SAT "Adversity Rating"

[Phoebe]

Glad they acknowledge (or do they?) the fully, intentionally racist history of their exam, the lack of correlation between performance and success or academic preparation, and their destructive monopoly over this part of the college admissions process.

But wait, instead of dealing in a significant way with any of those problems, they decided to attach an adversity score by which standards my own children will seem to have had some kind of significant adversity to deal with, because we made a point of wanting to go to fully racially (and thus hand-in-hand, economically, which is a big impact on this metric) integrated schools, because they are academically and in other ways superior. But anybody who knows me knows how ridiculous that is, so... Okay, bonus for my kids, I guess I'll take you, and meanwhile good wishes to the SAT in solving the decades-long history of actual problems they've helped to cause.

Meanwhile, my friends who live a mile away and whose kids attend schools that have a more affluent economic background, because the parents sacrificed everything they could to move into a neighborhood that has these fancy schools, even though the parents are refugees and the children have had to deal with every possible sort of adversity growing up, except for the great part about having two loving stable parents... They'll have about the same or lower adversity score than my kids. I look forward to bearing this out with empirical proof next year.

Another fun example is my cousin's child, who has been through unimaginable trauma, the loss of a mother, parent who's a drug addict, parent who is mentally ill, and I can't even go into all the other problems... He spent his early childhood living in a neighborhood that no doubt would help him get a significant adversity score, but since further intervention in his life has caused his circumstances to improve dramatically, he will doubtless get the lowest adversity score of all these kids, even though anybody looking down from above would see that he probably deserves the highest one, in terms of how remarkable his current highest academic achievements are.

[Mike]

The real question though is: does it help level the playing field on average?

I know nothing about it, but it seems like any broadly applied action will cover a bell curve of cases, and of course the ends of that curve will seem incongruous with the intent, but does that mean the aggregate is bad?

I have no clue, but anecdotal cases of unfairness don't prove anything. Which, of course is why you say you look forward to empirical evidence, I assume.

[Phoebe]

You are right, I am looking forward to see what kind of evidence comes out later. In the pilot version I understand that some places were using it as a way of screening students back in who had been rejected, in case they decided to take a closer look at someone they might have missed. If that's what they're going to use it for, ok, it's just helping people open the door. Otherwise... I don't like it. But more importantly, it bugs me that this is the answer they've chosen to problems with their own methods of testing. Maybe they should come up with a test that isn't so biased against people who have struggled with the types of adversity they're concerned about! I guess that would be the hard way, the way involving accountability and using metrics to determine whether your own product is good, rather than pushing it off to someone else. Did I mention I'm annoyed with their monopoly, lol?

Anyway, I don't think it's good even if it helps level the playing field on average. Imagine that kids took a whole year in high school for which the grading was quite arbitrary, and totally wrong in some cases, but on average tended to come out better for students who did well in previous years and less favorably for those who didn't; and then they decided to add this year to the student's GPA, for purposes including scholarships and all sorts of other things that will make a big impact, instead of sticking only with the years of courses that were accurately graded. What good would that do, other than confirming the GPA in most cases but distorting it in an inaccurate way for others? It's like, we got further away from reality rather than closer to it.

[Ronster]

It is not possible to level the playing field of life, IMO.

When you try to do that, you are always crippling someone else, but as they say, If you want to bake a cake, you will need to break some eggs.

My $0.02 is that I have worked hard to do the best for my family and we have sacrificed to put them in a better school.
The girls have worked hard for their grades and learned their material. It would be horribly unjust and dishonest to have the results of a test doctored up because life isn't fair.
You can change a lot of things, but you cannot change the world you were born into...those are your circumstances.
Change the world you bring the next generation into, but don't do it by changing the test results. That is a lazy solution.

Also, what about the ACT?

[Mike]

That's a wonderful idea. We all recognize that the world is currently extremely unfair to certain groups of people. What ideas do you like for making the next generation more fair?

[Phoebe]

Use the ACT, that is one small step for actual fairness that depends more on whether you applied yourself to learning in high school, and therefore might be a good bet for future success that requires determination and the ability to learn.

Or maybe make the SAT less biased toward certain factors?

But really what we do 0-7 is far more important, in terms of grander plans for resource investment.

[Ronster]

I now contribute to some alumni programs that offer scholarships based on need although that too can be manipulated, but we have to start somewhere.

I do not want to see us relegated the poor to menial labor because of the lack of opportunity but that is exactly what our system does.
The military does the ASVAB to assess skills. I would think that a test like that would be beneficial to those who wished to utilize it. Now I sound all Orwellian/Communist but maybe it would give people some guidance as to where their talents lie. I speak for myself when I say college is not for everyone.

...and before you know it we'll be Alphas, Beta, and Deltas wearing differently colored coveralls

[Tahlvin]

Paranoia's Alpha Complex, here we come!