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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

#331

Post by rayiner »

adbge wrote: post #240
thex10 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Interestingly, black and Hispanic people support vouchers at a slightly higher rate than white people. That is remarkable because whites overall skew heavily conservative. (Trump and Romney won white non-Hispanic voters approximately 60-40.) White liberals are the only demographic that strongly oppose school choice and vouchers.

Source: https://www.gse.upenn.edu/news/press-releases/poll-majority-...

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

#332

Post by whatshisface »

thosakwe wrote: post #328
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.

> Now Asians will be discriminated against secretly. So, a separate number being added to College Board's overall package is secret discrimination against Asian students? The "adversity score," according to the article, is calculated based on 15 different factors. The two listed (relative quality of the student’s high school and the crime rate/poverty level of the student’s home neighborhood) are not directly tied to…

>So, a separate number being added to College Board's overall package is secret discrimination against Asian students?

It sounds kind of like, "put a gold star on all of the Jewish applicants, and allow each reviewer to decide how to act on that information individually."

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

#334

Post by duxup »

>15 factors

That just seems so limited considering the variability of life.

It seems there are so many well intentioned efforts out there that seem focused on sort of economic or just easily measured statistics .... and people just try to unweave the weave by putting pressure on those easy to measure numbers.

I'm not sure that solves anything.

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

#335

Post by thosakwe »

whatshisface wrote: post #332
thosakwe wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now Asians will be discriminated against secretly. So, a separate number being added to College Board's overall package is secret discrimination against Asian students? The "adversity score," according to the article, is calculated based on 15 different factors. The two listed (relative quality of the student’s high school and the crime rate/poverty level of the student’s home neighborhood) are not directly tied to…

> So, a separate number being added to College Board's overall package is secret discrimination against Asian students? It sounds kind of like, "put a gold star on all of the Jewish applicants, and allow each reviewer to decide how to act on that information individually."

It really does not, at all. How can you equate a combination of 15 factors (at least two of which are not tied to any specific identity) to improve admissions results, with a Nazi policy that directly foreran the Holocaust, and singled out groups for mass extermination?

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

#336

Post by [deleted] »

781 wrote: post #200
UnpossibleJim wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it even secretly anymore? It just seems outright discrimination, at this point, as far as admissions is concerned.

According to current thinking it's impossible to discriminate against white/east-asian people.

[deleted]

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

#337

Post by dsfyu404ed »

pesmhey wrote: post #325
dba7dba wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And who gets to decide how oppressed you are? Maybe you grew up in a poor neighborhood but have incredibly supportive parents/family? Maybe you grew up in a billionaire family but with parents who are never around because they have business to run and places to go (as they can afford to)? And the 'secret' part of the story really really bugs me. Why don't we turn US tax code into a state secret so that rich…

Language is probably a decent one. If there was a major language shift in your family tree within the last 500 years, you can probably count yourself as disadvantaged in a lot of ways. This includes Africans, indigenous people, but also people from countries where a central version of their language spread from the capital out, although not as bad of a case. If your Asian parents immigrated and sacrificed hard for yo…

>Language is probably a decent one. If there was a major language shift in your family tree within the last 500 years, you can probably count yourself as disadvantaged in a lot of ways.

500yr is waaaaay too long. 100yr ago nobody in my family tree spoke English and they were all subsistence farming on a different continent. Every relative I know is decently prosperous. Some people make more of their lives than others but nobody is disadvantaged.

I have a friend who's grandparents had everything taken by the Japanese, then again by the communists, moved somewhere they couldn't even speak the language (they got called crazy but they got the last laugh when everyone else starved) and my friend owns a house in a gentrifying city and makes six figures sitting on his butt staring at a screen. Not bad for two generations.

I knew a woman who lost a good chunk of her immediate family to violence in a south American country her mom moved with her to the US (I'm pretty sure she came to the US as a refugee) they eventually wound up in one of the "worse" cities in NJ and her mom signed her up for some educational program that somehow led to her being sent to a prep school in New England and from there she wend to college and graduated from Colombia.

Compare all of those to my girlfriend's family tree which is chock full of deadbeats. I don't know a single one who is actively engaged in working hard to move up in the world. They've been on this continent longer than the existence of the nation they reside in. Maybe they made something of themselves once upon a time but this branch of the family tree has done nothing productive.

I think whether or not you grow up in a household with parents who are driven to raise their kids well is the primary determining factor. If colleges want to know how "disadvantaged" a kid is they should be looking at the parents. Immigrants for the most part tend to be very industrious and pass that on to their children and grandchildren but it seems to diminish over the generations and the variance among individuals takes over as the determining factor. Some individuals are highly driven. Some are deadbeats.

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

#338

Post by cheesymuffin »

I've actually thought quite a bit about this issue over the past few years. Essentially the problem is that students with parents who did not score well are fighting a constant uphill battle.

Grade families like classes. The "class average" should always be a C (assume for sake of explanation that a C is 2000).

C, the student's initial score (call it the "crude score", C) is computed the same way it's always been

P is the student's penalty, computed from a weighted average of all of their ancestors' crude scores (w_k...w_1) as well as theirs (w_0).

For the next generation,

set w_k := w_(k-1)

if C > C_av: w_0 = w_1 * w_2 else: w_0 = w_1

normalize w_0...w_k

P = (sum(w_0...w_k) - C_av) * urgency

Where urgency is a measure of how in need the disadvantaged groups are as well as their numbers. This can be adjusted manually based on the political climate, maybe by a DAO that governs the College Board on the Ethereum blockchain.

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

#339

Post by dawkra »

781 wrote: post #200
UnpossibleJim wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it even secretly anymore? It just seems outright discrimination, at this point, as far as admissions is concerned.

According to current thinking it's impossible to discriminate against white/east-asian people.

You forgot South Asian people.

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

#340

Post by spamizbad »

danmaz74 wrote: post #212
learc83 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The OP had the same opportunity, but because they did the traditional things for a poorer family to encourage their students to succeed (moving to a good school district and sacrificing on the commute) they will be considered a privileged student in this analysis. Compared to the poor students whose parents didn't make those sacrifices, they are privileged.

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

How does a child earn hard-working parents? They don't: they won the genetic lottery.
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