A new "adversity score" assigned by the College Board on the SAT exam will reportedly reflect students' family income, environment and educational differences in an effort to level the playing field in the highly competitive college admissions process. The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that 50 schools used the new indicator as part of a beta test last year and the College Board plans to bring more than 150 schools into the fold this fall. The College Board is a New York-based non-profit that is in charge of overseeing the SAT. A dialogue about wealth and privilege in educational institutions exploded this year in wake of the college admissions scandal, in which 33 parents were charged with paying huge sums of money to have their children cheat on the SAT and be admitted into top colleges under the false pretenses of being student athletes. 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. Together these factors will calculate an individual's adversity score on a scale of one to 100. According to the Journal, a score of 50 is considered "average." Anything above 50 proves "hardship" while anything below 50 is considered "privilege." There's more but, come on. What a joke. Oh, and who is the College Board CEO behind this lame concept? That would be David Coleman...mastermind of common core. His company Zimba was allied with McGraw Hill and of course Bill Gates foundation which provides delivery of set curriculum. And then common core and now College Board. He's a Yale/Oxford grad and almost single-handedly deciding how and where American kids will go to college. Sick...in a bad way. How does an exam that represents itself as "standardized" introduce a scoring concept that is anything but? One step closer to free college for everyone and bias against white and asian kids. Housing values? Geebus.
it's a too complicated world we live in,.. they should just look at each kid individually, judge them based only on the merit of their work,.. or am I just simple minded
"crime in the neighborhood." is a factor. that would suck if somebody got in over you because some thug robbed their neighbor
Rich people are going to start paying thugs to rob them so they can raise their kid's adversity score.
But nullified by the housing value score. Why should the educational level, or lack thereof, of parents have any value? Single parent boost? Another encouragement against becoming a family. Way too many ways to cheat, just like the College Board SAT is now. Hell, they should be spending their time trying to find out why they had dirty proctors susceptible to millionaire parents and a test that was infiltrated by Chinese nationals whose kids came in and aced it despite not speaking a word of English.
Housing value score can be manipulated too. I can see a great business opportunity in renting private mailboxes addresses in the hood for the well to do to list as their home address.
Everything is manipulatable. Fake a divorce to appear as a single parent. Sign up for school free lunch program. Report a bunch of non-existent crimes. This is literally the dumbest idea in a long time.
They make it seem like if a poor kid scores slightly lower than a rich kid that they won't get into college. That is bull, maybe they dont go to mit but with high enough scores they would go somewhere really good.
Of course they would. Not only that but if a student had poor scores and a high enough adversity score, and really was an incapable student, is it fair to put them in the classroom with kids who are highly intelligent and moving at a different pace? The current process works itself out for the most part.
Which leads to the next step of this lunacy, dumbing down the course material to make it fair for the stupid. One step backwards for man, one giant leap backwards for mankind. Kids who should have gone to butcher school will be surgeons instead. Won't their moms be proud?
