The College Board, the provider of the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), had wanted to use students’ socioeconomic profiles as adversity score. It has, however, warded off this plan and provides admission personnel with aggregated data about a learner’s neighborhood, high school, and similar data.
The so-called “adversity score” combined neighborhood and school factors to produce a single number to supplement a student’s test score.
Equitability was an issue that was questioned about the adversity score, but this has been addressed by redesigning SATs (Scholastic Aptitude Tests). For instance, these examinations will be administered for free to every public high school learner. As a result, students who were previously underserved will benefit.
Additionally, the methodology to be used will be availed by the public for authenticity purposes. The adversity score initiative by the college board was previously referred to as Environmental Context Dashboard. It has presently been rebranded to Landscape.
Adversity score’s blowback
The adversity score’s transparency was questioned by educators, and this proved to be a considerable drawback to its existence.
According to the College Board CEO, David Coleman, adversity score was heavily criticized, and this prompted them to make it transparent and better by naming it “Landscape”.
He noted that Landscape was instrumental in giving admission officials with more precise background information about each student, without consideration of where they learn and live.
Some admissions officials have attested that Landscape will be pivotal in supplying missing information about high school applicants, nearly twenty-five percent (25%) of whom lack such data.
The redesigned adversity score
Based on thoughtful critics, adversity score has been redesigned so that it can address some of the problems presented.
As Landscape, it will be comprised of primary elements as aggregate neighborhood and high school information. No student-level data from the
College Board is ever provided. Some distinctions from the past adversity score of the rebranded Landscape:
Participating colleges provide high school names and codes, SAT® or ACT® scores from their applicant records and location information to help identify census tracts. The test score in Landscape is based on the scores that students choose to send to colleges. Colleges choose which student-submitted test score to display in Landscape.
Nevertheless, it is yet to be seen whether the new structure will be instrumental in fast-tracking changes in admission decisions.
Admission structures are usually sensitive, and this is founded on their magnitude. For instance, university admission procedures in the United Kingdom were recently criticized by Damian Hinds, the outgoing UK Secretary of State for Education.
He asserted that they were characterized by numerous pressure-selling strategies that were harmful to the learners’ grades.
In case you do not know…
Many colleges in the United States require scores from the SAT or ACT tests as a part of the admissions process. Your SAT score is a key component of your college applications.
Henceforth, the College Board is abandoning its plan to assign an adversity score to every student who takes the SAT, after facing criticism from educators.
