Sounds like a good way to get kids into schools where they will not do well.
SAT isn’t very predictive. It has only weak correlation with “how well” a kid will do in a particular school. The reason why selective colleges try to find students with the highest SAT scores is to maintain their brand reputation as a “highly selective” school.
SamuelA is right. SATs are not terribly predictive, and they are least predictive for kids with a high “environmental context” score–poor kids in bad schools. Well-off kids in great schools are being prepped for the SAT in their rigorous classes, which are aligned to the skills the SAT teaches. They have professional tutors. They have parents and teachers who help them use their PSAT – which they take–report to identify specific skill gaps to remediate. They retest. The kid who has none of that but is still within a 100 points of the ones who do–that kid is perfectly capable.
Could it be that after many years of education in well-functioning public schools and the added instruction that high income students participate in, that they are better prepared for college success? Seems odd that advocates of public schooling would argue that many years in adverse learning conditions would have no impact on a college students’ academic preparedness.
Capability is another ball game. Of course they are capable of achieving what rich kids achieve if they had those benefits. The thing is, they did not have those benefits. Admitting them to a school does not sprinkle preparedness dust on them. IMO they should start at a college on their level and level up as they enter the final years of undergrad or wait until grad school.
You say there is no correlation. Perhaps the researchers you are thinking of did some shoddy analysis in search of a desired outcome. We know, and you admit, that low income students have lower SAT scores. We also know that the dropout rate for low income students is much higher. This is probably due to “adverse” conditions, but the fact remains. If you admit more students with a high adversity score, you will be admitting students you know will be more likely to drop out.
This is not true. Very selective and highly selective colleges are very good and supporting and developing the students they have: they typically have an 85-90% 4-year graduation rate. There are two reasons for this:
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They have great systems in place to develop students. Writing labs, generous office hours, tutors, etc. These systems have been in place for time immemorial because they’ve always taken kids who need support–“development” kids (donors/future donors); athletes; feeder schools; kids with extraordinary talents and extraordinary gaps. I have sent many kids who had “gaps” in their skill set but were mostly strong, and they have always received the support they needed to develop the skills they needed to catch up. No need to wait till grad school.
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There is a lot of context for the slightly lower score, and they pay attention to it. When you have a kid whose score is 100 points lower than what you’d expect from an upper-class kid in a supportive environment, you look at everything else. You notice he took it once, and his score is higher than that other kid’s first attempt. You notice that he’s ranked very highly, so he is getting the most out the curriculum available to him. You have a rec letter that says before him, no one had passed the AP Calc exam in years because the teacher is ineffective, and not only did he self-study to a 5, 2 other kids got a 3 and it’s widely believed by faculty and students that it’s because this kid ended up effectively teaching the class by the end of the year. You see he’s worked the same job for two years to help pay for his own expenses, and in that time, he’s become front-end supervisor and gotten employee of the month 3 times. All that together shows a kid who is absolutely capable of doing the work, and while there may be gaps, he has the work ethic and ambition to take advantage of all the support structures available to make sure he catches up.
Kids who undermatch–who go to a school where they are comfortably qualified–are lesslikely to graduate on time. Putting a student in a challenging school with more resources to support him seems to be the best way to make sure he is developed to his full capacity.
Yes that may be. Unfortunately, having an adversity score does not repair US education. The fact remains that low income students drop out like crazy. Any change that results in more of them being accepted will lead to an increase in dropouts or a dumbing down of content.
The choice isn’t “adversity score with extra help” vs. “no adversity score”. The choice is adversity score vs no adversity score, with everything else remaining constant.
Also, all of the wonderful criteria you listed will not be captured by this adversity score. There is nothing in this score that signals the merit or capability of an individual student. This score will be a tool for lazy admissions decisions.
I don’t think it will be terribly useful, no, except in the case of a kid from a school that rarely or never sends applications to a certain institution: it may serve as a flag to then go look at the application through a different lens–to go looking to those things that do signal merit from a kid with few opportunities.
That said, the schools that low-income students are dropping out of are NOT, largely, the ones that care about SAT scores. They drop out of 2-year colleges, regional public universities, and for-profit schools at astronomically higher rates than they do from state flagships and selective private schools. This includes students who would have been much more successful at a more selective school. I do this professionally, and it is absolutely possible for a kid to be more prepared for and do better at Harvard than they would at a community college.
If the test is shown to be unfair due to economic circumstances then it is unfair. even if they change the unfair test to another unfair test it is in the same category. So it doesn’t matter a hell of beans.