting from rehearing en banc, “[t]he use of per curiam opinions of this sort, adopting in full the reasoning of a district court without further elaboration,”–let alone summary orders of the kind the panel originally sought to use!–”is normally reserved for cases that present straight-forward questions that do not require explanation or elaboration by the Court of Appeals. The questions raised in this appeal cannot be classified as such, as they are indisputably complex and far from well-settled.”

I hope its not left up to the courts to decide how to negotiate the treacherous waters of scaling back race-based set-aside policies as America gradually realizes its potential to be a nation that judges on all on the content of their character, as MLK once counseled.

This needs to be something where the people and their reps play a big role, not special interests and their hand-picked plaintiffs.