SAT test to now include "adversity" score

[BeepBoo]

Hate to tell you this, but most of the advantages Europeans enjoy today originated outside of Europe. Might wanna give Jared Diamond a read sometime.

You're misunderstanding. I'm fully for exploitation of outside sources for the betterment of your own stuff if you can convince participants willingly. Unfortunately, war, conquest, and colonization brought most of those to europeans, but that ship has sailed and I'm not willing to relinquish my privilege I received from it. At best, I'm willing to at least ACKNOWLEDGE people as equal and move on from here. If that's not good enough, then you can pry my privilege from my cold dead hands after a fight, and we all know who wins fights more than anyone else (hint: that same box you posted earlier).

Not seeing anything wrong with it is understandable, because it's navel gazing. Check your privilege.

I'm well aware of my privilege. I just don't see any reason to give it up in an attempt to be "fair" to someone without it. Best I can do is promise to not directly physically harm someone with it and also not buy into dumb stereotypes such as "black people are inferior" or "we should ban turbans in schools" etc.

[SirKickBan]

From several readings of the article it actually says nothing one way or the other about race, leaving that mystery to the reader to solve.

From the article itself:

This new "adversity score" number is calculated by assessing 15 factors that can better help admissions officers determine an individual student's social and economic background, the Journal reported. These factors are first divided into three categories: neighborhood environment, family environment and high school environment.

Each of the three categories has five sub-indicators that are indexed in calculating each student's adversity score. Neighborhood environment will take into account crime rate, poverty rate, housing values and vacancy rate. Family environment will assess what the median income is of where the student's family is from; whether the student is from a single parent household; the educational level of the parents; and whether English is a second language. High school environment will look at factors such as curriculum rigor, free-lunch rate and AP class opportunities.

You either didn't read the article as thoroughly as you thought, or that's a deliberate misrepresentation, because when they list out the categories, none of them are racial. And then, about fifteen seconds of googling was enough to further confirm that there's no explicit racial element to any of the categories.

[Themius]

It's also going to be hugely politicized and completely subjective. For example, I'm sure that the adversity scores of the white students going to that shitty school in Baltimore will be far lower than the black students even though they faced the same challenging school environment.

The program literally doesn't exist yet and you're just making shit up?

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"You're pretty smart...for a Black person." - College SAT Board

The SAT Board seems like a bunch of extreme racists to me, but what do I know, I don't have the "smart" skin color.

Did you even bother to read? There isn't a racial element.

[Dextroden]

From the article itself:



You either didn't read the article as thoroughly as you thought, or that's a deliberate misrepresentation, because when they list out the categories, none of them are racial. And then, about fifteen seconds of googling was enough to further confirm that there's no explicit racial element to any of the categories.

Well, you could make an argument for English as a second language is going to apply to immigrants and their children more than anyone else. But I don't expect it to be worth more than any other factor in Family Environment.

[Underverse]

The program literally doesn't exist yet and you're just making shit up?

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Did you even bother to read? There isn't a racial element.

Well, the racial element is implicit, not explicit.

I'm actually in favor of colleges recruiting individuals who have lower scores but come from lower-income/high adversity backgrounds to round out parts of their cohorts. I'm not convinced that it's the SAT's job to make those judgements, and I don't think that this data should be used as a supplementary score to modulate SAT scores, which is what is being proposed. People from high adversity backgrounds who have lower SAT scores still need to have some reason other than adversity that allows them to propel past more statistically qualified students, otherwise they're not only being given an unfair advantage, but they're also being set up to fail. As others have stated, that 'other reason' can and does come in the form of recommendation letters, personal essays, and extracurricular activities such as community service.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

"You're pretty smart...for a Black person." - College SAT Board

The SAT Board seems like a bunch of extreme racists to me, but what do I know, I don't have the "smart" skin color.

Race isn't a factor but census data we'll be. So they might base it on location which is abuse-able. I also here people on this forum talk about changing affirmative action to factor in wealth rather than race and isn't this a step in the right direction?

[Themius]

Well, the racial element is implicit, not explicit.

I'm actually in favor of colleges recruiting individuals who have lower scores but come from lower-income/high adversity backgrounds to round out parts of their cohorts. I'm not convinced that it's the SAT's job to make those judgements, and I don't think that this data should be used as a supplementary score to modulate SAT scores, which is what is being proposed. People from high adversity backgrounds who have lower SAT scores still need to have some reason other than adversity that allows them to propel past more statistically qualified students, otherwise they're not only being given an unfair advantage, but they're also being set up to fail. As others have stated, that 'other reason' can and does come in the form of recommendation letters, personal essays, and extracurricular activities such as community service.

So let me get this straight.

People argue against AA and such saying "there are poor white people too"

So then a system is created that takes race out as a factor and uses socioeconomic factors which means it includes white and... there is still something to bitch about????

[Dextroden]

So let me get this straight.

People argue against AA and such saying "there are poor white people to"

So then a system is created that takes race out as a factor and uses socioeconomic factors which means it includes white and... there is still something to bitch about????

Didn't someone want to expand AA to affect whites and you and Endus argue against it?

[Underverse]

So let me get this straight.

People argue against AA and such saying "there are poor white people to"

So then a system is created that takes race out as a factor and uses socioeconomic factors which means it includes white and... there is still something to bitch about????

I know you didn't read/understand my post, because you rarely do. Here's a summary:

1. Colleges should recruit high adversity students
2. It's the college's job to determine which high adversity students they should recruit (or federal law, replacing AA, but either way, I don't see why the SAT should be involved)
3. Adversity can be used as a supplementary data point, but should not replace the need for other sources of value in the context of low SAT scores (extracurriculars, strong recs, etc)

To elaborate, what people (including myself) don't want to see is a scenario in which students with 50th percentile SAT scores are given a free ride to top-tier private colleges because their dad beats them while the asian kid with a 99th percentile score winds up going to community college because there are too many people like them. In no way is this scenario fair or just (I hope you can agree with that), and this system, if used incorrectly, enables this outcome.

Taking from a worker and giving to a victim doesn't change the amount of injustice in the system. It just moves it around.

[morpen]

Sure will help make America less effective and competitive on the global market.

[Zan15]

It's often not about funding. New York City spends 22k per student. It's that those students are raised in poverty, with broken families in a broken culture, by dumb parents who were terrible students themselves (and often raised in broken homes, single parent, grandma, whatever).

It's very difficult to create a good school if there's no community to back it up.

And also, the biggest problem is that the focus is on improving the performance of every student, which comes at a significant cost to the high achievers who get ignored while the system pours money into behavior plans, therapy, special ed, and smaller classrooms for the hopeless cases.

Ya but 22k in NYC is relative to 11-12k spent in places like Charlotte NC just because of the cost of living in NYC.

When you look at per capita spending then adjust for cost of living (since salary, benefits and general personal admin is over 60% of the cost) the amount spent is actually much closer between states then a "per student basis"

[Elegiac]

Sure will help make America less effective and competitive on the global market.

[Citation Needed]

[Bodonius]

We dont want asians, you know arabs are asians? Brain carsh!

[Underverse]

[Citation Needed]

Preferentially giving higher education slots to people who aren't prepared for higher education will result in fewer well prepared graduates (partially due to higher dropout rates; this is known already).

It's not much of a stretch. I would say that the weakest point in the argument is whether this policy will result in more slots being given to people who aren't prepared (and who will suffer from higher rates of attrition because of that). Logically, the policy seems to enable that outcome. I don't know how it will work in practice.

[I Push Buttons]

So how do they verify any of this information? Millions of people take the test at any given time all year long. What's to stop everyone from simply filling it out saying they grew up in the poor neighborhood, in a single parent household, with no income, attended a poor school, etc...?

Why would anyone NOT do that? The form is a farce... "Hey prospective college student! Fill out this form and if you indicate that you grew up in a nice neighborhood, with two well-off parents, and attended a nice school, we will hold all of those things against you and give less consideration to your test results!"

[breslin]

Oh right cool. Maybe a system which accounted for that and provided appropriate support would have led to you making points that were less facile and self-defeating.

You can start, I'd like an apology and 1000 dollars for your lack of understanding. Thanks

[Reaper0329]

So how do they verify any of this information? Millions of people take the test at any given time all year long. What's to stop everyone from simply filling it out saying they grew up in the poor neighborhood, in a single parent household, with no income, attended a poor school, etc...?

Why would anyone NOT do that? The form is a farce... "Hey prospective college student! Fill out this form and if you indicate that you grew up in a nice neighborhood, with two well-off parents, and attended a nice school, we will hold all of those things against you and give less consideration to your test results!"

I haven't taken the SAT in a long, long time, but you have to give pretty detailed information to apply for the test and, I **think,** provide your SSN. It's been about a decade and several other standardized tests ago.

[bullseyed]

Where do I check all the adversity boxes?

I had to walk to school 15 miles barefoot, over lava, uphill both ways, in the snow, with my 6 siblings on my back while we passed around one jacket.

Yeah but you're a white male so that doesn't count.

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHA increase education funding AHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAA

Many public elementary schools today are getting $30,000+ per student per year. Equivalent to college tuition.


Some people are dumb and some teachers are bad teachers. Paying a bad teacher more money won't make them a good teacher. The best teacher in the world can't make a dumb person smart.

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A few years ago a Baltimore news station did a study and found that 14 separate high schools in Baltimore had a grand total of 0 students who were proficient in math.

Math? When am I gonna need that in the real world? Duh.

[PACOX]

Yeah but you're a white male so that doesn't count.

Half right. I'm not white.

[Sunseeker]

Many public elementary schools today are getting $30,000+ per student per year. Equivalent to college tuition.


Some people are dumb and some teachers are bad teachers. Paying a bad teacher more money won't make them a good teacher. The best teacher in the world can't make a dumb person smart.

No, actually the reality is that much of education funding goes to administrators and board members. The farther you are from children, the more you get paid.