If we can all remember, early this year SAT announced that they would be implementing an adversity score onto the SAT exams next year. As seen below, this adversity score would take into account things such as crime, the level of high school, average income, etc.
Yet even though the adversity score seems to address a fair amount of the grievances people had towards race based admissions, it was almost immediately criticized. In fact, the criticism was so bad that later College Board said that they were scrapping the idea. So I wonder, what do people want to see? This time, this process seemed to take into account things that people were pointing out as solutions for affirmative action and yet people didn't like it. One interesting thing that makes me connect them together is that the adversity score doesn't take into account one thing: race, which has been a hotly debated topic for decades. Now I understand that some people didn't like the fact that adversity would be given a single number which couldn't possibly address how complicated adversity really is. But at the same time, how is that different from considering race as a factor. Isn't that almost worse than assigning numbers for adversity because you are marginalizing entire communities into a single group of people based on race? Assuming that a single race could determine the amount of adversity that people face is something that I disagree with. For while some races do face more adversity than others, it isn't as simple as just that. So overall, I just wanted to ask, if people don't want this adversity score and they also don't want race based admissions, then how do you guys think we can help to fix the racial and socioeconomic problems that we face today? How do you guys think we could come to a compromise?
This is a really interesting take on the issue. I agree with you that addressing both race and adversity is not so straightforward. People definitely would end up making generalizations about race based on a person's socioeconomic background. It's also not feasible nor possible to quantify a student's challenges and achievements. I think one potential solution would be to consider each student case by case. Race as a factor would be difficult to eliminate, but since each student has varying socioeconomic challenges, testing agencies and colleges should at the very least continue to provide appropriate accommodations for low-income students. Essentially, race and adversity should be looked at separately, not grouped together.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/us/sat-adversity-score-college-board.html
I think you propose an interesting question in your post. However, I think more people are angry with the fact that the adversity score is so public and is on a test such as the SAT, which nearly every high-school student in the nation takes. For example, the UC system takes into consideration many of the same factors that the adversity score does because it cannot consider race in its application per University of California v. Bakke. I think just the fact that for many people the SAT adversity score was so public and out there for how socioeconomic factors could be boiled down to a single formulaic number that scared people.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point that just addressing one may be inaccurate. An interesting point brought up in light of the Harvard court case against Students for Fair Admissions is that even though Harvard does try to have diversity in terms of race and ethnicity, most of its students are still overwhelmingly in the upper class despite this ethnic and racial diversity as the following article explains: https://harvardmagazine.com/2017/01/low-income-students-harvard. Just focusing on race or socioeconomic status without focusing on the other can definitely lead to inequities (and possibly violations of the Fourteenth Amendment, depending on what the courts and the Supreme Court decide in the Harvard case) where even though racial and ethnic diversity may be increasing, fairly privileged people (people in the upper class) are the ones that still have the advantage.
ReplyDeleteI found your post to be extremely interesting. Personally, I feel like assigning an "adversity score" to every individual isn't really fair because it's difficult to judge someone's "adversity" with just a number. There are several things that go into someone's adversity that aren't statistical - not just their race, religion, socioeconomic status, etc. I feel like adversity isn't something that can just be measured, and getting a number assigned to you might not be the best solution.
ReplyDelete