Critics of the SAT "Adversity Score" Point Out the Adversity in Such a System

Nick Anderson of the Washington Post published an article today, "SAT's New Adversity Score Faces its Own Adversity". The critics of the so-called "adversity score" that the College Board is supplying to colleges and universities for applicants as a means to measure their relative level of economic and social disadvantage.

Check out this article to see who is criticizing this new system.

My own personal criticism of such a score starts at the fact that parents and students do not have a right to know what the score is, and how it was derived. The College Board does make mistakes - and I can certainly imagine any number of scenarios on how the Collee Board could provide a faulty score to colleges.

What shocks me the most about this adversity score is this: the score is not derived by using personal details about the student! Instead, it is based on publicly available demographic data somehow mapped to the student through home address or school location. The opportunities for errors in such a scoring system are to numerous to list here.

So in my view, the Adversity Score of the Adversity Score system keeps rising the more I consider it.