Posted on 05/29/2019 6:03:24 AM PDT by reaganaut1
In the 1992 movie “A Few Good Men,” there is a courtroom scene where the prosecuting attorney (played by Tom Cruise) tells the defendant Marine officer Nathan Jessup (played by Jack Nicholson) that he wants the truth. To that, Jessup shouts back, “You can’t handle the truth.”
What brings that to mind is the recent revelation that the College Board (CB) has begun calculating an “adversity score” for each student who takes its aptitude test, the SAT. Apparently, the people running the CB don’t believe that we can handle the truth that individual students vary in their academic abilities, and therefore their actual SAT scores must be adjusted (“put in context”) to supposedly reflect the circumstances of the test taker.
Schools will receive adversity scores that boost the actual scores of students to the degree that the CB thinks they have faced adversity in their lives. How well students are actually prepared for academic work will now be hidden behind an egalitarian gauze that is supposed to make things more fair.
Strangely, the news about this change in the SAT was not trumpeted by the CB itself but rather was revealed in the Wall Street Journal. Author Douglas Belkin explained that the CB “has worried about income inequality influencing test results for years” and he quotes CB chief executive David Coleman, “We can’t sit on our hands and ignore the disparities of wealth reflected in the SAT.”
The “adversity score” for each test taker will depend on 15 factors relating to the area of the student’s high school, such as poverty levels and crime rates. What counts is the area, not specifics about the student and his or her family.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Yes, they do, in fact, “presume” that people of color need a hand and can’t succeed without help from the government. Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken about that fact, as well as the tendency for some to assume that black people - like Thomas himself - only succeeded because they were given special treatment and not due to personal effort and commitment.
Interesting that your historical reference point of 50 years correlates closely with the beginning of Johnson’s “Great Society” program about 54-55 years ago. Black historians who haven’t sold out to the Democrat Party will tell you that the Great Society program destroyed previously vibrant black communities throughout the United States. The 50 years of “highly reliable data” you refer to has been used to gauge the effectiveness of the Great Society program in destroying black communities and ensuring dependency on the government, particularly Democrat government at every level.
Yes, the data is correct in noting that black students do underperform students from other ethnic groups. The question we should be asking oursleves is why; what cause and effect relationship exists to explain the disparity?
Most Americans can. It is the self styled elites who cannot. They do not comprehend the results of their attempts to rebalance society.
Well, as a matter of social policy, I suppose that is correct to call for analysis of cause and effect - but you must take into account that society is completely unprepared for certain outcomes of such an analysis. You should not, in general, do studies where your pre-analysis view is not one of equipoise (i.e., if you are committed in advance to one among several outcomes).
But the College Board is not in charge of that analytic work. THEIR job is to deliver a product that colleges will pay for (by making millions of juniors and seniors take and pay for their tests), and colleges are fully committed to human cognitive uniformity across races. Since the data does not support that hypothesis, and since the data has been resistant to many interventions, the fastest and simplest solution to keeping the customer satisfied is to change the scores.
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnOPE
Common Core: ‘the gift that Pearson counts on to keep giving’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/09/23/common-core-the-gift-that-pearson-counts-on-to-keep-giving/
The skinny on Pearson and the Common Core Standards
https://seattleducation.com/2015/05/08/the-skinny-on-pearson-and-the-common-core-standards/
I’ve read that only colleges will know your child’s Adversity Score.
I actually have a child in high school. Has taken PSAT and will be taking the SAT. We’ve never received an “adversity score” but did get a detailed report on how she placed relative to others her age and likely score when she takes the SAT.
And the articles coming out say they have good reason, in their minds, to keep it secret.
“Should it be secret?
It’s easy to see why the College Board would want the scores and the way the scores are calculated to be secret. If the full truth were known, most people would be unhappy for one reason or another, and some of those people would probably have legitimate complaints. But it’s harder to complain about your score and how it was calculated if you don’t know anything about either issue. A more legitimate motivation for secrecy may also be in play: it’s also harder to game the system if you don’t know what actions will improve your score and how much difference your actions will make.”
True and thanks
Thanks.
I post in between not being very busy at work lol, but the board seems extra busy today.
Probably mueller.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.