The SAT’s new “adversity score” has gotten a bad rap for inserting intersectional politics into academics. However, the College Board is pushing back on the phrasing of “adversity score” altogether.
Instead of inflating scores based on arbitrary measures of adversity, the SAT’s new adjustment is really an “Environmental Context Dashboard” that shows “how a student’s SAT score compares to those of other students in their school.” Its purpose is to give admissions officers “better context about an applicant’s neighborhood and high school.” Unlike a grade curve, this dashboard provides context while leaving the student’s nominal score untouched.
Admissions officers have argued that the Environmental Context Dashboard helps them better understand a student’s score. It can be helpful for admissions officers to see how students perform in comparison to their classmates and in what educational environment they are learning. For example, while a student may perform at an average level overall, that average score could place him or her at the top of their high school class. This context is important, as it gives you an idea of what opportunities and quality of education their school offered.
The College Board explains that the Environmental Context Dashboard is designed to recognize “poor rural families,” kids in “inner cities,” and children of military families “who face the daily difficulties of low income and frequent deployments.” All of these factors can change or negatively impact a student’s academic performance, but shouldn’t limit a student’s ability to learn and thrive in college. So, it’s completely reasonable for the College Board to seek to alert admissions officers to these kinds of situations.
“Through its history, the College Board has been focused on finding unseen talent,” President David Coleman said in a recent statement. “The Environmental Context Dashboard shines a light on students who have demonstrated remarkable resourcefulness to overcome challenges and achieve more with less.” Coleman continued: “It enables colleges to witness the strength of students in a huge swath of America who would otherwise be overlooked.”
The current backlash over the “adversity score” is overblown by conservatives understandably wary of affirmative action and social justice in academia. However, in this particular case, the Environmental Context Dashboard should make sense to conservatives who believe in limited government and localized options in education. After all, the mantra of conservative school choice advocates is that one size does not fit all. In the same way, one set way of scoring an SAT performance does not give every student a fair shake. The new environmental context information helps assess a diverse group of students, and is actually something conservatives can support.
Alexander James is a contributor to Red Alert Politics and a freelance journalist.
