As you say, contrast that to my experience where everyone took University Entrance exams in their final year of school. Score over X and you have the right to go to a university. Don't score high enough? The university can still choose to admit you at their discretion.
Because it's only de facto the primary method, as evidenced by MIT dropping it for a while there. They didn't need government permission to do that. Even public universities here generally have a high degree of autonomy regarding such things.
Instead of funding The One True Test, the US government partially funds every test competing to be the best college placement test.
Well, I mean.. America is experimental capitalism. Why run anything government when it can be for profit and 'the market' will solve any and all issues with it?
It turns out 'the market' will skew in favor of making a small amount of people rich over actually improving the lives of anyone, but hey, that's freedom baby!
They're really precious about it though, so don't criticise this system out loud.
Do with that what you will.
I wonder how one could codify a regulation for schools requiring entrance test to provide "reasonable" accommodations for prospective students to take it; like some parent comments mentioned not everyone can feasibly get to a testing center
Probably the same reason that the Federal Reserve Bank is not a government entity (they only have a meaningless government "oversight board") even though it loans all money to the US Government with interest and has never been audited.
- was created by the US government
- is ran by US government appointees, who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate
- has to make annual reports to Congress
- returns all its profits to the US government
- describes itself as a government agency. [0]
Does the Fed have more independence than, say, the Department of Agriculture? Yes, but an independent government agency is still a government entity.
[0] "The Federal Reserve, like many other central banks, is an independent government agency..." https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_12799.htm
The SAT is treated as a standardized test but it, as you note, is inaccessible to many. It is not government run or organized. I've found, from teaching undergraduates, that most of the students who go to college presume that everyone takes the SATs, that it is government administered, and that it is free.
compare this to the, still far from perfect and problematic in other ways, centralized university admissions testing system in many other countries.