The College Board’s “Adversity Score”: A (Brief) History of a Very Bad Idea
Remember that time you were sitting in your high school English class, staring at the clock, dreaming of a world where your biggest worry was whether you’d be able to snag the last slice of pizza at lunch? Yeah, that was probably a lot more carefree than the lives of some of your classmates.
The College Board, in a move that was arguably more “well-intentioned” than “well-thought-out,” decided to try and quantify that difference with an “adversity score.” Think of it as a GPA for your neighborhood, except instead of grading you on your knowledge of Shakespeare, it judged you based on the number of food stamps in your ZIP code.
So, how exactly did the College Board plan to grade adversity, you ask?
Well, they decided to use 15 factors, including the neighborhood crime rate, the poverty level, and the quality of the student’s school. This would be represented by a single number (from 1 to 100, with 100 being the highest disadvantage), which would give college admissions officials an idea of what challenges a student has faced to achieve their academic goals.
Here’s where things get a bit…complicated.
The College Board, in their infinite wisdom, decided to use this score to put SAT scores in context, meaning that a student from a more “adverse” background might get a bump on their score. The idea was to level the playing field and give students from underprivileged backgrounds a better chance of getting into college.
But, alas, the “adversity score” was met with a lot of backlash.
Critics argued that it was unfair to penalize students from more affluent backgrounds, and that it was essentially a way of saying that these students had an “unfair advantage” because they had access to better resources. Plus, there was some serious concern about the validity of this score, and how it might end up reinforcing existing prejudices.
In other words, it was a great idea in theory, but in practice, it was about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
The College Board, recognizing that they’d inadvertently created a score that was more likely to create controversy than solve a problem, eventually dropped the “adversity score” in 2019.
So, what can we learn from this?
Well, first, sometimes good intentions aren’t enough. Second, it’s important to be mindful of the unintended consequences of your actions. And finally, maybe we should just focus on making sure everyone has access to a good education, rather than trying to create a system that gives students an artificial advantage based on their background.
As for the College Board, they seem to have learned their lesson (or maybe they just got tired of being on the receiving end of all the criticism). They’ve since replaced the “adversity score” with a more nuanced approach, focusing on providing students with more information about their college options, as well as the resources they need to succeed.
In the end, the “adversity score” was a cautionary tale about the dangers of trying to quantify complex social issues. It also served as a reminder that sometimes, the best way to help people is to simply give them the tools and opportunities they need to succeed.
And as for the students who were stuck in those English classes, well, they probably just learned a valuable lesson about the sometimes-unpredictable nature of the world.
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