It’s true that the ETS says the SAT no longer tries to identify innate ability. That’s a shame, because one of the primary benefits of intelligence testing is that it offers the promise of identifying ability wherever it may reside. After all, intelligence is distributed much more democratically than wealth and income. ETS should be front and center making this argument, rather than retreating from it because of political pressure.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that despite the changes and ETS’ dancing around the issue, the new SAT will be highly correlated with intelligence, just as the old one was, and just as any cognitively sensitive test is always going to be. If you look at the latest results from the SAT (https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-percentile-ranks-gender-race-ethnicity.pdf), you will see the same gaps by race, the same differential ability in quantitative measures between males and females, the same greater variances for males and for whites generally, the same kurtosis in the score distributions for blacks, East Asians, etc. that we have seen for decades in the SAT, ACT, LSAT, UKCAT, MCAT, GRE, and just about every other test (including decades of IQ testing) I’ve ever seen.
Whatever the SAT measures has not changed appreciably over the years, although as I implied it will not be as sensitive any longer to identifying those aspects of intelligence that are less sensitive to coaching and other environmental advantages. Which is a shame. Chalk up another victory for the privileged class.