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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

#721

Post by snaggletooth »

jachee wrote: post #259
GhostVII wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and every non-privileged person who gets in also hurts others who are in the same situation, since they have taken up a spot. The difference is in this case there is an actual policy which is actively punishing people for being in a perceived state of privilege.

Punishing those in privilege is how you achieve equality. They can't give up that inequality voluntarily, and wouldn't if they could.

So if you make $125k/yr and I make $75k/yr, equality can only exist if you give me 25k? Should America all just average our salaries and call it a day?

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

#722

Post by jachee »

remote_phone wrote: post #478
jachee wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is giving underprivileged people a leg up "punishing" anyone? Privileged people need to start recognizing their inherent pre-rigging of the system. For those in power, equality feels like oppression.

Pre-rigging? I’ve worked my ass off for nearly 30 years, as has my wife. We are both smart and very hard working and it paid off. My roots are middle class at best. My parents are immigrants and were extremely poor as children but they also worked hard and went from poverty to middle class. I’m teaching my children to work hard and be good people and contribute to this world. How pray tell am I benefiting from “pre-r…

The system is pre-rigged against:

    • People of color
    • LGBTQ 
    • Lower-than-upper-middle-class
    • Divorced and/or single-parent homes
    • Rural families
You talk about the decisions you made. The fact that you even had a choice is a privilege denied to many. For each of the above that you didn't have to overcome, that's a way the system is rigged in your favor. Your children won't be disadvantaged in any way, and you're free to spend your resources to ensure their maximum opportunity.

Take a break from your "I gotta get mine before anyone else gets any!" attitude, and walk a mile in my shoes.

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

#723

Post by adelie »

aabajian wrote: post #522

I'll play devil's advocate. I went to a public high school that served a large area (it's Rim of the World High in Southern California in case anyone is curious). It's the only high school in the mountains, and services "poorer" areas like Crestline and "wealthier" areas like Lake Arrowhead. To my knowledge, I was one of the only honors kids from Crestline. My morning consisted of getting up at 5:30 am and taking a 4…

i'd actually say that's an argument against having an 'adversity score' - a single value simply isn't enough to capture the nuances of your situation, and having a standardized score might pressure colleges to rely more heavily on those values.

specifically for your example, there doesn't seem to be any factor in the score calculation that takes into account 'distance from school,' while 'quality of high school' does play a role. so it's quite possible that since your high school did better overall (i.e. serviced 'wealthier' kids, skewing the score), your score would look better than things actually were.

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

#724

Post by Mirioron »

jachee wrote: post #715
remarkEon wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For those in power, equality feels like oppression. This is a classic Kafka-trap, and I see this rhetorical payload delivered more and more these days. "If you have a problem with changing the status quo, then you're in power and thus deserve to have the status quo changed on you."

If the status quo systematically oppresses one group and benefits another, the beneficiaries of said system will perceive any change to the status quo that would reduce the oppression of the former group as an unfair attack.

But it's not systemic oppression. The system doesn't try to keep poor people poor or uneducated. Do poor people have it harder? Yes, but they have many of the same opportunities available to them. The modern world is rich in information that is freely taught. College is signaling in large part, but there are plenty of opprobrious right now where skill beats signaling.

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

#725

Post by snaggletooth »

jachee wrote: post #707
svd4anything wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow punishing those in privilege creates equality. The logic “progressive” american politics is pursuing is truly scary and broken. Hating the rich is hate. If you really loved the poor you would think how to help them lift themselves up. Holding down the top both doesn’t work and is deeply unethical. College board should provide free tutoring and review classes based of their adversity score instead. I can’t image t…

>If you really loved the poor you would think how to help them lift themselves up I know! Let's give them a bit of advantage in getting an education. Oh, wait.

Does anyone honestly believe the only way to provide that advantage is to fake their score? That kind of lazy thinking is what needs an adversity score to be considered good.

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

#726

Post by AnthonyMouse »

robotresearcher wrote: post #711
remote_phone wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already talked to my wife about this. I would retire, we would divorce, and I would rent a shitty apartment in East Palo Alto all the while living in our house. If they think they can boil my kids into a single number without bothering to find the context of who my kids are then I will game it to as much as possible. I don’t know why my family should be punished because my wife and I worked our asses off to get ahe…

I understand the feeling, but how about if we rephrase it from another viewpoint: I don’t know why I should be punished because my parents didn’t succeed financially. I work hard in highschool but don’t have extra private tutoring or parents who can help me with calculus homework. I’m hard working and bright but how can I compete with kids from Saratoga High School where everyone’s parents went to MIT/Penn and work a…

The underlying problem is that we're trying to ration something that shouldn't be this scarce.

If everybody wants to go to Harvard then why can't they expand the school and accept more students?

Because the same brand of metrics trolls who are screwing this up have also screwed up in the school rankings by making schools rank better if they reject more applicants, so now the schools optimize for that.

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

#727

Post by waterhouse »

Glyptodon wrote: post #18

This seems likely to end up being ugly. For example wealthy people could buy or rent addresses in "adverse" neighborhoods, or charter schools might locate offices there, in order to attempt to improve scores on this metric. At the same time this won't be able to identify many adverse life circumstances like abusive parents, cancer, etc. What it does do is outsource components of admissions decisions the colleges may…

I guess that means it'll give the truly wealthy, who can afford such shenanigans, an advantage over the decently well off. Fascinating.

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

#728

Post by pathseeker »

robotresearcher wrote: post #711
remote_phone wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already talked to my wife about this. I would retire, we would divorce, and I would rent a shitty apartment in East Palo Alto all the while living in our house. If they think they can boil my kids into a single number without bothering to find the context of who my kids are then I will game it to as much as possible. I don’t know why my family should be punished because my wife and I worked our asses off to get ahe…

I understand the feeling, but how about if we rephrase it from another viewpoint: I don’t know why I should be punished because my parents didn’t succeed financially. I work hard in highschool but don’t have extra private tutoring or parents who can help me with calculus homework. I’m hard working and bright but how can I compete with kids from Saratoga High School where everyone’s parents went to MIT/Penn and work a…

By the time you hit the SAT it's too late. If you aren't qualified enough to do well on the SAT then, you are going to struggle and hold classmates back more-so than the peer you displaced would have.

Offer free additional after-school programs, etc in high school to solve the problem. You don't make a slow runner faster by moving the finish line closer for him/her.

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

#729

Post by jachee »

snaggletooth wrote: post #721
jachee wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Punishing those in privilege is how you achieve equality. They can't give up that inequality voluntarily, and wouldn't if they could.

So if you make $125k/yr and I make $75k/yr, equality can only exist if you give me 25k? Should America all just average our salaries and call it a day?

If I made $125k a year, that'd be almost double my current salary. I could spare the $25k, then, if you were struggling.

Could you do the same in the reverse situation?

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

#730

Post by snaggletooth »

jachee wrote: post #715
remarkEon wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For those in power, equality feels like oppression. This is a classic Kafka-trap, and I see this rhetorical payload delivered more and more these days. "If you have a problem with changing the status quo, then you're in power and thus deserve to have the status quo changed on you."

If the status quo systematically oppresses one group and benefits another, the beneficiaries of said system will perceive any change to the status quo that would reduce the oppression of the former group as an unfair attack.

I mean if we reversed this plan and said students from rich areas get bonus points on their SATs, wouldn't poor areas call it an unfair attack? Does that somehow prove that rich kids are systemtically oppressed? This vague statement is not some kind of proof of oppression, it's just wordplay.
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