SAT’s ‘Adversity Score’: The Wrong Answer?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/opinion/letters/sat-adversity-score.html

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To the Editor:

Re “SAT Adds Score to Gauge Test Takers’ Hardships” (front page, May 17):

The College Board’s decision to include an “adversity score” as part of students’ SAT test results is a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to provide additional context and meaning to a test that is irredeemably flawed.

I’ve seen countless instances where students with low SAT scores went on to do very well in college, along with an equal number of cases in which high SAT scores have not translated into college success.

Adding an “adversity score” will not change that because it will not fix the fundamental problems associated with the SAT — that it is not always a good predictor of college success and it is a form of assessment that confers undue advantage on the affluent and those who invest in test prep.

Richard StopolLong Island City, QueensThe writer is president of NYC Outward Bound Schools.

To the Editor:

As a student just months away from applying to college, I am concerned that the SAT’s adversity score will reduce me and other students into mere numbers, statistical rankings that would inevitably simplify or even fail to capture the multifaceted challenges and adversities we face.

No numerical adversity score could accurately capture the challenges I’ve faced in high school, as a student in an immigrant household who battled and beat a brain tumor, while studying full time and even working.

That’s why colleges have relied for so long on personal essays. They give students the space to shine light on their own challenges and idiosyncrasies — something a numerical score could never do.

Matthew TikhonovskyMarietta, Ga.

To the Editor:

Let me get this straight: We’ll rely on stereotypes that stigmatize students by assigning them a score based not on their own experiences, but on contextless, aggregated data about crime and poverty based solely on location? We’ll make gross assumptions across race, class and community in evaluating a student, an actual human, regardless of personal experience to determine a score they will never even see?

If so, we tether deep structural inequities — underfunded schools, income inequality, institutional racism — to the student, rather than the systematic factors responsible for causing them. It not only diverts our attention from an unjust system but also perpetuates it.

For the same investment it took all these stakeholders to get here, why wouldn’t they have addressed the real inequities, like fixing the SAT’s inherent biases or addressing a test-prep industry that institutionalizes the opportunity gap?

Jessica PliskaNew YorkThe writer is the founder and chief executive of The Opportunity Network, which works with students from underrepresented communities on their paths to college and career.

To the Editor:

There is only one important question about a college admissions test: Does it reliably predict college performance? For the current SATs the answer to this question has repeatedly been found to be “yes.”

The only important question about the new adversity score is whether it adds to the predictiveness of the SAT. It should not be difficult to answer this question over the next few years. All the current speculation about it is idle.

Gerald ZuriffCambridge, Mass.

To the Editor:

Now that the SAT is introducing a new wrinkle to college admissions, one can’t help but wonder how long it will be until some wealthy parent is photoshopping his or her child’s face onto the image of a homeless person sitting next to a dumpster.

Gerard IannelliHaddon Heights, N.J.