Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 959 posts

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

#281

Post by Declanomous »

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

Based on the views you have espoused here, I would not call you a leftist commie. It sounds like freedom of speech is your number 1 concern, which would be in character for someone with views that could be considered alt-right. Maybe you are a libertarian, which could otherwise be referred to as an anarch-capatalist, but libertarianism is in no way a leftist movement.

While South Park and Eminem both 'triggered' a lot of people because of their use of obscenity, neither is leftist in any way, shape or form. South Park regularly attacks anyone who tries to change society, which is in no way a leftist mindset. As for Eminem, I can't think of a single example of left-leaning thought in any of them outside of freedom of speech.

In general I think you'd have a very hard time making the claim that the overton window is sliding to the left. Maybe the overton window is moving to the left for gender identity and sexual expression, but that is about it. The right has succeeded in moving the overton window substantially in their favor in most social and economic programs.

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

#282

Post by rosser »

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

> Maybe not, it feels like to me that the Overton window[0] has been sliding left.

The Left-Right Overton Window has definitely moved Right, in that reductive to the point of uselessness, single-axis characterization of American politics. Some of Reagan's and Nixon's policies would be dismissed as "libtarded" now, as would some of W.'s.

Another Overton Window (or, more accurately, related group of Windows), describing discourse about and among the races, sexualities, gender identities, &c, have at the same time moved in a direction that is less welcoming to speech that is premised in a notion of superiority or morality about those things, especially when uttered by a person who believes that premise, and which is about the speaker's (and by implication their tribe's) own superiority, or someone else's inferiority or immorality.

The vector product of those Windows' movements is a culturally dominant polity who feels marginalized.

> 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.

I think there's a meaningful difference between speech that is offensive, whatever that means, to cultural norms — especially those that are othering, or regressive, or shame-based, or whatever — and speech that is offensive, whatever that means, to individuals and populations — particularly when those individuals or populations are minorities, and have been historically subject to oppression, and which speech attempts to normalize their oppression.

Don't mistake me: Freedom of speech is for the speech one likes least, or it's for no speech at all; I want the bigots every bit as free to make their noise as I do the artists or the critics (who are often the same people), but for entirely different reasons.

Perhaps the comedian's notion of "punching up" versus "punching down" is relevant here. Perhaps also that people — on both sides — are generally just bad at disagreeing.

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

#283

Post by Apocryphon »

GhostVII wrote: post #268
Sebguer wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you suggest solving a problem that comes down effectively to 'some people have more money and free time'? Not everyone can afford high quality tutoring, and high quality tutoring clearly has an impact on test scores.

After school programs, ensuring all schools have equal funding, getting better at determining which kids aren't succeeding, and spending more time with them to give them the one on one support they need. I mean it's a very hard problem, and maybe it's unsolvable, but I think we have a lot more things we can try before giving up and trying to put Band-Aids on the problem. I think if class sizes are sufficiently small…

Those are all great ideas, but the disadvantaged children in the schools this mechanism is trying to help probably don't go to schools that offer those benefits.

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

#284

Post by harryh »

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.

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

#285

Post by YjSe2GMQ »

harryh wrote: post #235
paulddraper wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This score is apparently a secret. > The score would not be reported to the student, only to college officials. They give you a standardized test, but you can't even find out how well you did.

You still get the score for how well you did. You don't get your "adversity score" which is not based on how well you did, but only on where you live and what high school you attend.

Which is absurd, considering it's involved in college admission process.

Maybe we should also have a hidden citizen score, to be used behind the scenes in the courts of law?

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

#286

Post by ausjke »

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.

Free lunch, low-income pays no incoming tax(47% and more of them), food stamps, disabled benefits, medicare medicaid, CHIP for kids, etc etc, I'm fine so far. But AA for college admission(and jobs too these days)? followed by SAT score manipulation? this is literally pushing me to the far right side, it makes me feel hard working, sacrificing for next generation made no sense, this is getting close to robbery. what's next for me as a middle class guy?!

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

#288

Post by p1necone »

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

Anecdotal, but I notice a lot more people clamoring about freedom of speech when it's white supremacists being affected and a lot less when it's ISIS or Al-Qaeda. I find it very hard to take them seriously because of this, despite agreeing with a lot of the sentiment.

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

#289

Post by toast0 »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #38

This new metric seems to be mostly based on ZIP and school-level data, not individual circumstances, so it may not be trivially gameable (short of moving your family to an impoverished neighborhood, which seems... unlikely). That said, colleges already have access to this information through publicly-available high school rankings and ZIP-level demographic data. All this new metric does is add opacity and plausible d…

> mostly based on ZIP and school-level data, not individual circumstances, so it may not be trivially gameable

Once the ZIP code to score mapping is known, it's trivially gameble to get a mailing address in the best scoring ZIP code that won't get you kicked out of your school, if the ZIP code comes from school records. People do this all the time in reverse to get kids into desirable schools.

Actually getting your kid into an undesirable school to get the full score might be less likely, although that may depend on the specific time requirements to get the score and the magnitude of the score related to other factors.

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

#290

Post by enraged_camel »

brankoB wrote: post #219
enraged_camel wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I don’t know why my family should be punished because my wife and I worked our asses off to get ahead. Just to offer some general commentary, I think this mentality is probably the root of most of our social ills: people see everything as a "race" and they work hard to "get ahead", and they therefore get angry at policies that attempt to even the playing field because it might help others "catch up".

It's not an anger at helping others catch up, but an anger at pulling people back. We can help people who are behind without sacrificing the people who are already ahead.

>>We can help people who are behind without sacrificing the people who are already ahead.

Again, the problem is you are viewing the world through a certain lens, where people are "ahead" or "behind".

Post reply on HN