First of all, how would a standardized test be racist if everyone takes the same test?

Maybe the racism is in the zoning laws, the redlining, the education department and how funding is allocated disproportionally. Maybe there are other reasons why students from underserved communities do worse on standardized testing, and it's not because the tests are racist?

That being said, standardized testing is bullshit and comes with a whole slew of problems that make education outcomes worse for everybody. Schools start tailoring the curriculum to teach for the test, rather than teach for knowledge and understanding. Everything becomes about the metrics, which we can see in many domains has led to serious issues. A lot of important things are qualitative rather than quantitative, and standardized testing misses that entirely.

But yes, the average going down is bad. But it's a natural consequence of the way things are being run, and not surprising at all.

I'm merely watching the consequences unfold of the things I tried to warn about years ago, and was scorned for it as fringy or edgy or whatever because I was too different for the system to tolerate. The system punishes non-conformity.

I wish I could say I feel pleasure at being corroborated but no, I'm simply sad for society and where it's going...