291–300 of 959 posts
FTA: "The score would not be reported to the student, only to college officials." Brilliant. Another aspect of the already sketchy admittance process that will be overanalyzed and ultimately gamed to death -- assuming that this score truly has value to begin with.
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According to current thinking it's impossible to discriminate against white/east-asian people.
I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. The United States has a system of de jure discrimination against white and asian men. Moreover, there is a great deal of de facto discretization against them as well. Many people seem to think that it is "fair" and appropriate for this to be the case, but I don't think its debatable that this is the fact of the matter. I think those who support this policy should defend it…
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.
Devil's advocate: I'd argue that you not eating out, getting socialized, and traveling actually made you less of a well-rounded individual and you probably should be penalized for those things. Colleges need diversity. They don't need the same kind of kid replicated 10,000 times. Racquetball, violin, AP calculus does not an interesting campus make.
My (apparently unpopular?) opinion: this is an excellent move. Colleges already try to take adversity into account in admissions. Now they'll have a more uniform, clear, objective, and standardized way of doing so. I do wish it was more transparent--i.e. that students could see their own scores--but this is clearly a step in the right direction.
https://priceonomics.com/post/48794283011/do-elite-colleges-...
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> I’m getting pushed further and further to the right. Oh, do you think the right is going to improve upon the US's current system of incentivizing/forcing families to fight over/make big sacrifices for homes in the wealthiest school districts in order to give their children a half-decent shot at a good education? Or do you just want to be entitled to the good college in exchange for the childhood your parents chose…
> Oh, do you think the right is going to improve upon the US's current system of incentivizing/forcing families to fight over/make big sacrifices for homes in the wealthiest school districts in order to give their children a half-decent shot at a good education? Yes? Ever heard of school vouchers? The political right would love to reform the education system, from teachers unions to university professors, the entrenc…
The purpose of the SAT is supposed to be to predict if a person would succeed or not at college. I don't see how adding an adversity score will aid in making this prediction.
If adversity measures correlate with lower test scores more than they do with lower performance, then it would obviously help.
Of course, the adversity score—which is separate from the main test score—may serve a separate function for institutions using it, just because the existing score serves one purpose doesn't mean that everything the College Board packages with it must serve that purpose.
"The score would not be reported to the student, only to college officials." That's... kinda scary.
Zero chance this non-disclosure policy lasts. Remember how much pressure Uber got to allow riders to see their rating? And that "score" has just about zero impact on anyone's life/future/potential scholarship opportunities.
My (apparently unpopular?) opinion: this is an excellent move. Colleges already try to take adversity into account in admissions. Now they'll have a more uniform, clear, objective, and standardized way of doing so. I do wish it was more transparent--i.e. that students could see their own scores--but this is clearly a step in the right direction.
> Now they'll have a more uniform, clear, objective, and standardized way of doing so. How do we know this? Why should the College board be reporting this? The lack of transparency is the real issue. What data are they collecting to generate this score and why? Is it just going to be an 0-100 index of the average score for that particular test location?
- Neighborhood environment
- Crime Rate
- Poverty Rate
- Housing Values
- Vacancy rate
- Family Environment
- Median income
- Single parent
- Education level
- ESL
- High school environment
- undermatching
- curricular rigor
- free lunch rate
- AP opportunityEarlier quoted context omitted.
I was talking to someone who's been involved in elite university admissions, and gaming for the city/neighborhood/HS has been a known tactic for a while. There's a related tactic for people in affluent suburbs, for getting their child into urban school districts with an especially well-regarded primary public school: buy a house or condo in the city, and try to make it look on your application like that's your primar…
At that point why not just send your kids to a private school?
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During grad school I tutored (@ $50-$100/hr). I could consistently help even the poorest students move from below 50th percentile to 75th percentile. Moving from I think SAT/ACT are pretty good tests [1], but they're horrendously over-gamed at this point. I have very little faith in either as anything other than a demonstration of how badly the student wants to be admitted to a good school and has money for tutoring.…
Research contradicts your anecdote. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/after-service/201903...
I worked with students throughout the school year with a focus on the underlying content, and only switched to "coaching" the last few weeks before the exam. For many students, I tutored them weekly or biweekly, for 1-3 hours per week, for multiple years!
NONE of the studies on the effect of coaching consider the effect of this sort of longer-term individualized instruction.
I'm willing to believe that short-term coaching only has small effects, but sustained individual instruction has a huge impact on mathematical ability. And as I explicitly said in my original post, SAT/ACT do a good job of measuring that ability.
But claiming that sustained access to individualized high-quality teaching doesn't effect performance on subject-specific tests that require nontrivial content knowledge and practice is, on face, absurd. At the very least, the studies you're citing say absolutely nothing about this sort of sustained intervention.
(Also, College Board loves amplifying those studies. I wonder why...)