
College Board Drops Plans for SAT Student Adversity Score - big_chungus
https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-board-drops-plans-for-sat-student-adversity-scores-11566928181?mod=rsswn
======
ThrowawayR2
Quoting from the article:

" _Instead, it will try to capture a student’s social and economic background
in a broad array of data points. The new tactic is called Landscape and
doesn’t combine the metrics into a single score._ "

So they didn't really drop it. They just revised it a bit and gave it a new
name.

~~~
_Nat_
> They just revised it a bit and gave it a new name.

Asians are a minority but out-score whites. So, if you were responsible for
assigning an adversity score:

1\. Would you say that Asians should get a lower score (since they tend to do
better) or a higher score (since they're a minority)?

2\. How much of an income difference between an Asian student's family and a
white student's family to result in the same score?

If you choose to penalize Asian individuals for their racial group doing
better on average, how could you justify this to Asians who feel discriminated
against? What would you say when they point out that you're penalizing them
compared to white people despite being historically discriminated against?

If you choose to penalize white individuals despite their racial group doing
poorer on average, how could you justify this to whites who feel discriminated
against? What would you say when they point out that your system increases,
rather than decreases, racial gaps in colleges?

To be clear, I agree with you -- this revised system has many of the same
problems as the original proposal. But, now some of these tough questions
aren't on their shoulders.

~~~
ralusek
I have said this for years. Asians, particularly Asian males, are the only
racial group in America subject to overt policies meant to disadvantage them
on the basis of their race, and nobody cares. Asian immigrants to the US tend
to embody more than any ethnic group precisely the characteristics that are
supposed to constitute America. Meanwhile we're playing games of trying to
tease out how implicit bias might be impacting XYZ, or taking population
outcomes as evidence of systemic bias impacting other groups, when
disadvantages put on Asian individuals are explicitly laid out as systemic and
on the basis of their race.

~~~
jimbob45
Meh. Happens to us white males too. Adversity makes us stronger or something.

~~~
usrlocaletc
I recall the pleasure of riding a slow, long school bus meandering around the
city for 3 hours a day for 4 school years because there were "too many
whites/Asians" at a school on the same block where I lived. Gotta love
bureaucratically-proscribed "equality of outcome" policies foisting inequity
of treatment externalities onto individuals based on their race. Definitely
not racism, because racism can't happen to white males due to the celebration
of the hierarchy of victimhood, right?

------
Gomer1800
"The College Board, the New York-based nonprofit that oversees the SAT, said
it has worried about income inequality influencing test results for year"

If only these systems in place focused on this rather than race. I know race
in the USA correlates strongly with socioeconomic status and outcomes, but its
turned out to be such a divisive issue that consistently antagonizes
stakeholders and leads to controversial policy decisions.

Sure poverty disproportionately affects some ethnic groups more than others,
but it nonetheless has pervasive effects on the health and economic outcomes
of people of all races. Hopefully the next system to replace the last takes
into account the economic handicaps of students and not their race.

~~~
krastanov
I can agree with you that it might be a more productive fast way to fix some
of the issues, but the fact is that racism still affects even the well-off
people of color. Maternal deaths related to birth are a recently studied
example, as is upward/downward social mobility among the well-off.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Such studies aren't capable of determining that "racism" is the cause.

~~~
Miner49er
What else could be a cause?

~~~
krastanov
While I very much disagree with that idea because it has been disproven plenty
of times, the usual "not racism" explanation that people suggest is some
inherent difference between ethnicities unrelated to historical subjugation or
current policies. At this point I take the proponents of such "not racism"
explanations as willfully ignorant implicit racists at best.

~~~
mises
"If you don't agree with me, you're a willfully ignorant implicit racist."

Not a productive remark; painting all who disagree with you as "racists"
devalues the legitimate use of the term and prevents honest discourse.

------
cwperkins
I think I’m well within the minority here, but I am Conservative and support
this initiative. I support it mostly because I’d prefer a transparent system
used widely to a bunch of different opaque systems at all the various
universities. I also ascribe to the belief that someone who is exceptional in
an area where the average may be below proficient is truly exceptional. That
being said I want to work to the ideal that something like this won’t be
necessary in the future of zip code does not determine outcome.

~~~
xyzzyz
It would only be transparent if admissions were decided by an algorithm based
on inputs. With these data from College Boards, you get no transparency: the
schools are still allowed to do whatever they want, and now they get extra
data for a posteriori justification of their decision.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Why shouldn’t the schools do what they want? Nobody is entitled to go to the
school they want to go to.

------
40acres
The problem with diversity programs in education is that they are half baked,
if you wanted to truly solve the root causes of racial discrepancies in
education you'd need reform at the elementary school level. School districts
are too tightly coupled with housing for stakeholders to advocate for reform
at that level. If you design programs that try to tackle these discrepancies
without aiming at the root cause you get mishaps like this.

~~~
mises
How do you propose to decouple elementary schools and houses? Busing? We saw
what kind of a disaster that was [0] [1].

Personally, I think on-line schooling is a better option. Internet is becoming
broadly available, and it seems that serving every one the same curriculum
(albeit with some adaptivity to what a student is doing better or worse on)
seems the most viable way to make sure each student gets the same education, I
would think. Then maybe provide a smaller staff at local schools with tutoring
and counseling.

Online education does a good job [2], and has had good results, even in the
third world [3] [4]. It of course needs further development, but I see no
reason why it couldn't be a strong contender to mitigate this issue.

[0]: [https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/02/how-the-lefts-
embra...](https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/02/how-the-lefts-embrace-of-
busing-hurt-the-cause-of-integration.html)

[1]: [https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/10/06/496411024/why-
bus...](https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/10/06/496411024/why-busing-didnt-
end-school-segregation)

[2]: [http://news.mit.edu/2014/study-shows-online-courses-
effectiv...](http://news.mit.edu/2014/study-shows-online-courses-
effective-0924)

[3]: [https://borgenproject.org/online-education-in-developing-
cou...](https://borgenproject.org/online-education-in-developing-countries/)

[4]: [https://www.onlinecoursereport.com/democratizing-
education-o...](https://www.onlinecoursereport.com/democratizing-education-
online-education-and-the-developing-world/)

~~~
nradov
Online schooling only works for motivated, disciplined students. Most children
need to have a qualified teacher in the same room in order to learn
effectively. That especially applies to subjects that students don't enjoy,
but which they need to learn in order to function in society.

~~~
mises
Maybe the question we ought to be asking, then, is, "Why are our youth not
motivated to study?" This seems to be true across all background, excepting
one: first-generation Americans. I was certainly motivated to study, even
things I didn't like. I knew it was my path to a better life. The "second-
generation problem" is well-documented [0], and so the obvious question is:
what can we do to inculcate that same motivation in our youth? To make them
self-directed? On that, I am not sure.

[0]: [https://dyske.com/paper/1258](https://dyske.com/paper/1258),
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/2547418](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2547418)

------
Excel_Wizard
How is the Harvard Asian discrimination lawsuit going lately? I haven't heard
anything in a while.

------
Causality1
>a diverse student body is part of the educational mission of a school.

Why? Why should anyone attempt to intentionally manipulate the ethnic
backgrounds of college students? If you award admission bonuses for the
symptoms of racism like being worse off financially or going to a poorly-rated
high school, wouldn't you be adjusting for adversity in exact proportion to
actual hardship instead of assigning an arbitrary value to skin color? This
entire process can be completely race-agnostic and still compensate for
systemic racism at the same time.

I'm also curious what stops me from putting whatever I want in the race field
on my application. I don't recall my university running a blood test to check
if I was fibbing.

~~~
mises
> I'm also curious what stops me from putting whatever i want int he race
> field on my application.

Nothing, as we found out with Elizabeth Warren being "Indian". As you said, no
test. Of course, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable handing my DNA over to every
school to which I wanted to apply.

~~~
dbcurtis
Back in the day, a woman on my dorm floor would check a different box every
quarter during registration, just to see what would happen. The main thing
that would happen is that one quarter she would get a lot of mailings from the
black student organization, and the next quarter a lot of mailings from the
Asian student association.

Of course, on an admissions form, a whole different machine kicks in. I think
falsifying your admissions form would have consequences.

~~~
nradov
There are no consequences. What objective criteria could they possibly use to
prove you falsified your application?

------
uptownfunk
I think there are two dimensions (likely correlated)

1\. Race.

2\. Socioeconomic status.

Callibrating a score on race would be a problem, because you are explicitly
reinforcing virtues that lead to suboptimal performance. However calibrating a
score on (2) makes sense because kids with unequal resources should have
access to the same opportunities, and it is reasonable to me that a top
performer in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood would do better than someone
who performed similarly were they raised in a more affluent neighborhood.

Where you run into problems is that lower socioeconomic neighborhoods are
associated strongly with black/Latino populations and so it is indirectly
biasing for select racial groups. I don’t think there’s a perfect solution, or
one that is 100% equitable to all parties but I think we can do better than we
are now, in fact I think it is crucial.

------
conscion
Where are all the comments about racial diversity coming from? There's a
single article mentioning that _using_ race is a contentious issue - not that
this score uses race.

Further down in the article, it lists what the scores are based on:

> Those factors are college attendance, household structure, median family
> income, housing stability, education levels and crime.

Which all sound like tests of the living conditions and environment that the
students had to learn within - and if those strongly correlate with race, then
maybe there's other issues that need to be addressed

------
fromthestart
If we allow entry of students from underperforming schools into colleges with
historically high academic requirements, one of two things will happen,
neither of which are particularly good:

1\. These students will struggle and be much more likely to fail out,
depending on how much of a boost they're given by the so called adversity
score

2\. Standards will be lowered and as a result graduates will be less competent
and schools lose prestige and/or society suffers in the long run from workers
who previously would not have qualified for their degrees.

You cannot undo the damage of 12 years of poor schooling by simply throwing a
student into a more rigorous curriculum, no matter how admirable the intent.

And arguably point 2 has already been happening for some time anyway given the
swelling of college ranks over the last few years and the corresponding
devaluation of the college degree. More people may hold degrees, but the
normal distribution of intelligence has not changed, which must indicate that
the rigor of the average degree has dropped substantially in the last few
decades given the proportion of the population that is now educated.

~~~
leetcrew
those aren't the only two possible outcomes. I went to a pretty good state
school with pretty generous admissions criteria, but very rigorous coursework.
most of the required courses for stem majors started at the 200 level. if you
got a "good" highschool education (ie passed calculus) you were expected to
start with CS-201. if not, there were lots of gentle 100-level courses to ease
you into programming or teach high school math material that you either didn't
take or failed. note when I say gentle, I mean the material itself is not
difficult. you would be assigned a large _quantity_ of work in every class at
every level.

plenty of kids failed out along the way, but it was more because they didn't
put in enough time than being hopelessly underprepared for the rigor.

you do kinda have to give up on the "undergrad takes exactly four years" thing
if you want this to work though. some people will need to do more than 120
credits to fulfill the requirements of the degree. not everyone will be able
to take a full-time course load every semester or even any semester. that
doesn't make the end result worse when they finally graduate (though it may be
more expensive).

------
wufufufu
Credit score is a number highly correlated with your social-economic status
and race/ethnicity.

------
akhilcacharya
We can’t simultaneously be mad at programs like this and also say school
doesn’t matter.

Personally I think providing separate scores for adversity is a good thing.
Ultimately getting into ones state school isn’t that difficult, and even if it
was your SAT is a small part of that.

------
RickJWagner
I would think that by college age, the raw input to the school had better be
pretty well-refined and at roughly the same level.

To let people into big-league colleges with any 'fudge factor' isn't doing
them any favors. It's just an easy path to failure. (Also: even if the schools
provide hand-holding and personal tutoring, the school had better make sure
what is provided sticks. Very well. Else they may graduate some 'charity
cases', but it won't be doing the graduates any favors when they hit the
workforce.)

~~~
ThrustVectoring
A large portion of the value of a degree is simply in signaling - it tells
potential employers rough information about candidate IQ, conscientiousness,
and social capital. Graduating unqualified students is absolutely a favor, and
a huge one to boot. The primary people harmed are the _other students_ , who
suffer the ill effects of inflation in the value of their degree.

------
TCR19
I get the idea that with so many admissions we need some way to "standardize"
admissions, but the way we do it is pretty archaic, and definitely doesn't
work for a host of different students. Has anyone seen any interesting
concepts or ideas around dropping standardized testing in general for
something else?

~~~
umanwizard
In many countries it goes the other direction: the standardized exams are much
harder than the SAT (so you don't have a bunch of people clustering at the top
with perfect scores) and are the _only_ metric used for university admissions.

~~~
skinnymuch
That seems pretty bad too, no? Basing everything off just standardized exams?
Are these exams usually/mostly multiple choice?

~~~
umanwizard
Why does it seem bad to you? To me it seems like the fairest possible method,
as long as the tests are reasonably accurate measures of competence.

The US method on the other hand where colleges try to assess “leadership” and
other qualities of that nature makes no sense to me. What in the world do
“leadership”, extracurricular activities, sports ability, etc. have to do with
academic ability?

I guess it’s because in the US, college is seen as a way of sorting people
into social classes, just as much as a place to actually learn something (or
more). But a sane system shouldn’t care about having “well-rounded” students —
it should optimize for having the best 100 students in physics in the country
studying together from the best physicists, the best in history from the best
historians, etc.

> Are these exams usually/mostly multiple choice?

No.

