SAT "adversity" adjustment

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The whole purpose of the SAT and ACT is that they are *standardized* non-subjective tests of aptitude.

If you have 5 kids taking the same test, you score the tests and see which kid made the best score. Easy, right?

Ha.

see I think this is debatable.

How on earth can the answer to an Algebra 2 problem be subjective? If you give 5 kids the same exact problem to solve and 2 of the kids solve it correctly and mark the right answer, while the other 3 solve it incorrectly and mark the wrong answer.....what else do we need to know?

Exactly. And if a kid has a high adversity score, how does that indicate in any way that he/she can handle said algebra in college? This system is set up for failure. Folks now have to be careful who they hire, coming out of these colleges. I agree with a PP about avoiding candidates with fluff-majors from Ivy Leagues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I believe this is a move that is well-intentioned but will end badly.

The intent is to identify those students who may not perform as well as others on standardized type testing or who don't have the highest grades but have great potential for success.

The outcome will be excluding students who have "adversity" that is not accounted for by those giving the score. It will also encourage others to cheat to claim adversity (lying about living address, for example). And, it will end in schools being encouraged to accept students who do not have the academic background nor the stamina to be successful at college.

And, the ultimate losers here are those students who work really hard and are from middle class, stable families.

Explain this.

Easy - students who are low performing are given a "adversity score" and their low performance will be blamed on these adversity factors. While in reality, the student is not prepared for college, may not even WANT a college education, and would be better off learning a trade.

You have it backwards. Most lower income kids WANT a college education, it's the overindulged upper income kids like Olivia Jade who don't WANT a college education because they know they will be fine without it because of mommy and daddy's money/contacts.

Not true. I live in a state that has "tuition free" education at community colleges for the first two years. There are far too many students who attend, not because they want to go to college, but because their parents insist on it. Their academic work ethic and their readiness for academic rigor is just not there. Most end up dropping out during or after the first year.

Many of these kids have to work to pay for their living expenses and to help their families. They may drop out because balancing school and work proves too hard. Oftentimes it's not that they don't want to go to college, it's that they get overwhelmed with jobs and other pressing life concerns that middle class and above kids don't face. You have no clue about who wants to go to college and who doesn't. And by the way, if someone is applying to university, that might indicate that they want to go to school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually don't see the problem with this. If I understand it correctly, the adversity adjustment is not going to take anything away from anyone, but simply bump up those in disadvantaged circumstances. I think this country is so screwed up in terms of the haves and the have nots. So many outside of our bubble don't have access to tutors, enrichment, stability, etc. We are very well off and both my kids get tutors when needed. My kid is going to a top 20 school and that's because he scored very high on the ACT and we were able to pay for all sorts of enrichment in his high school career. This is SO not typical in other parts of the country, and these kids should have some sort of an opportunity to break out of that cycle.

The people upset about this are probably the same ones who think that learning disabled kids should not get extra time or that everyone should get extra time. It is just amazing how selfish and heartless people can be.

I feel blessed that my kid will have an amazing college experience, but even if he didn't get into his first choice, he would have been FINE!! That would probably not be the case with these kids with the high adversity scores.

And if you really have a problem with it, just prep for the ACT. It's not like you don't have choices.

By bumping some people up, other people by default are going to be bumped down. And the reason people are upset is because the college board has no way of knowing who has faced adversity in their lives and who hasn't. Simply living in a lower income zip code or even being lower income does not necessarily mean that one is disadvantaged disproportionately. An example would be my own family. We have a HHI of $130,000 which is not low income but is lower than the majority of families that my kids go to school with, because we made the decision that I should stay at home. Our lower HHI should be a disadvantage and in some ways it is. However, we are laser focused about education and enriching our kids (which is why I stayed home in the first place) I would say our family is more education focused than the majority of other families who live near us that have higher incomes. And my kids are pretty much the top students at their school. But the College Board would only see a lower HHI and assume that my kids are actually disadvantaged as compared to the families that make more.

??? That's not how it works. They aren't comparing $130,000 HHI with higher HHI and assigning significant adversity score differences. They know that a family with a HHI of $130,000 is fine. They are looking at lower income families and comparing them to you. Do you think they are also comparing those making $500,000 vs. $1M and giving the $500,000 an adversity score benefit that colleges would care about?

My point is that it is difficult for an outsider to determine who faces more adversity than others. You can't no what factors come into play in someone's life that make them more disadvantaged than others and not even income tells you everything. Most people would consider a kid come from a family with an income of $130,000 to be more disadvantaged than a kid coming from a family making $300,000. But in our case, I would not consider my kids to be disadvantaged at all because even though they have less money, they have had a sahm who has basically made a career out of raising them to be well educated, and they are performing higher than most of their peers who come from much more affluent families. This is the problem with solely using income to determine who is advantaged or not. There are so many other factors that could play into it (like the advantage of having an invested sahm) that it is basically impossible for the college board or anyone else to try to gauge who is more advantaged than others and try to put a score to it.

Again, no one is considering a child from a family with a HHI of $130,000 more disadvantaged than people making more money. They might think your kid likely has fewer luxuries, but not those that would arise to adversity. Someone from a family making $50,000 would likely have fewer benefits that actually would result in adversity that could significantly impact academics.

Really, at $130,000 for a family of four in NOVA we can't afford tutors for our kids, yet many posters seem to assume this is the norm for white kids.

Yup. Your kids should be lumped together with the kids whose parents can’t put a decent meal on the table every night because you chose to go on vacation rather than pay for a tutor.

[Anonymous]

This system is counter to freedom and is unconstitutional. Never should you be discriminated for being well off over someone else. I hope Trump weighs in and torpedoes this social justice bullshit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually don't see the problem with this. If I understand it correctly, the adversity adjustment is not going to take anything away from anyone, but simply bump up those in disadvantaged circumstances. I think this country is so screwed up in terms of the haves and the have nots. So many outside of our bubble don't have access to tutors, enrichment, stability, etc. We are very well off and both my kids get tutors when needed. My kid is going to a top 20 school and that's because he scored very high on the ACT and we were able to pay for all sorts of enrichment in his high school career. This is SO not typical in other parts of the country, and these kids should have some sort of an opportunity to break out of that cycle.

The people upset about this are probably the same ones who think that learning disabled kids should not get extra time or that everyone should get extra time. It is just amazing how selfish and heartless people can be.

I feel blessed that my kid will have an amazing college experience, but even if he didn't get into his first choice, he would have been FINE!! That would probably not be the case with these kids with the high adversity scores.

And if you really have a problem with it, just prep for the ACT. It's not like you don't have choices.

By bumping some people up, other people by default are going to be bumped down. And the reason people are upset is because the college board has no way of knowing who has faced adversity in their lives and who hasn't. Simply living in a lower income zip code or even being lower income does not necessarily mean that one is disadvantaged disproportionately. An example would be my own family. We have a HHI of $130,000 which is not low income but is lower than the majority of families that my kids go to school with, because we made the decision that I should stay at home. Our lower HHI should be a disadvantage and in some ways it is. However, we are laser focused about education and enriching our kids (which is why I stayed home in the first place) I would say our family is more education focused than the majority of other families who live near us that have higher incomes. And my kids are pretty much the top students at their school. But the College Board would only see a lower HHI and assume that my kids are actually disadvantaged as compared to the families that make more.

??? That's not how it works. They aren't comparing $130,000 HHI with higher HHI and assigning significant adversity score differences. They know that a family with a HHI of $130,000 is fine. They are looking at lower income families and comparing them to you. Do you think they are also comparing those making $500,000 vs. $1M and giving the $500,000 an adversity score benefit that colleges would care about?

My point is that it is difficult for an outsider to determine who faces more adversity than others. You can't no what factors come into play in someone's life that make them more disadvantaged than others and not even income tells you everything. Most people would consider a kid come from a family with an income of $130,000 to be more disadvantaged than a kid coming from a family making $300,000. But in our case, I would not consider my kids to be disadvantaged at all because even though they have less money, they have had a sahm who has basically made a career out of raising them to be well educated, and they are performing higher than most of their peers who come from much more affluent families. This is the problem with solely using income to determine who is advantaged or not. There are so many other factors that could play into it (like the advantage of having an invested sahm) that it is basically impossible for the college board or anyone else to try to gauge who is more advantaged than others and try to put a score to it.

Again, no one is considering a child from a family with a HHI of $130,000 more disadvantaged than people making more money. They might think your kid likely has fewer luxuries, but not those that would arise to adversity. Someone from a family making $50,000 would likely have fewer benefits that actually would result in adversity that could significantly impact academics.

Really, at $130,000 for a family of four in NOVA we can't afford tutors for our kids, yet many posters seem to assume this is the norm for white kids.

Yup. Your kids should be lumped together with the kids whose parents can’t put a decent meal on the table every night because you chose to go on vacation rather than pay for a tutor.

I'm not saying that my kids should be lumped together with low income kids, My point is that the College Board should not be assigning adversity points to anyone at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why don't they put effort into cheating. This is subjective stupidity that will be challenged in Court

If they are only looking at socioeconomic status and not race, gender, religion....what's the basis for the challenge? Being rich isn't a protected class, yet. Yes

[Anonymous]

I don't know why people think that ANY kid with a high adversity score will be admitted to an elite school. These kids will still have high scores -- but maybe not the very highest. This is just an additional data point for colleges to consider.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This system is counter to freedom and is unconstitutional. Never should you be discriminated for being well off over someone else. I hope Trump weighs in and torpedoes this social justice bullshit.

This is the type of stuff that drives people to vote for someone like Trump.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The whole purpose of the SAT and ACT is that they are *standardized* non-subjective tests of aptitude.

If you have 5 kids taking the same test, you score the tests and see which kid made the best score. Easy, right?

Ha.

see I think this is debatable.

How on earth can the answer to an Algebra 2 problem be subjective? If you give 5 kids the same exact problem to solve and 2 of the kids solve it correctly and mark the right answer, while the other 3 solve it incorrectly and mark the wrong answer.....what else do we need to know?

Exactly. And if a kid has a high adversity score, how does that indicate in any way that he/she can handle said algebra in college? This system is set up for failure. Folks now have to be careful who they hire, coming out of these colleges. I agree with a PP about avoiding candidates with fluff-majors from Ivy Leagues.

Because they aren't JUST considering the adversity score.

[Anonymous]

College board is to grade sat and prevent cheating. They have no experience, authority to do anything more. This is illegal.

[Anonymous]

This is a terrifying time to be a white boy. Sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a terrifying time to be a white boy. Sad.

just terrifying....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:College board is to grade sat and prevent cheating. They have no experience, authority to do anything more. This is illegal.

How is it illegal?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a terrifying time to be a white boy. Sad.

Not poor white boys in trailer parks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The whole purpose of the SAT and ACT is that they are *standardized* non-subjective tests of aptitude.

If you have 5 kids taking the same test, you score the tests and see which kid made the best score. Easy, right?

Ha.

see I think this is debatable.

How on earth can the answer to an Algebra 2 problem be subjective? If you give 5 kids the same exact problem to solve and 2 of the kids solve it correctly and mark the right answer, while the other 3 solve it incorrectly and mark the wrong answer.....what else do we need to know?

Exactly. And if a kid has a high adversity score, how does that indicate in any way that he/she can handle said algebra in college? This system is set up for failure. Folks now have to be careful who they hire, coming out of these colleges. I agree with a PP about avoiding candidates with fluff-majors from Ivy Leagues.

Olivia Jade, tee hee.