The College Board, which administers the SAT college entrance exam, is revamping the so-called “adversity score.” The score was given to colleges but unseen by applicants and effectively reduced the experience of an applicant to a single socioeconomic designation.
Mike blogged in May:
The College Board is trying to make the SAT more ‘fair’ for everyone by taking social and economic factors into account.This is really just the latest attempt to institutionalize the concept of social justice into higher education. But this process is pernicious — the students who are assigned a socioeconomic score won’t know how they score, so they may be penalized in college admissions without knowing it. It’s like being on Double Secret Probation (ref. Animal House)….Would you be surprised to learn that the man behind this plan is the same person who brought us Common Core?
Tuesday, the College Board announced a handful of changes to the socioeconomic score component. Students will be able to access to their designation and rather than a single number, a handful of government derived data points will be available for viewing by institutions and students.
The LA Times has more:
David Coleman, College Board’s chief executive, said in an interview with The Associated Press that some also wrongly worried the tool would alter the SAT results.“The idea of a single score was wrong,” he said. “It was confusing and created the misperception that the indicators are specific to an individual student.”The College Board announced several changes to the tool Tuesday, including the decision to give students access to the information about their schools and neighborhood starting in the 2020-2021 school year.Renamed “Landscape,” the revised tool will provide a series of data points from government sources and the College Board that are seen as affecting education. They include whether the student’s school is in a rural, suburban or urban location, the size of the school’s senior class, the percentage of students eligible for free- and reduced-price lunch, and participation and performance in college-level Advanced Placement courses at the school. Admissions officers also will see a range of test scores at the school to show where the applicant’s falls, as well as information like the median family income, education levels and crime rates in the student’s neighborhood.The tool’s creation was an acknowledgment of persistent criticism of the use of admissions tests in an era of growing concern with unequal access to advanced coursework and high-priced tutors that further advantage those with the means to access them. This year’s “Varsity Blues” scandal, which exposed cases of affluent parents cheating the admissions system, has brought further scrutiny.
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