The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights circulated draft guidelines penalizing universities that use SAT scores, on which blacks and Hispanics do not score as well, as a leading criterion when making admissions decisions. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which broke the story, "the guidelines would establish a high burden of proof for institutions to show that [SAT-weighted] policies do not violate anti-bias laws." Panicked administrators were initially told they had only four working days to comply with the new requirements.

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