9 ms·

I think instead of trying to lower the bar for low income students, we should work on solving the actual problems causing them to perform more poorly on the SAT

I think instead of trying to lower the bar for low income students, we should work on solving the actual problems causing them to perform more poorly on the SAT (or adjust the SAT so it is more representative of their actual skills). If students are accepted with a lower SAT score because of their background, they are likely going to struggle in University, since they have lower scores than the rest of their class, seems like this would be just pushing the problem further down the road, rather than actually addressing it. From what I have seen, the problems for low income students start in grade school, if you are behind academically before you even enter high school, it's going to be hard to catch up. On the other hand though it might be essentially impossible to close the gap between low income and high income students. Your parents have a huge impact on your learning, and if your parents are poor and have to work all of the time, they aren't going to be as available to help you learn. Regardless, I think it is pretty impossible to calculate an adversity score that is actually accurate (how do you compare the challenges faced by a child in a single parent family with one who grew up in a poor neighbourhood?), and it seems pretty wrong to me to have a hidden score based on things you likely can't control influece admissions, but it would lead to some interesting research if it was actually used.

Sebguer 7y ago
How do you suggest solving a problem that comes down effectively to 'some people have more money and free time'? Not everyone can afford high quality tutoring, and high quality tutoring clearly has an impact on test scores.
- GhostVII 7y ago
  After school programs, ensuring all schools have equal funding, getting better at determining which kids aren't succeeding, and spending more time with them to give them the one on one support they need. I mean it's a very hard problem, and maybe it's unsolvable, but I think we have a lot more things we can try before giving up and trying to put Band-Aids on the problem. I think if class sizes are sufficiently small though, at least in grade school, a teacher should know every student, and be able to identify those who aren't getting the support they need at home. If they are a good teacher, they can act accordingly, and maybe work with the parents to help the child succeed.
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    Those are all great ideas, but the disadvantaged children in the schools this mechanism is trying to help probably don't go to schools that offer those benefits.
    - newen 7y ago
      Well yes...the person you're replying to is saying that those schools should get enough funding (and whatever else) so that they can offer those benefits.
      - rexpop 7y ago
        And where's that funding going to come from? Currently, we're funding schools in proximity to household wealth. Perhaps increasing poor working families' wealth is the solution that fits in with our current setup.
        devcpp 7y ago
        Or perhaps we should just even out the funding. Crudely redistributing wealth is a historically very poor way to solve inequality (assuming it is a problem), since it doesn't address the root cause. Investing in education, in particular trades, is an arguably better way. They are practical, have the most bang-for-buck value, and are not time-consuming or demanding.
  - AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
    I'm not sure equal funding is the solution. "Bad school" is not the one without a freshly refurbished swimming pool. It's the one with poor discipline, parents who don't care and a principal who has no idea how to work with kids.
- cpncrunch 7y ago
  >Not everyone can afford high quality tutoring, and high quality tutoring clearly has an impact on test scores. There are a number of organizations offering free online tutoring, such as https://learntobe.org https://learntobe.org. https://weteachscience.org https://weteachscience.org used to provide free STEM tutoring to students in disadvantaged schools, but they recently shut down...I think it was difficult getting stable funding. There is no technical reason why high quality tutoring couldn't be offered to all these students. It's simply a matter of arranging the funding. I think a workable non-profit business model would be to arrange long-term funding from some government organization. If anyone is interested in setting up a business like this, feel free to email me and I can provide contacts and technology (I work with online tutoring companies, including the two listed above).
  - hrktb 7y ago
    > There is no technical reason why [...] vs the article: > “growing up in a neighborhood with less violence gives you advantages in your academic work.” The score proposed is to adjust for societal issues, and technological solutions aren’t usually a good fit for those.
- cm2187 7y ago
  Actively pushing and monitoring children's education has probably a lot more to do with academic success than free time. I am not aware that the asian minority has much more money and free time than anyone else.
  - Causality1 7y ago
    At the end of the day some children will belong to Culture X which is more compatible with academic achievement that Culture Y. My best friend growing up was a Korean kid whose parents almost tortured him and his siblings to excel in school. His pain and sacrifice deserve to count for something.
    - intertextuality 7y ago
      Or perhaps we can look into alternate systems that don't reward excruciating studying and working systems. Perhaps standardized testing like the SAT is fundamentally flawed and we need to figure out better assessment systems. > South Korea has the 10th highest suicide rate in the world. Note that this is also inflated due to an abnormally high elderly suicide rate due to some systemic factors. > Although lower than the rate for the elderly, grade school and college students in Korea have a higher than average suicide rate. One example alternative would be de-emphasizing the utmost need for a degree, and emphasizing trades as an alternative. Not everyone should need a degree, and from an academia standpoint it makes having a college degree relatively worthless and slowly turns universities into degree mills. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea
      - repolfx 7y ago
        What sort of fair system would not reward very hard work and study with very high rewards? If Koreans culturally want a life more tipped towards academic achievement, who are we non-Koreans to tell them they're wrong or that their achievements should be invalidated in the name of equal outcomes.
        7y ago
- thatfrenchguy 7y ago
  Reduce the maximum working week to 20 hours. Boom, lots of free time.
lenkite 7y ago
I believe all the problems you have mentioned can be easily solved. Permit adversity scores to weigh in favour of course grades and graduate honors. Legislation can be passed to ensure adversity scores count towards corporate and government employment to prevent any bumps further down the road. Furthermore, adversity scores should also be counted towards recruitment in elite military units, selection for senior military leadership and all significant promotions. The adversity you faced in childhood should give one guaranteed opportunity throughout life. This progressive path ensures harmonious diversity and a perfect union of our states. Adversity is Excellence! Merit is Privilege!
- fastball 7y ago
  Had me going for a second.
- Papirola 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  Disingenuous mockery doesn't help. (If you actually believe that's where people are trying to go then I have worse insults for you.)
  - lenkite 7y ago
    My mockery reflects the progression of reality in other nations where such policies have been implemented. Your anger and threat of "worse insults" matter little to history. At each stage, the devout proponents of equality will only choose to draw the line further. When students of the 'adversity' quota are unable to get good grades, their grades will be inflated. When they are unable to get jobs, a push will be made for implementing adversity/equality quota in jobs. Case study: India. In India, every community fights to be included in the backward communities category because the benefits are so frighteningly high. Politicians are elected on the basis that they promise to categorise their communities as backward to improve the opportunities for their children. Other politicians threaten to remove some communities from backward status. Being backward gains you a fantastic advantage towards college admissions, reservation in jobs, and several other free benefits. (including lowered prices, etc). Who will not want to leverage this ? The US may very well develop the same problem as a natural evolution of this policy with corresponding natural devolution of merit. Where do you draw the final line on adversity ? If you think this is unrealistic, you are severely mistaken my friend. This simply happens over time. It always starts with "Good Intentions".
rlue 7y ago
100%. To truly level the playing field requires far earlier intervention (of the sort we see through LeBron James' I Promise initiative), and is entirely beyond the ability of the College Board or even the university system as a whole. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. > (or adjust the SAT so it is more representative of their actual skills). The problem, as you point out just one sentence later, is that adversity materially diminishes students' abilities. Either we can test them on their actual skills, which correlate strongly with socioeconomic status, or we can give disadvantaged kids preferential treatment at the last minute. You can't have both. I don't know how to reconcile the belief that everyone deserves a fair shot with the reality that there are only so many open seats at America's premier universities (or anywhere else advancement and prosperity reside, for that matter). If you truly believe in equal opportunity, you must concede that the rich and poor are equally deserving of the chance to go to Harvard, and artificially closing the gates on some of the rich in favor of some of the poor is a crude facsimile of justice.
- WillPostForFood 7y ago
  Why fixate on Harvard? It can only ever serve a few thousand kids. There are hundreds of universities and colleges that can provide a good education and more than a fair shot. The problem isn't a poor kid who graduates from University of Wisconsin or University of Colorado instead of Harvard or Stanford, it is the kid who didn't even graduate high school, can't really read, and isn't prepared to show up at work in the morning, let alone do the job.
  - akhilcacharya 7y ago
    The reason why the elites fixate on Harvard is because they’re completely out of touch with the 99% of folks that don’t apply to or don’t get into elite institutions. It’s pure condescension on their part.
    - WillPostForFood 7y ago
      I agree. Also, there is no policy ever that will make admission to Harvard completely equitable, so as long as you hold up Harvard as the example, it justifies any intervention you want to try. Because Harvard.
arkh 7y ago
> On the other hand though it might be essentially impossible to close the gap between low income and high income students. If this is a goal a society set it is possible. Remove the parents from being involved in their children education. When born, remove the children from their parents and send them to some national education system until they're adults.
- tty2300 7y ago
  They tried that in Australia. Didn't work well.
  - arkh 7y ago
    I may not have been clear. It does not apply only to poor people. All children, from rich and poor parents would have to be raised in the same institutions.
    - tty2300 7y ago
      So now we emotionally cripple an entire generation?
      - arkh 7y ago
        But the gap is closed.
        beasteurope 7y ago
        Maybe we should learn to live with inequality? Seems as if you can't build an egalitarian society without tyranny.
- lizardking 7y ago
  Not sure if that is intended genuinely, but as a parent who also experienced growing up in poverty, I find that solution to be worse than the problem.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sosodev 7y ago
While I agree that calculating hardship is pretty much impossible I don't think a lower SAT score necessarily means worse student.
siruncledrew 7y ago
> "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." I could be wrong, but my interpretation here is that there's a lot more data on students the CollegeBoard is reporting to colleges that students taking the test don't see or know about. This also seems unfair to assess students on hidden metrics. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the CollegeBoard were to (or currently does) partner with Equifax to see parents' credit histories. There's an entire analytics farm on students.
fallingfrog 7y ago
You’re so, so close but maybe having not lived it you can’t quite get there. The difference is not a difference of ability. It’s situation. Did you have to work full time all the way through school? I did. Did you have no support whatsoever from your parents and have to manage to pay rent, hold down a job, and take classes full time? My wife did it. She was on her own at the age of 17, no support. Put herself through school. It has nothing to do with tilting test scores. What people need is material support and frankly, for most working class kids, the only thing that will reliably solve their problems is free education and free room and board while they’re in school. That’s what leveling the field would look like. And that’s not even starting to consider students with small children.

Sebguer 7y ago

How do you suggest solving a problem that comes down effectively to 'some people have more money and free time'? Not everyone can afford high quality tutoring, and high quality tutoring clearly has an impact on test scores.

GhostVII 7y ago
After school programs, ensuring all schools have equal funding, getting better at determining which kids aren't succeeding, and spending more time with them to give them the one on one support they need. I mean it's a very hard problem, and maybe it's unsolvable, but I think we have a lot more things we can try before giving up and trying to put Band-Aids on the problem. I think if class sizes are sufficiently small though, at least in grade school, a teacher should know every student, and be able to identify those who aren't getting the support they need at home. If they are a good teacher, they can act accordingly, and maybe work with the parents to help the child succeed.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  Those are all great ideas, but the disadvantaged children in the schools this mechanism is trying to help probably don't go to schools that offer those benefits.
  - newen 7y ago
    Well yes...the person you're replying to is saying that those schools should get enough funding (and whatever else) so that they can offer those benefits.
    - rexpop 7y ago
      And where's that funding going to come from? Currently, we're funding schools in proximity to household wealth. Perhaps increasing poor working families' wealth is the solution that fits in with our current setup.
      - devcpp 7y ago
        Or perhaps we should just even out the funding. Crudely redistributing wealth is a historically very poor way to solve inequality (assuming it is a problem), since it doesn't address the root cause. Investing in education, in particular trades, is an arguably better way. They are practical, have the most bang-for-buck value, and are not time-consuming or demanding.
- AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
  I'm not sure equal funding is the solution. "Bad school" is not the one without a freshly refurbished swimming pool. It's the one with poor discipline, parents who don't care and a principal who has no idea how to work with kids.
cpncrunch 7y ago
>Not everyone can afford high quality tutoring, and high quality tutoring clearly has an impact on test scores. There are a number of organizations offering free online tutoring, such as https://learntobe.org https://learntobe.org. https://weteachscience.org https://weteachscience.org used to provide free STEM tutoring to students in disadvantaged schools, but they recently shut down...I think it was difficult getting stable funding. There is no technical reason why high quality tutoring couldn't be offered to all these students. It's simply a matter of arranging the funding. I think a workable non-profit business model would be to arrange long-term funding from some government organization. If anyone is interested in setting up a business like this, feel free to email me and I can provide contacts and technology (I work with online tutoring companies, including the two listed above).
- hrktb 7y ago
  > There is no technical reason why [...] vs the article: > “growing up in a neighborhood with less violence gives you advantages in your academic work.” The score proposed is to adjust for societal issues, and technological solutions aren’t usually a good fit for those.
cm2187 7y ago
Actively pushing and monitoring children's education has probably a lot more to do with academic success than free time. I am not aware that the asian minority has much more money and free time than anyone else.
- Causality1 7y ago
  At the end of the day some children will belong to Culture X which is more compatible with academic achievement that Culture Y. My best friend growing up was a Korean kid whose parents almost tortured him and his siblings to excel in school. His pain and sacrifice deserve to count for something.
  - intertextuality 7y ago
    Or perhaps we can look into alternate systems that don't reward excruciating studying and working systems. Perhaps standardized testing like the SAT is fundamentally flawed and we need to figure out better assessment systems. > South Korea has the 10th highest suicide rate in the world. Note that this is also inflated due to an abnormally high elderly suicide rate due to some systemic factors. > Although lower than the rate for the elderly, grade school and college students in Korea have a higher than average suicide rate. One example alternative would be de-emphasizing the utmost need for a degree, and emphasizing trades as an alternative. Not everyone should need a degree, and from an academia standpoint it makes having a college degree relatively worthless and slowly turns universities into degree mills. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea
    - repolfx 7y ago
      What sort of fair system would not reward very hard work and study with very high rewards? If Koreans culturally want a life more tipped towards academic achievement, who are we non-Koreans to tell them they're wrong or that their achievements should be invalidated in the name of equal outcomes.
      - 7y ago
thatfrenchguy 7y ago
Reduce the maximum working week to 20 hours. Boom, lots of free time.

lenkite 7y ago

I believe all the problems you have mentioned can be easily solved. Permit adversity scores to weigh in favour of course grades and graduate honors. Legislation can be passed to ensure adversity scores count towards corporate and government employment to prevent any bumps further down the road. Furthermore, adversity scores should also be counted towards recruitment in elite military units, selection for senior military leadership and all significant promotions. The adversity you faced in childhood should give one guaranteed opportunity throughout life. This progressive path ensures harmonious diversity and a perfect union of our states. Adversity is Excellence! Merit is Privilege!

fastball 7y ago
Had me going for a second.
Papirola 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
Dylan16807 7y ago
Disingenuous mockery doesn't help. (If you actually believe that's where people are trying to go then I have worse insults for you.)
- lenkite 7y ago
  My mockery reflects the progression of reality in other nations where such policies have been implemented. Your anger and threat of "worse insults" matter little to history. At each stage, the devout proponents of equality will only choose to draw the line further. When students of the 'adversity' quota are unable to get good grades, their grades will be inflated. When they are unable to get jobs, a push will be made for implementing adversity/equality quota in jobs. Case study: India. In India, every community fights to be included in the backward communities category because the benefits are so frighteningly high. Politicians are elected on the basis that they promise to categorise their communities as backward to improve the opportunities for their children. Other politicians threaten to remove some communities from backward status. Being backward gains you a fantastic advantage towards college admissions, reservation in jobs, and several other free benefits. (including lowered prices, etc). Who will not want to leverage this ? The US may very well develop the same problem as a natural evolution of this policy with corresponding natural devolution of merit. Where do you draw the final line on adversity ? If you think this is unrealistic, you are severely mistaken my friend. This simply happens over time. It always starts with "Good Intentions".

rlue 7y ago

100%. To truly level the playing field requires far earlier intervention (of the sort we see through LeBron James' I Promise initiative), and is entirely beyond the ability of the College Board or even the university system as a whole. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. > (or adjust the SAT so it is more representative of their actual skills). The problem, as you point out just one sentence later, is that adversity materially diminishes students' abilities. Either we can test them on their actual skills, which correlate strongly with socioeconomic status, or we can give disadvantaged kids preferential treatment at the last minute. You can't have both. I don't know how to reconcile the belief that everyone deserves a fair shot with the reality that there are only so many open seats at America's premier universities (or anywhere else advancement and prosperity reside, for that matter). If you truly believe in equal opportunity, you must concede that the rich and poor are equally deserving of the chance to go to Harvard, and artificially closing the gates on some of the rich in favor of some of the poor is a crude facsimile of justice.

WillPostForFood 7y ago
Why fixate on Harvard? It can only ever serve a few thousand kids. There are hundreds of universities and colleges that can provide a good education and more than a fair shot. The problem isn't a poor kid who graduates from University of Wisconsin or University of Colorado instead of Harvard or Stanford, it is the kid who didn't even graduate high school, can't really read, and isn't prepared to show up at work in the morning, let alone do the job.
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  The reason why the elites fixate on Harvard is because they’re completely out of touch with the 99% of folks that don’t apply to or don’t get into elite institutions. It’s pure condescension on their part.
  - WillPostForFood 7y ago
    I agree. Also, there is no policy ever that will make admission to Harvard completely equitable, so as long as you hold up Harvard as the example, it justifies any intervention you want to try. Because Harvard.

arkh 7y ago

> On the other hand though it might be essentially impossible to close the gap between low income and high income students. If this is a goal a society set it is possible. Remove the parents from being involved in their children education. When born, remove the children from their parents and send them to some national education system until they're adults.

tty2300 7y ago
They tried that in Australia. Didn't work well.
- arkh 7y ago
  I may not have been clear. It does not apply only to poor people. All children, from rich and poor parents would have to be raised in the same institutions.
  - tty2300 7y ago
    So now we emotionally cripple an entire generation?
    - arkh 7y ago
      But the gap is closed.
      - beasteurope 7y ago
        Maybe we should learn to live with inequality? Seems as if you can't build an egalitarian society without tyranny.
lizardking 7y ago
Not sure if that is intended genuinely, but as a parent who also experienced growing up in poverty, I find that solution to be worse than the problem.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sosodev 7y ago

While I agree that calculating hardship is pretty much impossible I don't think a lower SAT score necessarily means worse student.

siruncledrew 7y ago

> "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." I could be wrong, but my interpretation here is that there's a lot more data on students the CollegeBoard is reporting to colleges that students taking the test don't see or know about. This also seems unfair to assess students on hidden metrics. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the CollegeBoard were to (or currently does) partner with Equifax to see parents' credit histories. There's an entire analytics farm on students.

fallingfrog 7y ago

You’re so, so close but maybe having not lived it you can’t quite get there. The difference is not a difference of ability. It’s situation. Did you have to work full time all the way through school? I did. Did you have no support whatsoever from your parents and have to manage to pay rent, hold down a job, and take classes full time? My wife did it. She was on her own at the age of 17, no support. Put herself through school. It has nothing to do with tilting test scores. What people need is material support and frankly, for most working class kids, the only thing that will reliably solve their problems is free education and free room and board while they’re in school. That’s what leveling the field would look like. And that’s not even starting to consider students with small children.