It looks like in 2010 they added a category for 'Two or More Races', and at least a third of people who previously identified as Native American switched to identifying as Two or More instead over the course of the next few years. There appears to have been a similar but smaller effect on Black, and the statistics are too noisy to determine if this affected anyone else. Their footnote explains it this way: "Prior to 2010, institutions were not required to report separate data on Asians, Pacific Islanders, and students of Two or more races."
But fundamentally that probably means the pre- and post- 2010 statistics are incomparable. Even if you could somehow correct for the fact that this is just SAT scores, which is only the portion of seniors who plan to go to college, not a random sample.
44: Going to the original data source: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_306.10.asp
It looks like in 2010 they added a category for 'Two or More Races', and at least a third of people who previously identified as Native American switched to identifying as Two or More instead over the course of the next few years. There appears to have been a similar but smaller effect on Black, and the statistics are too noisy to determine if this affected anyone else. Their footnote explains it this way: "Prior to 2010, institutions were not required to report separate data on Asians, Pacific Islanders, and students of Two or more races."
But fundamentally that probably means the pre- and post- 2010 statistics are incomparable. Even if you could somehow correct for the fact that this is just SAT scores, which is only the portion of seniors who plan to go to college, not a random sample.