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

nytimes.com

821–830 of 959 posts

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

#821
This reminded me about the quote from "Winners take all"

> A true critic might call for an end to funding schools by local property taxes and the creation, as in many advanced countries, of a common national pool that funds schools more or less equally. What a thought leader might offer MarketWorld and its winners is a kind of intellectual counteroffer—the idea, say, of using Big Data to better compensate star teachers and weed out bad ones.

Hardship score is a symptom. A large part of the problem lies in aristocratic-like school funding system.

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

#822

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…

I'm not sure equal funding is the solution.

"Bad school" is not the one without a freshly refurbished swimming pool. It's the one with poor discipline, parents who don't care and a principal who has no idea how to work with kids.

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

#823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that it's hard to make a constructive answer to a post that doesn't really offer a clear argument of its own.

What's unclear?

It's much easier to say that the only thing about it that's clear is that the poster is sarcastically enthusiastic about the hypothetical end of some slippery slope. How that conjecture relates to the actual matter at hand, or what the poster really believes about it is left untold.

The post a level above it in the thread on the other hand makes a reasoned case for why this might not be a good idea, rooted in the actual matter and addressing it directly. With that in mind, it's even harder to imagine what lenkite thought would add to the discussion.

Actually saying that disingenuous mockery doesn't help apparently added to the discussion, though, in that lenkite then responded with a clearly reasoned argument.

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

#824
post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Numerous private universities (Christian schools in particular) enforce strict student code of conduct rules that severely limit the student body's freedom of expression as to way to enforce religious or secular compliance. And it doesn't hurt their reputation but instead is an integral component of the school's identity. Perhaps you're coming from a different cultural context than, but in my circles such universit…

Sadly the people who mock students from private religious schools are also mocking students from historic black colleges or those who went to comminity college. Next time you hear about this speak up and change the conversation.

Not the case, at least in my experience. I work in the San Francisco Bay Area. We recruit exclusively at Ives, the likes of Stanford, MIT, Georgia Tech, etc. and HBCUs and HWCUs. There's a big push to increase racial and gender diversity at least in this region. There's not much much diversity at religious colleges (>82% white, nowhere near the kind of representation we're looking for).

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

#825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day some children will belong to Culture X which is more compatible with academic achievement that Culture Y. My best friend growing up was a Korean kid whose parents almost tortured him and his siblings to excel in school. His pain and sacrifice deserve to count for something.

Or perhaps we can look into alternate systems that don't reward excruciating studying and working systems. Perhaps standardized testing like the SAT is fundamentally flawed and we need to figure out better assessment systems. > South Korea has the 10th highest suicide rate in the world. Note that this is also inflated due to an abnormally high elderly suicide rate due to some systemic factors. > Although lower than t…

What sort of fair system would not reward very hard work and study with very high rewards? If Koreans culturally want a life more tipped towards academic achievement, who are we non-Koreans to tell them they're wrong or that their achievements should be invalidated in the name of equal outcomes.

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

#826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who went to Harvard, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of extremely decent universities that all basically provide the same quality of instruction. People just get unreasonably hung up over the 'best' schools, but there are easily at least like 100+, if not several hundred, that provide easily roughly the same educational experience as far as I'm aware. The peer group may definitely dramatically different fr…

+1. A new member in our team has PHD from a top university and an MBA from Columbia business school.I don't how he got there but it was definitely not for the intelligence or smartness. First time I've understood that CBS graduates can be with zero knowledge or smartness.

Maybe affirmative action at work?

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

#827
post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fr…

Did you even read the comment? Child of immigrant barely in middle class is not privilege.

Immigrant children are very privileged to have parents who managed to lift their asses and move to another country in search of a better life.

Parents who care is the single greatest privilege a child may get.

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

#828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you instead articulate why you disagree?

It's pretty simple. "we should work on solving the actual problems causing them to perform more poorly on the SAT" doesn't even resemble "guaranteed opportunity throughout life"

Wouldn't you want to address actual problems causing them to perform more poorly on the SAT instead of pretending they don't exist? The alternative, of lying to someone, is obviously worse. Do you somehow think this hypothetical person wants to be lied to? Or maybe they want to pretend they did something they did not do?

I don't assume that, nor would I want to be treated like that.

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

#829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's unclear?

It's much easier to say that the only thing about it that's clear is that the poster is sarcastically enthusiastic about the hypothetical end of some slippery slope. How that conjecture relates to the actual matter at hand, or what the poster really believes about it is left untold. The post a level above it in the thread on the other hand makes a reasoned case for why this might not be a good idea, rooted in the act…

Reductio ad absurdum is useful. Sounds like you agree. Idk why label it a slippery slope, it's pretty cut and dry. SAT scores def do determine who gets to work on your heart.

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

#830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps we can look into alternate systems that don't reward excruciating studying and working systems. Perhaps standardized testing like the SAT is fundamentally flawed and we need to figure out better assessment systems. > South Korea has the 10th highest suicide rate in the world. Note that this is also inflated due to an abnormally high elderly suicide rate due to some systemic factors. > Although lower than t…

What sort of fair system would not reward very hard work and study with very high rewards? If Koreans culturally want a life more tipped towards academic achievement, who are we non-Koreans to tell them they're wrong or that their achievements should be invalidated in the name of equal outcomes.

Nobody intrinsically wants it. Nobody wants to go to school and then study until 7,9,11pm. Nobody wants to go to 3-6 private academies after school, every day, in order to study very hard to pass the 수능 college entrance exam. Nobody wants to study to an excruciating degree in order to have a chance to get into one of the top 3 universities, in order to have a good chance of being hired by the top 재벌[0] corporations like Samsung or as a civil servant, in order to work 11, 12 hour days for the rest of their adult lives. This is what over-competition (and over-emphasis of a college degree) does.

Think about being a parent and having children; do you honestly, sincerely think your kids would be better off literally studying the entire day, and during most of their childhood? The answer is no. Studying is important to an extent, but so is enjoying childhood and doing other things than studying all the time.

Korea only recently reduced the maximum legal working hours per week from 68 to 52. Korea also has an above average suicide rates in the 10s, 20s, and 30s (and much higher elderly suicide rate, since there are few programs for them). The outcome of the 수능 exam is so important for determining one's future that planes don't fly at that time, and workers head to work at a later hour than usual.

What's happening in Korea currently is a hyper rat race that looms over one's life from a young age. Nobody wants that, but it's inevitable due to the difficulties of finding a job in this economy.

I am not discussing whether or not work should equal reward. I'm saying there should be no need at all for this ridiculous amount of studying. The current system is fundamentally broken.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol

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