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Equality of opportunity over outcome for me. Now Asians will be discriminated against secretly. My family sacrificing vacations and eating out for 12 years (lit

• perfmode 7y ago
  Can you make an argument why this would be considered about “outcome” for the purpose of conversation?
  • jwfodnpmhl 7y ago
    Can it be called “conversation” at that point?
  • simple_phrases 7y ago
    It doesn't. It falls squarely into the "equality of opportunity" category, but that won't stop ideologues from screaming that the sky is falling.
  • crazy1van 7y ago
    They are imperfect phrases, but generally an equality of opportunity in this case refers to no matter what you look like, what your parents do, how much money you have, if you get a SAT score and GPA above a threshold, you get accepted into the school. Whereas equality of outcome would focus more on who gets in even if it means treating people differently based on what they look look, how much money they have, where they live, etc.
    • rexpop 7y ago
      SAT scores and GPA are strongly affected by how much money you have.
      • Erik816 7y ago
        Yes, because intelligent parents tend to make more money. And their children tend to be more intelligent as well.
        • learc83 7y ago
          That's part of it. But even when adjusting for IQ, parental income is highly correlated with success--SAT scores, college admission, lifetime income--however you want to measure it.
        • thaumasiotes 7y ago
          Similarly, the wind is strongly affected by weathervanes.
        • rexpop 7y ago
          Are you sure you're not confusing causation? I can, just off the top of my head, think of several situational variables impacted by wealth, which impact cognitive capacity: - sleep - diet - training - study time
  • paulddraper 7y ago
    They are using neighborhood income level and status to adjust the outcome of the SAT.
  • wallace_f 7y ago
    I grew up in a poor, dangerous neighborhood as a child. Later in my teens I lived in a wealthy suburb with collectible cars in the driveway after my father's startup succeeded. My father was physically abusive, and child services got involved. My father's lawyers sorted things out to get the investigation to stop and drop charges if I lived somewhere else. I unfortunately went into the Troubled Teen industry (which I had definitively no reason to be in other than as part of his lawyers' story blaming me for what happened). That industry is filled with abuse. The day I turned 18 I was pulled from there and struggled with homelessness for a year. It was extremely hard to succeed when you are homeless. Financial aid for university is tied to your childhood guardian's social security number until you are 25, so I was a homeless person, and not eligible for any financial aid. This is just a start. I've never broken any laws or done anything particularly wrong. Did you ever think of my story? Apparently bureaucrats didn't. Also, why should I need permission from some bureaucrats to study from the top degree programs? Shouldn't the goal be the opposite: to expand the best education opportunities to as many people as possible? We have so much wealth and enormous social spending in America, and yet look at our outcomes with homelessness, poverty and suicide...
    • metildaa 7y ago
      People shouldn't be viewed as financially coupled to their parents until 25. Our current system is set up to discourage people from furthering their educations, with exorbitant tuition and fees. If you had been in the Netherlands, you'd get a stipend of ~$10k per year when enrolling in school, and other countries have similar systems. UBC in Vancouver, Canada generally pays masters students $30k a year, having had a few friends depart to Canada due to said offer.
  • cljs-js-eval 7y ago
    The adversity score, as far as I can see, gives high scores to students who succeed in worse school districts. While none of the sites reporting on this bothered to link to any kind of official announcement, it looks like this may be a refinement of the tool announced here in 2016: https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/professionals/data-driven-models-to-understand-environmental-context.pdf https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/pr... From the college board's description of the tool, it weights applicant scores by the quality of their neighborhood and high school. So a disadvantaged student whose family focused on moving to a neighborhood/school where lots of students succeed is not given a high score in this analysis. The OP had the same opportunity, but because they did the traditional things for a poorer family to encourage their students to succeed (moving to a good school district and sacrificing on the commute) they will be considered a privileged student in this analysis.
    • learc83 7y ago
      >The OP had the same opportunity, but because they did the traditional things for a poorer family to encourage their students to succeed (moving to a good school district and sacrificing on the commute) they will be considered a privileged student in this analysis. Compared to the poor students whose parents didn't make those sacrifices, they are privileged.
      • danmaz74 7y ago
        In general, if you make a sacrifice to earn something, that something isn't a privilege.
        • learc83 7y ago
          Your parents making a sacrifice isn't the same thing as you making a sacrifice. If my dad makes a sacrifice by working 100 hours a week to buy me a Maserati, the car is definitely a privilege not something I earned. And yeah, I may have lost out on spending time with my dad, but that wasn't a choice I made, so while it cost me something it wasn't a sacrifice on my part.
  • mbostleman 7y ago
    Because it's an attempt to change the outcomes of the test to make them more equal than they would be otherwise.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• UnpossibleJim 7y ago
  Is it even secretly anymore? It just seems outright discrimination, at this point, as far as admissions is concerned.
  • paulddraper 7y ago
    This score is apparently a secret. > The score would not be reported to the student, only to college officials. They give you a standardized test, but you can't even find out how well you did.
    • harryh 7y ago
      You still get the score for how well you did. You don't get your "adversity score" which is not based on how well you did, but only on where you live and what high school you attend.
      • YjSe2GMQ 7y ago
        Which is absurd, considering it's involved in college admission process. Maybe we should also have a hidden citizen score, to be used behind the scenes in the courts of law?
        • NullPrefix 7y ago
          Should adversity points be included in that citizen score?
        • Mirioron 7y ago
          We should call it the social credit score.
        • harryh 7y ago
          The college admission process (especially for more elite schools) already involves lots of secrecy.
          • 7y ago
• gugagore 7y ago
  I might be missing the point, but from a quick glance at the article, it's about geographic location, and not race. Is there some second-order effect?
  • avn2109 7y ago
    Race and geography covary more strongly than ~all other pairs of parameters, such that the one is a reliable proxy for the other.
    • tenpies 7y ago
      Exactly, Facebook and a few others got in trouble because advertisers could set geographic criteria which translated quite neatly to race demographics. The fact is that different ethnic groups don't seem to mix organically unless they are all quite wealthy, at which point they have more in common with their socioeconomic class than with their ethnicity.
      • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        >The fact is that different ethnic groups don't seem to mix organically unless they are all quite wealthy, at which point they have more in common with their socioeconomic class than with their ethnicity. That goes both ways. If you've got a group of mostly upper middle class whites, Asians and Indians (i.e. your average tech company) the poor whites are going to hand out with the blacks, Mexicans and eastern Europeans. Not having much in common with the majority group is the trait that ties the minority group together.
    • hyperbovine 7y ago
      That’s an impressive claim. Source? I can think of a half dozen things that probably correlate as strongly with race. For example, what you ate for breakfast this morning.
  • LanceH 7y ago
    In the zero sum game of admissions, boosting someone else for their poor location/school impacts those who sacrificed to get score better without the boost. A poor asian community that sends their kids to after school schools and does very well as a whole will suddenly fight themselves without the boost that others at that economic level might have. All theoretical at this point I guess. I would prefer to let this play out a little bit more rather than race based quotas/scholarships which more often than not seem to go to kids with the same good backgrounds who just happen to be minorities.
• fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
  >I’m getting pushed further and further to the right. Maybe not, it feels like to me that the Overton window[0] has been sliding left. My views on freedom of speech made me a 'leftist commie' when I used them to defend South Park and Eminem now most often I'm accused being 'alt-right' by those who disagree with those same views. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
  • jdsully 7y ago
    A one dimensional left/right view doesn't really explain our current politics very well. Factions in both parties have strong reasons to be against freedom of speech.
    • shiven 7y ago
      This. So much this. FoE is attacked from both sides. Each with their own self-serving justifications.
    • Gibbon1 7y ago
      There is a very strong tribal/identity politics thing going on with both the left and the right in the US. Scares the hell out of me.
      • aj7 7y ago
        Yeah. People with brains should be more united.
        • SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
          >Yeah. People with brains should be more united. While i don’t disagree on its face. That statement usually means “people should just be on my side”. As written above; the Overton window has been moving left, and things like not prosecuting female gential mutilation in the US, straight socialism, not settling for anything less than full gun bans, open borders - things that would have got you locked up 50 years ago are being pushed by presidential candidates and congress members. It’s moved left, and a little too far. So while I agree people with brains should be united, right now many of the balanced beliefs will get you called an alt-right Nazi.
• rexpop 7y ago
  Getting into college is not an outcome—it's an opportunity.
  • vonmoltke 7y ago
    Then let's dispense with competitive admissions entirely and use a lottery. There is nothing more fair than a random draw.
    • GreaterFool 7y ago
      Why not actually? Instead of politicized solutions one could require schools at every level to create some sort of random admission pool for some percentage of yearly admissions. For instance, take the mean SAT of admitted students, lower it by X% and pick candidates to random pool with scores above that level. I imagine that to many people it wouldn't be "fair" because it wouldn't bring the outcome they want. But it'd be fun to watch them argue that random system privileges XYZ group!
• jachee 7y ago
  Those with less privilege are getting a smidge closer to an even starting point, and your idea is to get more conservative? What if your family had the choice to move wherever without sacrificing opportunity? This isn't about penalizing anyone. It's about offering a modicum of equality in a privilege-drowned world.
• educationdata 7y ago
  One thing I have to say about this SAT thing is that, there are lots lots of Asians working in SAT as statisticians, psychometricians, and analysts. There must be lots of Asians working on the project related to the 'Adversity Score', unless they intentionally exclude Asians from this project. But we've never heard anything about internal disagreement or resistant against this stuff. This fact tells something.
  • lr4444lr 7y ago
    That Asians respect the NDAs they signed?
    • jessaustin 7y ago
      Enough with the stereotypes!
• prvc 7y ago
  Devil's advocate: do you think children who lack families that provide such advantages must necessarily "suffer" as a consequence of that lack? And conversely, why did you wait to object until this, in particular, became a consideration instead of before (when ethnicity and other factors were already considerations)?
  • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    I can’t speak for the original commenter, but lots of people did not wait to object to this. What’s uniquely bad about this is that it doesn’t have even the facade of holistic analysis. The College Board is counting up how oppressed they think you are, and telling colleges to count your score less if you don’t have enough oppression points.
    • dba7dba 7y ago
      Exactly. And who gets to decide how oppressed you are? Maybe you grew up in a poor neighborhood but have incredibly supportive parents/family? Maybe you grew up in a billionaire family but with parents who are never around because they have business to run and places to go (as they can afford to)? And the 'secret' part of the story really really bugs me. Why don't we turn US tax code into a state secret so that rich people/business cannot try to game the system to pay less tax? EDIT: I got downvotes. But really, I'd like to know who gets to decide how oppressed you are?
      • pesmhey 7y ago
        Language is probably a decent one. If there was a major language shift in your family tree within the last 500 years, you can probably count yourself as disadvantaged in a lot of ways. This includes Africans, indigenous people, but also people from countries where a central version of their language spread from the capital out, although not as bad of a case. If your Asian parents immigrated and sacrificed hard for you, but still speak the language that their grandparents and their grandparents before them spoke, well, your parents sacrificed, but like, people go through shit. White people, black people, Asians, all types of people get exploited into nothingness. Into being not even human. Not going on vacation is not a hardship.
• kevinh 7y ago
  Equality of opportunity seems like a pipe dream to me. Are you really going to equalize socioeconomic status? Parental skills? Pollution? Proximity to opportunities? Those all determine the opportunities one has access to.
  • enraged_camel 7y ago
    That's not an argument against trying to equalize those things.
    • ryanobjc 7y ago
      It too hard! Give uppppppp The siren call of hackernews. Who the hell is even here anymore?
• mythrwy 7y ago
  I hear what you are saying, but that means you are advantaged. You had parents that cared and sacrificed and took and interest in your future. With that in mind they also probably made sure you studied and did your homework. To be a bit blunt (and hopefully not offensive, just for example), if someone who didn't have those kind of parents and that type of situation makes the same scores as you, likely they either worked harder or have more ability. Still I feel where you are coming from. Reverse discrimination for people who work hard is still B.S.
  • remarkEon 7y ago
    This is treading the line of being completely Kafkaesque. I'm having trouble following the discussion in this thread. On the one hand, lots of people are arguing that this test change is BS and will have lots of unintended consequences. Then there's others arguing, not always explicitly, that children should essentially be punished in terms of their "points", for lack of a better term, in college admissions because of their homelife. Have a mother and father that stayed together? You lose adversity points. A mom that stayed at home so dad could get promoted and afford to move the family to a better school district? You lose adversity points. A public high school with lots of AP classes? You lose adversity points. Family lives in an area with a tech boom, and thus has low vacancy rates in housing? You guessed it. No adversity points for you. This is insane, and it's going to encourage absurd behavior meant to dupe this system - and don't kid yourself, there will be (see all the wealthy Hollywood types cheating on their kids SAT scores). There might be less nefarious antics if the College Board at least was transparent about how they calculate the score and released it after the test - but they're not. That's how you know this is a shell game, meant to give Universities an "out" for manipulating the demographics of their matriculating classes as they see fit. These incentives are wrong and unethical. As a silver lining, maybe this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back and folks will start to realize what a fraud the modern "university" is. When the fiance and I start having kids, we've already discussed how college shouldn't be the default scenario. I hope others start considering this. It is mind-boggling to think that my kid could be disadvantaged specifically because I sacrificed to make a better life than I had growing up, so we won't be playing this game.
    • 7y ago
• rtkwe 7y ago
  The issue with 'equality of opportunity' is it barely exists and only for the group of people in nearly exact economic statuses in the same area. So many things in the environment and schooling set poorer people back from day 1 be it environmental pollution, noise pollution, or older poorly funded schools (given how much extra funding schools can get from a combination of property tax revenue and just fundraising from parents), the list goes on. Colleges have limited ability to help with those factors so they apply weights where they can. Hell even the SAT itself has a pretty regressive impact because most colleges will let you submit your highest score from multiple tests, I got 2 800s but it took 2 tests (not counting a couple PSATs I got various times) to get that a chance a poorer person is much less likely to have.
  • flukus 7y ago
    > The issue with 'equality of opportunity' is it barely exists ... Colleges have limited ability to help with those factors I think you summed up the problem quite well and acknowledged that colleges aren't in much of a position to solve it, but seem happy with a solution that ignores the problem. A much more effective effort would be to solve the problem and ensure that there is equality of opportunity as much as possible, like eliminating your postcode determining your quality of schooling. Don't forget that not everyone is college bound, those that don't get help from the college will still have a poor education, will still live a poor community and will still have another generation of kids facing the same issues.
• itsaidpens 7y ago
  Devil's advocate: I'd argue that you not eating out, getting socialized, and traveling actually made you less of a well-rounded individual and you probably should be penalized for those things. Colleges need diversity. They don't need the same kind of kid replicated 10,000 times. Racquetball, violin, AP calculus does not an interesting campus make.
  • lotsofpulp 7y ago
    I would need some very heavy proof that traveling (aka vacations where you instagram breakfast with a view) and eating at restaurants makes someone a well rounded individual, not to mention someone who “adds” to an educational institute. I would put my chips on someone who has at least proven themselves academically.
    • serf 7y ago
      >I would put my chips on someone who has at least proven themselves academically. everyone seems to be conflating academics with person-building in this thread. Why don't these same people seem to have any problem with non-academic scholarships? Here's the grand reason why it's a good idea to make schools mixing-pots : You can expose the really effective students to ideas and concepts that they may have never experienced, which they may use more constructively than other individuals. In other words : Colleges need people that create the idea of Napster , but they also need the folks that can implement it. Both groups are only marginally effective without the other. Similar line of philosophical questioning : 'Why do managers exist?'
  • dba7dba 7y ago
    Now THAT is racist attitude against asian-americans (well the stereo typical asian). So how about kids from single parent family or poor neighborhoods who cannot eat out and/or cannot travel because of lack of money? Are they less rounded kids too? Just because you are asian and do 'Racquetball, violin, AP calculus' doesn't make one asian same as the next asian. How damn racist of you.
  • s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    College isn't supposed to be a theme park. It's supposed to be an institution of higher learning.
• shawndrost 7y ago
  Ok, here's a question for you. You like equality of opportunity. Presumably you agree that the SAT (as-is) does not provide that, in light of (eg) people that can't afford to retake the test and get a higher score. So, here's the question: would you support an "accurate" adversity score? One that, say, was assigned by an all-knowing oracle?
  • harryh 7y ago
    The College Board offers Fee Waivers for disadvantaged test takers.
    • throwawayjava 7y ago
      During grad school I tutored (@ $50-$100/hr). I could consistently help even the poorest students move from below 50th percentile to 75th percentile. Moving from < 600 to mid 700s is totally doable with sufficient tutoring [1]. Even for pretty dumb students. I think SAT/ACT are pretty good tests [1], but they're horrendously over-gamed at this point. I have very little faith in either as anything other than a demonstration of how badly the student wants to be admitted to a good school and has money for tutoring. [1] edit: i.e., SAT/ACT are not easy to game wit short-term coaching, but sustained tutoring can substantially increase students' performance... see thread below for further elaboration and discussion of "coaching doesn't help" studies.
      • harryh 7y ago
        Research contradicts your anecdote. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/after-service/201903/5-seriously-stunning-facts-about-higher-education-in-america https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/after-service/201903...
        • throwawayjava 7y ago
          Nearly all of those studies focus on short-term and test-specific interventions; i.e., "coaching", not "tutoring". I worked with students throughout the school year with a focus on the underlying content, and only switched to "coaching" the last few weeks before the exam. For many students, I tutored them weekly or biweekly, for 1-3 hours per week, for multiple years! NONE of the studies on the effect of coaching consider the effect of this sort of longer-term individualized instruction. I'm willing to believe that short-term coaching only has small effects, but sustained individual instruction has a huge impact on mathematical ability. And as I explicitly said in my original post, SAT/ACT do a good job of measuring that ability. But claiming that sustained access to individualized high-quality teaching doesn't effect performance on subject-specific tests that require nontrivial content knowledge and practice is, on face, absurd. At the very least, the studies you're citing say absolutely nothing about this sort of sustained intervention. (Also, College Board loves amplifying those studies. I wonder why...)
• thex10 7y ago
  > I’m getting pushed further and further to the right. Oh, do you think the right is going to improve upon the US's current system of incentivizing/forcing families to fight over/make big sacrifices for homes in the wealthiest school districts in order to give their children a half-decent shot at a good education? Or do you just want to be entitled to the good college in exchange for the childhood your parents chose to give/were coerced into giving you?
  • adbge 7y ago
    > Oh, do you think the right is going to improve upon the US's current system of incentivizing/forcing families to fight over/make big sacrifices for homes in the wealthiest school districts in order to give their children a half-decent shot at a good education? Yes? Ever heard of school vouchers? The political right would love to reform the education system, from teachers unions to university professors, the entrenched interests are core Democrat voting blocs.
    • thex10 7y ago
      Interesting point -- I've heard of vouchers, though admittedly have no experience with them. But does it scale?
      • _dps 7y ago
        We already have school choice for universities. You go where you want and you either pay for it or find funding from the government/charities. No one finds it weird that you're not tied to your local neighborhood for higher education. We already have something that's not too far from school vouchers for universities, which is FAFSA. The government provides aid that you can use at any accredited institution, not just the institution into which you were geographically zoned.
    • mehrdadn 7y ago
      > Yes? Ever heard of school vouchers? Wikipedia sums it up: "the evidence to date is not sufficient to warrant recommending that vouchers be adopted on a widespread basis; however, multiple positive findings support continued exploration." Seems pretty reasonable that we don't let people replace the entire country's educational system with this new one until the evidence in favor of it is extremely compelling.
• jdavis703 7y ago
  I don’t see why children should have their opportunity limited by what their parents can or can’t do (or even refuse to do). How is that meritocracy or equality of opportunity? That’s just old fashion inheritance.
  • objektif 7y ago
    You are absolutely right. If playing some sports that only rich can afford makes you more likely to get into an ivy league school then may be hardships should too.
• ausjke 7y ago
  Free lunch, low-income pays no incoming tax(47% and more of them), food stamps, disabled benefits, medicare medicaid, CHIP for kids, etc etc, I'm fine so far. But AA for college admission(and jobs too these days)? followed by SAT score manipulation? this is literally pushing me to the far right side, it makes me feel hard working, sacrificing for next generation made no sense, this is getting close to robbery. what's next for me as a middle class guy?!
  • ryanobjc 7y ago
    Far to the right side at this point is basically the idea that some races are better than others. Really? Is that what you really mean? Because if you come at me being proud of the color of your skin, I’ll know you have nothing better in your life.
    • ausjke 7y ago
      not really, color-based AA admission is the true racist, I'm just emphasizing merit-based results no matter what your skin color is, the equalize-every-result is going way too far. Do you know each year how many of those AA students dropped out? I am sure we will have a solution soon, that is each college will give adversity-GPA-for-college-degrees-by-skin-color, all must be good. But I don't want to be treated by an AA doctor myself! The richest and the poorest are rare, let the majority students shine by hard working, that's the best gift we can give them instead of cut-in-line because their skin color difference, which is truly racism. Last, we probably should look into NBA, too few white and Asian there, how racist they are!
• rayiner 7y ago
  The ironic thing about your post is that the adversity score is just accounting for the ways in which children are denied "equality of opportunity." For example, it factors in: "the relative quality of the student’s high school and the crime rate and poverty level of the student’s neighborhood." Your post confirms it--why would your dad commute four hours a day to live in a particular neighborhood unless he believed it would confer some unequal, advantageous opportunity for his kids? What about kids whose parents didn't make those sacrifices--did they have equal opportunities to you?
  • darawk 7y ago
    ...and his point is why should his dad make that sacrifice for his kids if the SAT board is just going to subvert his efforts?
    • harryh 7y ago
      Because we don't want to live in a society that so strongly encourages "sacrificing vacations and eating out for 12 years (literally ate out 5x max)" and "My dad commuted 4 hours daily instead of moving." I'm all about parents sacrificing for their kids, but when the system is set up to push people that far something about the system is broken.
      • darawk 7y ago
        We should absolutely want to live in a society that rewards people for effort and sacrifice. If we do not reward people for doing those things, they won't do them, and you definitely don't want to live in that society.
        • apocalypstyx 7y ago
          I wonder if the opposite is true as well. That is, when theses sorts of discussions come up, I'm always asking: when is it over? When does the sacrifice stop? A person sacrifices for their kid for some nebulous better life, which their kid goes on to do for their kids...ad infinitum? However, through an evolutionary lens it make some sense: an individual doesn't have to have time to enjoy any advantage they've accrued through such previous sacrifice because evolution doesn't care if you're happy, just that you're reproducing successfully, and so far that's instilled (it's arguable) an instinctive sense to socially rise in order to obtain better access to such. So in such a sense there really would be no point of it being over (except for the extinction of the species). So why shouldn't someone in this great chain of sacrifice say no and kick their feet up and enjoy the fruits of all that sacrifice? This would explain why we (society at large and various specific social groups) treat the childless so negatively and use the term anti-natalist as a slur. However, there is another component to it: one's advantage is always relative to others' lack of advantage. This is why equal access education will never be truly supported (no matter what people say); if all kids have the same advantage as their kids, then their kids don't actually have any advantage at all (in social terms).
• pesmhey 7y ago
  Not going on vacation is not a hardship. Edit: This guy’s parents might have actually been through some shit. Asia was not a nice place over the last century. If he had said something like ‘my parents escaped pol pot’ or something ummmm, actually horrendous, then, I mean, that’s a hardship. And had this commenter framed it in that way, then it gives a whole other dimension to the discussion. But he didn’t. I’m going to repeat this for anyone spoiled enough by western society to ever say this: The lack of vacations is not a fucking hardship.
  • darawk 7y ago
    Hardship is relative. There's always someone who's had it harder than you. His parents sacrificed things to get him the resources he needed to succeed, is his point. They sacrificed things that the parents of other kids did not.
    • kaitai 7y ago
      People are starting at different points. His parents were physically able to do what they did. If his dad had been disabled, or dead, he wouldn't have been able to commute for 4 hours. Would that make his dad less virtuous?
      • darawk 7y ago
        I don't recall saying anything about virtue.
• thosakwe 7y ago
  > Now Asians will be discriminated against secretly. So, a separate number being added to College Board's overall package is secret discrimination against Asian students? The "adversity score," according to the article, is calculated based on 15 different factors. The two listed (relative quality of the student’s high school and the crime rate/poverty level of the student’s home neighborhood) are not directly tied to any one race. I know that promoting affirmative action is tantamount to blasphemy on this site, but let's be honest here. Standardized tests alone are really not the great equalizer that many might think. I am a Nigerian-American immigrant, but my parents were able to afford expensive, one-on-one ACT tutoring/prep, and I scored a 34, and was awarded the National Merit scholarship after SAT prep. Not everyone can say that they had the same opportunities I did. A so-called "adversity score" doesn't have to be the end-all, be-all. If it can provide additional context to the scores students receive, then it can really give first-generation, low-income, etc. students a fair shot at competitive universities. Besides - nobody said schools have to consider the "adversity score," anyways. > I’m getting pushed further and further to the right. I also don't understand how a single organization making a change to its testing package, in the interest of leveling the playing field, is somehow "pushing" your political beliefs in any one direction... It's your choice whether you want to align your beliefs more closely with any side.
  • whatshisface 7y ago
    >So, a separate number being added to College Board's overall package is secret discrimination against Asian students? It sounds kind of like, "put a gold star on all of the Jewish applicants, and allow each reviewer to decide how to act on that information individually."
    • thosakwe 7y ago
      It really does not, at all. How can you equate a combination of 15 factors (at least two of which are not tied to any specific identity) to improve admissions results, with a Nazi policy that directly foreran the Holocaust, and singled out groups for mass extermination?
      • 7y ago
• bilbo0s 7y ago
  Well, no dog in this race obviously, but doesn't that mean that instead of penalizing you for your parents' good character, we penalize poor rural and urban kids for their parents' bad character?
  • manfredo 7y ago
    Not exactly. This adversity score penalizes people who good character (insofar as making sacrifices to provide better education opportunity for ones' kids is good character). Family A makes $X and goes through significant sacrifices (e.g. commuting 4 hours) to live in a wealthy neighborhood with good schools. Family B makes the same $X and lives a leisurely live in a cheap neighborhood with bad schools. Which should have a better chance of succeeding? This adversity score says family B deserves a bonus over family A.
    • Jill_the_Pill 7y ago
      It seems you haven't spent much time in a "cheap neighborhood with bad schools." I can assure you that no one there is making $X. In my city, the average household income is $38k; the state average is $74k. Almost all people, including poor people, make sacrifices and want what is best for their kids.
      • manfredo 7y ago
        You're missing the point. The original comment in this chain comes from someone whose family made sacrifices in order to live in an area with good educational opportunities. This 'Adversity Score' would penalize them for making that sacrifice. Between two families with identical incomes, the one that chooses to curb luxuries to live in a place with a better school district would be penalized for that choice. The fact that good school districts tend to be populated by people with higher incomes is largely tangential to the point at hand. > Almost all people, including poor people, make sacrifices and want what is best for their kids. I don't doubt that people of all income levels want their kids to succeed. But there definitely are differences in behavior between demographics. The wealthier people are the more likely they are to use test prep across all demographics, but Asians are more likely to do so regardless of income. Asians also spend more than twice as much time studying outside of class than any other race [1]. There are differences in how much emphasis is put on education, this cannot be denied. 1. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/08/10/analyzing-the-homework-gap-among-high-school-students/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/...
• tankerdude 7y ago
  From the article: "The score will be calculated using 15 factors, including the relative quality of the student’s high school and the crime rate and poverty level of the student’s neighborhood." So no, it doesn't account for you to secretly discriminate against you. What it does do, for the penalization part, is that the schools that are in affluent neighborhoods have access to much better resources than ones from Compton or Watts. To me, a kid from Compton who scores 1500 on the SAT far outweighs someone from Palo Alto High who also scores 1500 because of all the resources the latter received to be able to reach it. Moving is orthogonal to the problem, except that the district could be brutally hard for some kids. Also, imagine the other folks in your neighborhood who got literally everything. Driving to school in a Maserati and spending for 4 different tutors over the course of 12 years. Who is more deserving? You, who scored 1500, or him, who scored 1500? I sure hope you don't say, "it should equal!"
  • john_moscow 7y ago
    Imagine you are about to undergo a major surgery. Would you rather get operated by a surgeon that graduated from the medical school with A+, or by someone with a B who got the job instead because they came from a poorer neighborhood?
    • chrisdirkis 7y ago
      The old joke is something along the lines of: Q: What do you call the person who graduated last in their class in medical school? A: Doctor. Sure, I'd probably prefer the higher performing doctor in this hypothetical scenario, but at the same time, it feels very much artificial (maybe a false dichotomy?). Sure, you always want the best for everything -- that's what "the best" means! Reality is that there are always going to be B students operating on people. If I were to propose my own false dichotomy, I might ask whether you prefer the B student who got tutored to pass the SAT, or one who self studied?
      • john_moscow 7y ago
        I am merely trying to simplify a complex matter to make it easier to understand/debate. I would say, in reality indeed a certain % of surgeons would be the B students. The problem is that some social policies would increase this %, while others would decrease it. In my opinion, giving points for anything other than raw measurable performance would increase this %. To answer your question, I would prefer a person who is passionate about what they are doing and capable of thinking outside the box. However, unfortunately, it's not something that could be easily formalized. Sure, self-taught students would likely be better motivated than tutored ones, however once you begin counting it as a part of the score, people would start gaming the system. Someone would lie about not being tutored. Someone else would actually skip taking private lessons and will miss out on learning something important, because doing so would give them a better score. A much better solution, IMO, would be to point out and quantify the traits and skills the self-taught people show, and include them in the test, giving everyone a chance to learn and practice them.
• natalyarostova 7y ago
  Welcome to the dark side.
  • dang 7y ago
    Could you please not use HN for ideological battle? It's tedious, destroys curiosity, and is not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • natalyarostova 7y ago
      Yeah, I'm sorry. Bad joke. I agree, I don't want HN to be an ideological battle ground.
• quickthrower2 7y ago
  The article says: > The rating will not affect students’ test scores, and will be reported only to college admissions officials as part of a larger package of data on each test taker. So there is no discrimination, unless this is used in a feedback loop, which maybe it is. > "My family sacrificing vacations and eating out for 12 years" So your family has hardship, but managed to skew things so you can have it better. If this analysis means more is done to help kids from poor backgrounds, you'd be doubly helped, one by your parents hard work, and again by the system.
• zasz 7y ago
  As a fellow Asian whose parents also sacrificed a lot, I'm sympathetic, but I would urge you to consider a couple things: 1. Like it or not, plenty of families in America have had it worse than you had, and would not find it at all impressive that you have never gone on a vacation or eaten out. 2. You should save your anger for the huge number of spots saved for legacies and athletes. Being the child of alumni means you have a 45% greater chance of getting into a college. (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/07/harvards-freshman-class-is-more-than-one-third-legacy.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/07/harvards-freshman-class-is-m...) If you must get angry at someone, don't get angry at the people who are struggling as hard, or harder than you are--get mad at the rich assholes who quietly sail into these so-called elite institutions. 3. If you have good grades and good test scores, there are tons of good colleges you can go to. They just might not be Harvard. Is not going to Harvard worth pushing yourself to the right? Worth aligning yourself with the guy pushing a trade war with China, which is going to do wonders for the image of Asians in America? Personally, I don't think so. 4. The adversity score is designed to ensure equality of opportunity, dude. If they were capable of making a good adversity score, they would certainly take into account your family's struggles. They probably won't be able to, because these things are unquantifiable, but frankly the SAT and the whole college admissions process are bullshit anyway, and you'll be happier once you let go of your belief that because your family sacrificed a lot, the system ought to reward you. It should, but it won't, because it's a capricious and unfair monster.
  • Apocryphon 7y ago
    > frankly the SAT and the whole college admissions process are bullshit anyway What's crazy about this whole controversy is that HN is usually skeptical towards college anyway. Even beyond the pro-Peter Thiel arguments back in the day about how college is a waste of time, nowadays there are plenty of allegations on HN about how higher ed is a bubble. About how CS, or at least programming, can be self-taught. So I don't understand why so many people here are giving College Board and the college industry any credence here.
    • jaredklewis 7y ago
      HN is skeptical towards the substance of college. I think most would recognize that going to Harvard or Stanford opens a lot of doors, regardless of what you learn or don't.
• indrax 7y ago
  An SAT score is an assessment of how well you will do in college. It's not something you can earn or deserve. If someone does less well than you but came from a much worse school district, why shouldn't a predictor take that into account? If this were almost any other example of adding a modifier to correct for a bias in an initial scoring system, nobody would bat an eye, and we'd be discussing specifics.
  • hermitdev 7y ago
    It's not an assessment of how well you will do, it's an assessment of how well you are prepared for college. Big difference.
    • indrax 7y ago
      That is incorrect. What would "well prepared" mean here anyway?
      • bloaf 7y ago
        Probably something along the lines of: Without accommodation, being able to learn, participate, and demonstrate competency in a series of courses which presume a student's mastery of information presented through secondary education.
        • indrax 7y ago
          Ok. If we take that definition, is there any reason a test shouldn't consider whether a student had a very good school and learned half of what they were given, or a very poor school and learned everything they were exposed to? (a contrived case, of course)
          • bloaf 7y ago
            I suspect your question has an unmarked asterisk, which is that the students end up with similar standardized test scores and GPA. For that to happen, it must be the case that a student at the good school can get good grades while learning only half the material, which seems not possible. And so the answer is that colleges already can and should take into account % learning through GPA.
• bigendian1234 7y ago
  > I’m getting pushed further and further to the right. Cycles of poverty will never end when people with the privilege of dedicated and capable parents facilitate their success feel like victims. How about some alternate suggestions for poor kids without parents like yours?
  • josh5555 7y ago
    The cycle of poverty will never be eliminated because it is human nature. Some people make wise choices and others make poor choices. It is evolution. No matter how many "adversity points" and other nonsense people come up with to make the system "fair", the family where the father is willing to break his back for his kids will win almost every time.
• siedes 7y ago
  Also Asian myself. There has never really been a place for us on either side of the political spectrum. The left does not treat us as they do with other minorities, so they don't care about screwing us over while the right generally only uses us to pretend that they care about minorities to appeal to centrists/other. While the right's policies may benefit us a bit, culturally the right will be just as happy to screw us to benefit themselves/their majority constituents when the time comes.
  • objektif 7y ago
    Most Asians I know are very well educated and doing well. I bet they are probably much better off compared to other minorities in the US. When I was doing PhD 90% of my classmates were Chinese. I think it is a bit of a stretch to to say Asians are completely getting screwed in the US.
    • siedes 7y ago
      That's exactly what I mean though, your conclusion that Asians are better off than other minorities just because you saw a bunch of Asians in your elite college (who were most likely foreigners coming to study abroad anyway and not American citizens) is justification the left uses to disregard us lesser Asians in lower economic classes.
      • Apocryphon 7y ago
        Pertinent to TFA, if this adversity score weighs economic factors more heavily than racial ones, then it might actually be more beneficial to Asian Americans than previous affirmative action implementations.
    • thereare5lights 7y ago
      I think it's a bit of a stretch to make any sort of conclusion based on your sampling of PhD students.
      • objektif 7y ago
• fisherjeff 7y ago
  The adversity score is basically an acknowledgment of the fact that there is no equality of opportunity, and moreover that it’s just never going to happen on any reasonable timescale, in the US. This is an attempt to correct for the inequality of opportunity that continues to exist and, although almost certainly imperfect, I think it’s completely reasonable.
• jhayward 7y ago
  > I’m getting pushed further and further to the right. No one's pushing you. If you really are a conservative, you should take responsibility for your own views and actions. Don't blame them on someone else. I'll also note that all of the things you describe as your personal virtues that are supposedly under attack were actually things provided to you by your parents. Not accomplishments of your own. Why should someone who's parents are addicts, have mental health issues, or crippling medical issues feel like the testing is a level playing field when they didn't get those advantages?
• tw04 7y ago
  Let me get this straight - because "College Board" - which has literally no government or political affiliation - has decided to introduce an adversity score, you're going to vote for the party that brought us Betsy "We need a little more rape on college campuses" Devoss? I'm struggling to find the logical progression there... how is this elected Democratic officials fault? They have literally no control or say in what the College Board does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Board
• rifung 7y ago
  > Equality of opportunity over outcome for me I'm also Asian American. This to me seems like it IS opportunity over outcome though. If you have two people who are equally hard working and one grows up in a disadvantaged environment, the latter going to score lower. My parents sacrificed a lot so I could go to a good school. It was completely obvious to see that not that hard working people at my school would do much better than extremely hard working people from poorer districts. The thing is, I imagine the people who worked harder but scored lower would probably fare better if given equal opportunity but they aren't. > My family sacrificing vacations and eating out for 12 years (literally ate out 5x max) to afford to live in a good school district shouldn’t penalize us. My dad commuted 4 hours daily instead of moving...I’m getting pushed further and further to the right If implemented correctly (and that's a big if) this should just make it so parents don't have to go through those sacrifices. Isn't that a good thing?
  • esyir 7y ago
    Strong disagreement from me here. I believe that encouraging parents to invest in their children's growth is a good thing. Removing/reducing the benefit of this investment in the child is the kind of perverse incentive that's probably bad for society as a whole. Simply put, parents are now forced to weigh the comparative benefit of a high-end university education over the child's development. I'm betting that diminishing returns on development investment will at some point encourage investment in gaming the adversity score instead.
    • rifung 7y ago
      > I believe that encouraging parents to invest in their children's growth is a good thing. No disagreement from me there. However, I would prefer if a child's outcome were not so dependent on how willing their parents are to make sacrifices. > Simply put, parents are now forced to weigh the comparative benefit of a high-end university education over the child's development. I'm betting that diminishing returns on development investment will at some point encourage investment in gaming the adversity score instead. I'd argue the current system already does this. Placing such a high emphasis on scores just makes it so that parents are strongly encouraged to put their children in SAT/AP prep scores while ignoring other things that would likely be much more important. I went to a school full of wealthy students. Almost all of them took prep classes to get really high scores. As far as I could tell, there was absolutely no instance of people learning for the sake of learning and little no to interest in doing something for the sake of a child's development.
• RickJWagner 7y ago
  I admire the drive and sacrifices your family has made. I hope that karma (and the American dream) reward generously.
• svd4anything 7y ago
  The more I reflect on your comment the more obvious to me it is that the situation is ultra urgent. Somebody needs to get a class action going asap, tomorrow. Its so so true that so many Asian families have made massive financial and personal sacrifices in the hope to provide their children the best opportunities possible. This is clearly protected activity under the founding documents of our nation, pursuing life, liberty and happiness for themselves and their children through education. I can’t imagine the sinking feeling running through so many of those incredibly honest and hardworking families tonight. Imagine you saved everything, lived in the smallest apartment possible barely in the good school zone, spent extra money on tutors and extra circulars and your high school senior or junior learns all his or her effort all the family’s effort they want to cancel out. It’s a blatant attempt to punish Asian families for believing in America.
  • remarkEon 7y ago
    There's going to be a lot of Veterans that feel the same way. Imagine serving in the military for a while, saving up money to move somewhere where your kids will have good schools and good quality of life, getting a good job after working your ass off to jump careers, and then have the College Board tell you that this will disadvantage your child when applying to college. This is insane.
• dominotw 7y ago
  Wouldn't you be able to add adversity points for being poor vs your richer Asian peers?
• aj7 7y ago
  Totally agree. 40 years ago I did integrals on the way home on the Subway from Stuyvesant. Totally support you.
• djtriptych 7y ago
  Your intact family sticking together for your childhood and making a sustained sacrifice for your benefit already represents several awesome advantages many, many, many kids will never enjoy. You didn't eat out much so... home cooked meals most nights? You lived in a good school district? You had parents and/or other family as a support structure for 12 years? You had a dad? Imagine having none of those things.
  • thrower123 7y ago
    What is with this sentiment that we have to try to make people ashamed for doing things the right way and working hard? Be proud of what you have accomplished. Fuck the people that want to tear you down because there's some poor wretch that "deserves" a shot more than you do.
    • djtriptych 7y ago
      Don't be ashamed. Do expand your viewpoint beyond yourself.
• cjhanks 7y ago
  The hard work of your parents for you to attend a better school have nothing to do with your potential. You were fortunate, not everybody was. You might also consider that the great sacrifices your parents made to place you in a certain environment robbed you of an education others less academically focused learned well. And that some of those skills have value.
• briandear 7y ago
  It’s basically like golf handicapping. Imagine if pro sports gave the Oakland A’s a few extra runs per games when they played the Yankees because they have a lower payroll. That’s what this is. Except you wouldn’t know how many runs would be added to the score until the end of the season. I went to high school with many lower-middle/poor people (I was one of them,) despite identical neighborhoods, crime, income, etc.,) most Asians I know aced the SAT — some were 1st generation and arrived in the US from places like Laos and Vietnam and spoke no English when they arrived. They (like me,) didn’t have expensive private tutoring; their families just put an insane focus on education. The tiger mom stereotype is there for a reason. Many of these families worked 16+ hour days in small shops, with the entire family working. Most of these kids went to Ivy schools or for full-rides at the state schools. Yet non-Asians living on the same block barely graduated, if that. Yet the only difference was parental motivation and cultural background. These kids respected the teachers, did their homework to a high standard and didn’t roam around the neighborhood looking for trouble. And discrimination? Asian kids with little English in a mostly black and white lower class neighborhood — they got picked on relentlessly. If parents value education, they find a way. Perhaps having a two parent, tightly knit family helps. If we want to really help future generations, we have to find ways to support and encourage two-parent families. That’s one of the biggest predictors of academic and social success and there is plenty of data to back it up. Limited income, educational level of the parents, crime ridden neighborhoods — somehow, statistically, Asians don’t seem to care, they find a way. Until we reverse many of the social policies created in the early 1970s that destroyed the two-parent family in certain communities, you’ll get more of the same results. Interestingly, black kids from two parent families perform just as well academically as does a white student from a two-parent family. All of these other “factors” are just noise. The problem is in the home, not with the tests.
• selimthegrim 7y ago
  Do I necessarily agree with this score? No. But you should read Rothstein's book "The Color of Law" and the Supreme Court decision Milliken v. Bradley and think about how these "good school districts" came about