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SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

nytimes.com

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Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#371

Post by colordrops »

fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #165
rhegart wrote: post #131

Equality of opportunity over outcome for me. Now Asians will be discriminated against secretly. My family sacrificing vacations and eating out for 12 years (literally ate out 5x max) to afford to live in a good school district shouldn’t penalize us. My dad commuted 4 hours daily instead of moving...I’m getting pushed further and further to the right.

>I’m getting pushed further and further to the right. Maybe not, it feels like to me that the Overton window[0] has been sliding left. My views on freedom of speech made me a 'leftist commie' when I used them to defend South Park and Eminem now most often I'm accused being 'alt-right' by those who disagree with those same views. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

The window is shifting to opinions held by those who call themselves the left, which isn't necessarily the same thing as what has been traditionally considered to be leftist.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#372

Post by tankerdude »

rhegart wrote: post #131

Equality of opportunity over outcome for me. Now Asians will be discriminated against secretly. My family sacrificing vacations and eating out for 12 years (literally ate out 5x max) to afford to live in a good school district shouldn’t penalize us. My dad commuted 4 hours daily instead of moving...I’m getting pushed further and further to the right.

From the article: "The score will be calculated using 15 factors, including the relative quality of the student’s high school and the crime rate and poverty level of the student’s neighborhood."

So no, it doesn't account for you to secretly discriminate against you. What it does do, for the penalization part, is that the schools that are in affluent neighborhoods have access to much better resources than ones from Compton or Watts.

To me, a kid from Compton who scores 1500 on the SAT far outweighs someone from Palo Alto High who also scores 1500 because of all the resources the latter received to be able to reach it.

Moving is orthogonal to the problem, except that the district could be brutally hard for some kids.

Also, imagine the other folks in your neighborhood who got literally everything. Driving to school in a Maserati and spending for 4 different tutors over the course of 12 years.

Who is more deserving? You, who scored 1500, or him, who scored 1500? I sure hope you don't say, "it should equal!"

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#373

Post by knolax »

gred wrote: post #321
knolax wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguing that point with a fictional novel seems incredibly opaque, inefficient, and sometimes disingenuous.

this comment : thought :: soylent : food

Your comment isn't nearly as clever or original as you think it is.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#374

Post by solveit »

learc83 wrote: post #228
danmaz74 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, if you make a sacrifice to earn something, that something isn't a privilege.

Your parents making a sacrifice isn't the same thing as you making a sacrifice. If my dad makes a sacrifice by working 100 hours a week to buy me a Maserati, the car is definitely a privilege not something I earned. And yeah, I may have lost out on spending time with my dad, but that wasn't a choice I made, so while it cost me something it wasn't a sacrifice on my part.

I agree, but do we really want to disincentivise parents sacrificing for their children's education? I'm fine with taxing Maseratis at whatever rate, not so fine with this.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#375

Post by max76 »

harryh wrote: post #284
max76 wrote: post #61

I think the goal of quantifying the amount of adversity a person experiences in their life is a fools errand. This is like asking "On a scale of 1-100 how beautiful is The Mona Lisa." Somethings can only be poorly approximated in numbers. Once we have a number it tends to become An Important Thing, regardless of how much the number reflects reality. It is ironic that SAT is making a new number that has little reflect…

Lot's of measures are imperfect. That doesn't mean they aren't useful.

What statistics will the Adversity Score be based on? How close to reality are those numbers? What statistics will colleges create using the Adversity Score? Those will surely be even further away from reality.

The primary use of a number like Adversity Score is to create a pretty spreed sheet that generates pretty graphs that look good in board meetings, grant applications and pamphlets. While the data backing up the graph is impeccable it also is built on layer after layer of imperfect abstractions until the graph has very little to do with reality.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#376

Post by batbomb »

darawk wrote: post #347
rayiner wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ironic thing about your post is that the adversity score is just accounting for the ways in which children are denied "equality of opportunity." For example, it factors in: "the relative quality of the student’s high school and the crime rate and poverty level of the student’s neighborhood." Your post confirms it--why would your dad commute four hours a day to live in a particular neighborhood unless he believed…

...and his point is why should his dad make that sacrifice for his kids if the SAT board is just going to subvert his efforts?

What would it subvert?

You go to a better school, you get a better education, you are more educated and you get a 34 on the ACT.

If you go to a crappy school and you get the same score than there's no qualitative difference between the schools and your parents skipped vacations for nothing.

But obviously the OP must believe there was value in the better school otherwise they wouldn't mention it. So they would believe they would have got a lower score in a different school, and if that's a proxy for education, then the OP must have ended up with a better education, and is also much more likely to succeed at _any_ college they go to, even if it's not Harvard.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#377

Post by darawk »

harryh wrote: post #360
darawk wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and his point is why should his dad make that sacrifice for his kids if the SAT board is just going to subvert his efforts?

Because we don't want to live in a society that so strongly encourages "sacrificing vacations and eating out for 12 years (literally ate out 5x max)" and "My dad commuted 4 hours daily instead of moving." I'm all about parents sacrificing for their kids, but when the system is set up to push people that far something about the system is broken.

We should absolutely want to live in a society that rewards people for effort and sacrifice. If we do not reward people for doing those things, they won't do them, and you definitely don't want to live in that society.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#378

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #306
rhegart wrote: post #131

Equality of opportunity over outcome for me. Now Asians will be discriminated against secretly. My family sacrificing vacations and eating out for 12 years (literally ate out 5x max) to afford to live in a good school district shouldn’t penalize us. My dad commuted 4 hours daily instead of moving...I’m getting pushed further and further to the right.

The ironic thing about your post is that the adversity score is just accounting for the ways in which children are denied "equality of opportunity." For example, it factors in: "the relative quality of the student’s high school and the crime rate and poverty level of the student’s neighborhood." Your post confirms it--why would your dad commute four hours a day to live in a particular neighborhood unless he believed…

[deleted]

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#379

Post by darawk »

rayiner wrote: post #362
darawk wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and his point is why should his dad make that sacrifice for his kids if the SAT board is just going to subvert his efforts?

Why should the College Board not recognize that kids in fact have unequal opportunities for reasons totally outside their control?

It's fine to recognize it. But if you say, z-score applicants by their 'adversity score' peer group, then you negate the impact of their parents efforts. If you negate their parents efforts, you make it not worthwhile for their parents to make those efforts in the first place. If you make it not worthwhile to make those efforts, they won't be made. And society as a whole will be worse off for it.

Re: SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships

#380

Post by DenisM »

I would like to put forward best arguments for both systems, maybe it will direct our discussion somewhat.

--------

Method 1.

Give everyone equal chance at competing in the admission process itself, regardless of how they got prepared. Someone who prepared well, for any reason, might do well in the future too, for the same reason.

Result 1: Get the best prepared students to best colleges, maximize the number of top scientists / engineers / lawyers / etc graduating. Stronger academia and industry in the end.

Result 2: Meritocracy.

Result 3: On the feeling level: objective reward for hard work (no good example comes to mind, but maybe a Cinderella-type story).

--------

Method 2.

Give everyone equal chance both during the preparation and taking the test. Since that cannot actually be done by the time tests are taken, instead normalize the test result to adversity levels, on the assumption that someone held back by difficult circumstance is likely to perform ~25% better once released from the difficulty.

Result 1: Uncover potential geniuses in the rough, remove mediocre-or-lazy-but-pampered kids.

Result 2: Reduce stratification of society, even if at the expense of overall academic performance of the country.

Result 3: On the feeling level: a fighting chance for poor kids in bad situations (think "The Wire" type kids).

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