Posted on 05/17/2019 7:23:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Few people have the audacity to speak the truth about the underlying problem with the efforts to engineer “diversity” – which in practice means that blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans receive a share of jobs, college admissions, income, and other products of achievement at least proportional to their share of the population. Fortunately, Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has a lot of guts.
Last night, Ms. Mac Donald appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight and discussed the newly-announced “adversity score” adopted by the College Board publishers of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). As explained by the New York Times:
The company announced on Thursday that it will include a new rating, which is widely being referred to as an “adversity score,” of between 1 and 100 on students’ test results. An average score is 50, and higher numbers mean more disadvantage. 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.
The rating will not affect students’ test scores, and will be reported only to college dmissions officials as part of a larger package of data on each test taker.
The Wall Street Journal expresses the decision factors in this graphic:
Source: Wall Street Journal
In his introduction Carlson outlined many problems with the whole idea:
It’s kept a secret. “Trust us,” in effect, they say. There is no appeal possible. And as a black box whose inner workings are secret, it becomes an ideal vehicle for engineering the racial results admissions offices desire.
It is easily gamed – fake addresses, even possible income manipulation by claiming a lot of depreciation,
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Would you want to be operated on by a doctor with a high adversity score and low SAT?
“Underpromise and overdeliver.”
Or, more accurately,
“Improved performance through lowered expectations.”
As Asian I truly admire the talent of whites. They can make an art out of bs.
I wonder if this conclusion by the estimable Heather McDonald is, regrettably, also an example of trimming to political correctness. Would it not be more accurate to say that although cultural values are not inherent in any race some races have inherently different cultural values or at least different value levels than others? Would it not also be fair to say that those cultural values closely correlate to "high scores?"
Uniformly, studies tell us that Head Start Program has virtually no positive effect on "underprivileged" children by the time they reach puberty and certainly not by the time they take SAT exams. The evidence is that SAT exam performance plus the virtues of "effort, persistence, and deferred gratification" lead to economic success in life. But the cultural values inculcated by Head Start have virtually no demonstrable effect in improving SAT scores on those who participated in the program.
In other words the evidence is not that these enumerated virtues lead to good SAT scores. In fact, it may well be that the intelligence necessary to score high in SAT examinations is the same kind of intelligence that prompts "effort, persistence, and deferred gratification." Dare we ask, does the low intelligence which leads to low performance on SAT exams also produce the culture of lack of effort, inconstancy, and immediate gratification?
If so, all that this SAT manipulation will accomplish is pushing Head Start to an older age level but with the same ultimate result. Meanwhile, since as the article points out, college admissions is a zero sum game, the harm to society by failing to advance merit will be an "evolutionary" downer.
Political correctness, unlike facts, does care about feelings.
100% correct, it de facto red lining.
This is the same as those that bought admission for their kids except gamed by the college admissions or the 1950’s tv game show where you win a prize for telling how awful your life is.
Forget the lying examples. Students who tell the truth and who can get it based on their "adversity score" are a bigger sham than lying about your athletic profile or lying about your zip code.
#9 & 10 they will tell by the home address. Use data that shows what race in what percentage lives where and of course by your name.
“I’m guessing my sons will actually have points DEDUCTED from their scores due to their immense “privilege”. “
If colleges want to change admissions due to a variety of different factors, that is up to them - but the SAT is supposed to bring utter objectivity to the table across the entire nation, all income classes, all types of schools, all races, etc. It is the same test on any given date (though the order of the questions differs to make cheating harder), and EVERYONE is graded on the same scale. That is the whole REASON why the SAT was created in the first place - so that the grade inflation or teacher favoritism at one school wouldn’t be allowed to give a false advantage to that student or those students.
Sue the bastards. I know that I will (my daughter is finishing her junior year in HS now, and will take her first SAT pretty soon). Screw these people - this is outright discrimination, and we know this because they won’t tell us how they are calculating this score, or how/if it will affect the real SAT score.
colleges need objective test scores to compare students nationally. Subjective information should not be part of that.
My son is a victim of such policy ~ scored 50 pt higher than average Stanford Admissioned student for MBA program, killed his GMAT, and didn’t get a sniff... White, make disadvantage
So much for the false promise of Common Core.
This is about affirmative action and the Bell Curve. Nothing else.
And if the Left insists on the economic disadvantage factors, then they can organize, at their expense, voucher programs for SAT prep.
This violates equal protection under the law. It must be challenged in court.
Looks like the same people that developed the 27 variable algoreythm to predict global warming.
Continues to point to a need to completely raze higher education and start over.
RE: They merely added points to your application if you were Black or Hispanic, and subtracted points if you were White or even more points if you are Asian.
And they added even more points if you claim to be Native American Indian. Just ask Fauxcahontas, our would-be President, Lizzy Warren.
“This is the democrat’s way of telling Blacks that they’re too stupid to do what everyone else does.
Blatantly racist on its face.”
I sincerely hope that this attempt to further socially engineer particular results due to race is the hook on which the whole system of racial quotas is hanged. And, no, I don’t give a rat’s ass what the imagery of that may be...I just want Bakke to go away. No one alive today ever legally owned a slave in this country, nor was any person alive today ever legally a slave in this country - so why are people of today able to benefit or, alternatively, have to be punished, for what none of them did or experienced?
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