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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

#481

Post by kaitai »

darawk wrote: post #382
batbomb wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not sure what your point is. Nobody mentioned Harvard. This de-values the efforts of parents to improve their kids education. If you devalue something, you get less of it. Simple as that.

Can you spell out how it devalues the efforts of parents to improve their children's education?

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

#482

Post by darawk »

harryh wrote: post #433
darawk wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where the efforts of parents don't help their kids, parents won't make efforts. This will degrade the educational attainment of all kids. Most people consider this to be a bad thing.

"diminishing the effect outsized parental involvement can have on college admissions" != "efforts of parents don't help their kids"

That really depends on how much diminishing you do. Either way, at the margin, you decrease the return to parental investment. At the margin, parents will invest less.

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

#483

Post by darawk »

harryh wrote: post #450
darawk wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you skip what I wrote? You say you're all about parents sacrificing for their kids. But why would they bother if their kids won't get any benefit from it?

It's a matter of degree. Some sacrifice = great. Extreme sacrifice = bad.

Is not eating out or taking vacations too much sacrifice?

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

#484

Post by kaitai »

verylongname wrote: post #258
781 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Could you explain what the US system of de jure discrimination against white and asian men consists of? Genuinely curious.

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

#485

Post by indrax »

hermitdev wrote: post #455
indrax wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An SAT score is an assessment of how well you will do in college. It's not something you can earn or deserve. If someone does less well than you but came from a much worse school district, why shouldn't a predictor take that into account? If this were almost any other example of adding a modifier to correct for a bias in an initial scoring system, nobody would bat an eye, and we'd be discussing specifics.

It's not an assessment of how well you will do, it's an assessment of how well you are prepared for college. Big difference.

That is incorrect.

What would "well prepared" mean here anyway?

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

#486

Post by astura »

wanderer2323 wrote: post #277
sjy wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Choosing to get a fake divorce so that you can game the system as much as possible isn't punishment; it's probably fraud. You could also choose to relax and let your children enjoy all the other benefits of a great upbringing, and accept that "the children of hardworking parents should be more likely to be admitted" isn't a design goal of the admissions system.

Resisting an abusive and insanely overreaching government system is not 'fraud' morally and it probably won't be one legally.

The SAT is administered by College Board which is an entirely private institution.

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

#487

Post by manfredo »

Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #474
manfredo wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. This adversity score penalizes people who good character (insofar as making sacrifices to provide better education opportunity for ones' kids is good character). Family A makes $X and goes through significant sacrifices (e.g. commuting 4 hours) to live in a wealthy neighborhood with good schools. Family B makes the same $X and lives a leisurely live in a cheap neighborhood with bad schools. Which should…

It seems you haven't spent much time in a "cheap neighborhood with bad schools." I can assure you that no one there is making $X. In my city, the average household income is $38k; the state average is $74k. Almost all people, including poor people, make sacrifices and want what is best for their kids.

You're missing the point. The original comment in this chain comes from someone whose family made sacrifices in order to live in an area with good educational opportunities. This 'Adversity Score' would penalize them for making that sacrifice. Between two families with identical incomes, the one that chooses to curb luxuries to live in a place with a better school district would be penalized for that choice. The fact that good school districts tend to be populated by people with higher incomes is largely tangential to the point at hand.

> Almost all people, including poor people, make sacrifices and want what is best for their kids.

I don't doubt that people of all income levels want their kids to succeed. But there definitely are differences in behavior between demographics. The wealthier people are the more likely they are to use test prep across all demographics, but Asians are more likely to do so regardless of income. Asians also spend more than twice as much time studying outside of class than any other race [1]. There are differences in how much emphasis is put on education, this cannot be denied.

1. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/...

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

#488

Post by remote_phone »

fzeroracer wrote: post #316
GhostVII wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also give resources to those who aren't in privilege so they are able to succeed academically, and don't need to have their admission average artificially lowered.

Giving resources is also a zero-sum game. When you're giving more resources to those that aren't privileged, you are in effect denying those same resources for those that are. For example, school admissions. We can provide more funding for underperforming schools, but that is also less funding going towards better performing schools. At a certain point you will have to accept that to help the poor it will mean cuttin…

No. If I can afford to provide my own resources, I’m okay with this. Just like I’m okay paying for social security but not receiving any when I retire. Those that have more resources can afford to take less than those that don’t have enough resources themselves.

What I’m not okay with is adjusting scores and denying opportunity because of economic class warfare.

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

#489

Post by remarkEon »

mythrwy wrote: post #255
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 hear what you are saying, but that means you are advantaged. You had parents that cared and sacrificed and took and interest in your future. With that in mind they also probably made sure you studied and did your homework. To be a bit blunt (and hopefully not offensive, just for example), if someone who didn't have those kind of parents and that type of situation makes the same scores as you, likely they either wor…

This is treading the line of being completely Kafkaesque. I'm having trouble following the discussion in this thread. On the one hand, lots of people are arguing that this test change is BS and will have lots of unintended consequences. Then there's others arguing, not always explicitly, that children should essentially be punished in terms of their "points", for lack of a better term, in college admissions because of their homelife. Have a mother and father that stayed together? You lose adversity points. A mom that stayed at home so dad could get promoted and afford to move the family to a better school district? You lose adversity points. A public high school with lots of AP classes? You lose adversity points. Family lives in an area with a tech boom, and thus has low vacancy rates in housing? You guessed it. No adversity points for you.

This is insane, and it's going to encourage absurd behavior meant to dupe this system - and don't kid yourself, there will be (see all the wealthy Hollywood types cheating on their kids SAT scores). There might be less nefarious antics if the College Board at least was transparent about how they calculate the score and released it after the test - but they're not. That's how you know this is a shell game, meant to give Universities an "out" for manipulating the demographics of their matriculating classes as they see fit. These incentives are wrong and unethical.

As a silver lining, maybe this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back and folks will start to realize what a fraud the modern "university" is. When the fiance and I start having kids, we've already discussed how college shouldn't be the default scenario. I hope others start considering this. It is mind-boggling to think that my kid could be disadvantaged specifically because I sacrificed to make a better life than I had growing up, so we won't be playing this game.

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