SAT drops ‘adversity score’

The College Board on Tuesday scrapped plans to score the socioeconomic status of students who take the SAT. The company, which administers the SAT, the PSAT, and Advanced Placement tests, faced criticism from educators and parents after announcing plans in May to implement an “adversity score” that would factor in information about the average educational attainment and crime levels in the neighborhoods where students lived.

What was wrong with the “adversity score”? The College Board wanted to put test results in context, but critics called the score dehumanizing and a Trojan horse for race-based admissions. Instead, the board will launch a tool it calls “Landscape” to capture a student’s social and economic background but not as a single numeric score. College Board CEO David Coleman said the test should score “achievement, not adversity.”

Dig deeper: Read Kyle Ziemnick’s report in Schooled on some of the concerns with the original plan.