8 ms·

Quoting from the article: "Instead, it will try to capture a student’s social and economic background in a broad array of data points. The new tactic is called

Quoting from the article: "Instead, it will try to capture a student’s social and economic background in a broad array of data points. The new tactic is called Landscape and doesn’t combine the metrics into a single score." So they didn't really drop it. They just revised it a bit and gave it a new name.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> They just revised it a bit and gave it a new name I don’t think that’s fair. Saying “this student is from a 6th decile income and 9th decile funding school district” is different from combining those data into a single measure. The former presents information. The latter analyses it.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  True, but choosing which stats to include in the presentation is also in itself a form of analysis.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > choosing which stats to include in the presentation is also in itself a form of analysis Agreed. But it’s less reductive than a private company deciding on its own what does and doesn’t constitute adversity (and to what degree).
the_jeremy 7y ago
It's still a huge improvement (not that this is good, just that a single metric for adversity is completely ridiculous).
- blisterpeanuts 7y ago
  Some would argue that any metric for adversity is inherently unfair. Probably the best example to support this view is that of a student with hidden adversity, e.g. abusive parent or unreported learning disability that had to be overcome, despite being an "advantaged" ethnicity and living in an affluent suburb.
  - Ancalagon 7y ago
    Agreed. I really don't believe the College Board can gain an accurate picture of whatever adversity their test takers have faced based off of the data they collect.
    - dmix 7y ago
      Of course not. It's always going to be shot in the dark, they'll have to put a ton of trust in the information put in front of them. They aren't going out in the field to interview friends and family. A single nice family home in the suburbs could have one kid turn out to be a successful judge and the other a drug addict drop-out (even Trump's older brother died an alcoholic). Good luck measuring that honestly from a college entrance office.
- sk5t 7y ago
  Do you believe that the consumers of the "landscape" scores won't sum those values up or apply some substantially similar reduction?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- pacala 7y ago
  The goal is to perform action selection. No matter how many metrics you come up with, you have to aggregate them into a single score to rank the set of possible actions. The fact that producing such a score is preposterous is merely an indication the whole idea of adversity metric[s] for deciding the future of our children is morally and functionally bereft. The change moves the onus of metric aggregation from the College Board to individual colleges. We'll institutionalize injustice / poor decision making, but you'll have a choice of which institution will apply the injustice. Blind admissions. We may even incentivize kids to actually study for college, instead of waltzing in with a seventh grade reading level. If we don't like that recent immigrants outperform natives [of all colors!], perhaps we could perform a serious root cause analysis and address it, instead of papering over the metrics. https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6174 https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6174: The average college freshman reads at 7th grade level
- Will_Parker 7y ago
  > a single metric for adversity is completely ridiculous What about a single metric for scholastic aptitude, though? :)
  - big_chungus 7y ago
    Colleges probably place too much weight on, say, the SAT (which is, I presume, that to which you are referring), but they still use more. Years of report cards, letters of recommendation, extracurriculars, essays, AP exams, SAT subject tests, ACT, personal interviews, "soft factors", and other things that aren't disclosed. I agree it's certainly not perfect, and think it needs improvement, but personally can't think of a way to easily filter the huge numbers of applicants without quantifiable metrics.
ravenstine 7y ago
> The new tactic is called Landscape That's some real Newspeak right there.
morpheuskafka 7y ago
Part of the concern was that they were claiming, by putting them into a single "adversity score," that they could somehow claim to measure a student's adversity with absolutely zero opportunity for the student to present evidence to challenge the broad social inferences College Board planned to make from low-resolution school and neighborhood level data. I definitely don't like them making these kind of files on students and I think they should be required to get informed consent from the students--the data subjects--to do so, especially since students are the customers and pay for the tests. However, I do think there is some real improvement in acknowledging that this is a limited metric and no longer claiming that it somehow represents a comprehensive score.
- dmix 7y ago
  I'd bet money those college entrance consultants are happy about another metric they could hack and exploit for personal gain. People are already giving up guardianship of their kids to get into schools: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746687110/some-parents-are-giving-up-guardianship-of-their-kids-to-get-college-financial-a https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746687110/some-parents-are-gi... Since it can't be based on a thorough review of data and people's actual background for scaling reasons, it's all going to be about the initial presentation and gaming the system will continue to increase the more entrance is disconnected from academic ability. Hopefully the end result is less companies blindly hiring people based on their university degree, which is already happening, but there will always be perks from the name recognition alone regardless which is what I guess people are betting on when they are trying to tip the scales.
  - Throw_Away_6232 7y ago
    So they change the person who is their guardian before they reach the age of majority, and this does permanently change the persons who are used to calculate the expected family contribution? The article is a bit unclear.
  - Aperocky 7y ago
    The perfect solution to that is github and fizzbuzz (perhaps something bit harder). Non-programming job are going to shrink soon enough, there won't be anyone hiring 'blindly' in those field, or largely at all.
_Nat_ 7y ago
> They just revised it a bit and gave it a new name. Asians are a minority but out-score whites. So, if you were responsible for assigning an adversity score: 1. Would you say that Asians should get a lower score (since they tend to do better) or a higher score (since they're a minority)? 2. How much of an income difference between an Asian student's family and a white student's family to result in the same score? If you choose to penalize Asian individuals for their racial group doing better on average, how could you justify this to Asians who feel discriminated against? What would you say when they point out that you're penalizing them compared to white people despite being historically discriminated against? If you choose to penalize white individuals despite their racial group doing poorer on average, how could you justify this to whites who feel discriminated against? What would you say when they point out that your system increases, rather than decreases, racial gaps in colleges? To be clear, I agree with you -- this revised system has many of the same problems as the original proposal. But, now some of these tough questions aren't on their shoulders.
- gnopgnip 7y ago
  It is about equal opportunity, not equal outcome
  - scoobyyabbadoo 7y ago
    That's not how diversity success metrics are reported though. It's said to be a travesty if half the number of women as men choose a STEM major
  - fromthestart 7y ago
    Well, no, and here is the Crux of the issue with affirmative action, and possibly one of the strongest base drivers of the cleavage between the American left approach to race and equality, and the American right approach to the same. These policies attempt to achieve equality of outcome based on the implicit presumption that given equality of opportunity outcomes will be equal among various demographics. Thus any systematic inequalities are, without much in the way of hard evidence (a limitation of the related fields of psychology, economics, and the like) immediately explained by uncompetitive social norms of successful groups, i.e. racism/discrimination - unlocking the justification for penalizing those on top to equalize outcomes for those on the bottom. The result of this implicit and fundamentally unproven assumption is the conflation of equality of outcome with equality of opportunity by the modern American left. This is a point of consternation for those near the center and leaning right primarily because it punishes success without allowing for the possibility of personal/internal explanations for discrepancies, i.e. cultural factors independent of poverty which limit economic success, and/or things like proven heritability of intelligence. Further, one could argue that such a conflation optimizes economic equality over merit, which is probably worse for society overall.
lozenge 7y ago
Under the old score system, all students in the US could sue College Board for discrimination in a legally unsettled area (as evidenced by the Harvard lawsuit). Under the Landscape system, students will have to sue each college separately.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> They just revised it a bit and gave it a new name I don’t think that’s fair. Saying “this student is from a 6th decile income and 9th decile funding school district” is different from combining those data into a single measure. The former presents information. The latter analyses it.

cortesoft 7y ago
True, but choosing which stats to include in the presentation is also in itself a form of analysis.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > choosing which stats to include in the presentation is also in itself a form of analysis Agreed. But it’s less reductive than a private company deciding on its own what does and doesn’t constitute adversity (and to what degree).

the_jeremy 7y ago

It's still a huge improvement (not that this is good, just that a single metric for adversity is completely ridiculous).

blisterpeanuts 7y ago
Some would argue that any metric for adversity is inherently unfair. Probably the best example to support this view is that of a student with hidden adversity, e.g. abusive parent or unreported learning disability that had to be overcome, despite being an "advantaged" ethnicity and living in an affluent suburb.
- Ancalagon 7y ago
  Agreed. I really don't believe the College Board can gain an accurate picture of whatever adversity their test takers have faced based off of the data they collect.
  - dmix 7y ago
    Of course not. It's always going to be shot in the dark, they'll have to put a ton of trust in the information put in front of them. They aren't going out in the field to interview friends and family. A single nice family home in the suburbs could have one kid turn out to be a successful judge and the other a drug addict drop-out (even Trump's older brother died an alcoholic). Good luck measuring that honestly from a college entrance office.
sk5t 7y ago
Do you believe that the consumers of the "landscape" scores won't sum those values up or apply some substantially similar reduction?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
pacala 7y ago
The goal is to perform action selection. No matter how many metrics you come up with, you have to aggregate them into a single score to rank the set of possible actions. The fact that producing such a score is preposterous is merely an indication the whole idea of adversity metric[s] for deciding the future of our children is morally and functionally bereft. The change moves the onus of metric aggregation from the College Board to individual colleges. We'll institutionalize injustice / poor decision making, but you'll have a choice of which institution will apply the injustice. Blind admissions. We may even incentivize kids to actually study for college, instead of waltzing in with a seventh grade reading level. If we don't like that recent immigrants outperform natives [of all colors!], perhaps we could perform a serious root cause analysis and address it, instead of papering over the metrics. https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6174 https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6174: The average college freshman reads at 7th grade level
Will_Parker 7y ago
> a single metric for adversity is completely ridiculous What about a single metric for scholastic aptitude, though? :)
- big_chungus 7y ago
  Colleges probably place too much weight on, say, the SAT (which is, I presume, that to which you are referring), but they still use more. Years of report cards, letters of recommendation, extracurriculars, essays, AP exams, SAT subject tests, ACT, personal interviews, "soft factors", and other things that aren't disclosed. I agree it's certainly not perfect, and think it needs improvement, but personally can't think of a way to easily filter the huge numbers of applicants without quantifiable metrics.

ravenstine 7y ago

> The new tactic is called Landscape That's some real Newspeak right there.

morpheuskafka 7y ago

Part of the concern was that they were claiming, by putting them into a single "adversity score," that they could somehow claim to measure a student's adversity with absolutely zero opportunity for the student to present evidence to challenge the broad social inferences College Board planned to make from low-resolution school and neighborhood level data. I definitely don't like them making these kind of files on students and I think they should be required to get informed consent from the students--the data subjects--to do so, especially since students are the customers and pay for the tests. However, I do think there is some real improvement in acknowledging that this is a limited metric and no longer claiming that it somehow represents a comprehensive score.

dmix 7y ago
I'd bet money those college entrance consultants are happy about another metric they could hack and exploit for personal gain. People are already giving up guardianship of their kids to get into schools: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746687110/some-parents-are-giving-up-guardianship-of-their-kids-to-get-college-financial-a https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746687110/some-parents-are-gi... Since it can't be based on a thorough review of data and people's actual background for scaling reasons, it's all going to be about the initial presentation and gaming the system will continue to increase the more entrance is disconnected from academic ability. Hopefully the end result is less companies blindly hiring people based on their university degree, which is already happening, but there will always be perks from the name recognition alone regardless which is what I guess people are betting on when they are trying to tip the scales.
- Throw_Away_6232 7y ago
  So they change the person who is their guardian before they reach the age of majority, and this does permanently change the persons who are used to calculate the expected family contribution? The article is a bit unclear.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  The perfect solution to that is github and fizzbuzz (perhaps something bit harder). Non-programming job are going to shrink soon enough, there won't be anyone hiring 'blindly' in those field, or largely at all.

_Nat_ 7y ago

> They just revised it a bit and gave it a new name. Asians are a minority but out-score whites. So, if you were responsible for assigning an adversity score: 1. Would you say that Asians should get a lower score (since they tend to do better) or a higher score (since they're a minority)? 2. How much of an income difference between an Asian student's family and a white student's family to result in the same score? If you choose to penalize Asian individuals for their racial group doing better on average, how could you justify this to Asians who feel discriminated against? What would you say when they point out that you're penalizing them compared to white people despite being historically discriminated against? If you choose to penalize white individuals despite their racial group doing poorer on average, how could you justify this to whites who feel discriminated against? What would you say when they point out that your system increases, rather than decreases, racial gaps in colleges? To be clear, I agree with you -- this revised system has many of the same problems as the original proposal. But, now some of these tough questions aren't on their shoulders.

gnopgnip 7y ago
It is about equal opportunity, not equal outcome
- scoobyyabbadoo 7y ago
  That's not how diversity success metrics are reported though. It's said to be a travesty if half the number of women as men choose a STEM major
- fromthestart 7y ago
  Well, no, and here is the Crux of the issue with affirmative action, and possibly one of the strongest base drivers of the cleavage between the American left approach to race and equality, and the American right approach to the same. These policies attempt to achieve equality of outcome based on the implicit presumption that given equality of opportunity outcomes will be equal among various demographics. Thus any systematic inequalities are, without much in the way of hard evidence (a limitation of the related fields of psychology, economics, and the like) immediately explained by uncompetitive social norms of successful groups, i.e. racism/discrimination - unlocking the justification for penalizing those on top to equalize outcomes for those on the bottom. The result of this implicit and fundamentally unproven assumption is the conflation of equality of outcome with equality of opportunity by the modern American left. This is a point of consternation for those near the center and leaning right primarily because it punishes success without allowing for the possibility of personal/internal explanations for discrepancies, i.e. cultural factors independent of poverty which limit economic success, and/or things like proven heritability of intelligence. Further, one could argue that such a conflation optimizes economic equality over merit, which is probably worse for society overall.

lozenge 7y ago

Under the old score system, all students in the US could sue College Board for discrimination in a legally unsettled area (as evidenced by the Harvard lawsuit). Under the Landscape system, students will have to sue each college separately.