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Maria Reyes

English III Honors, Block 5

Storer

November 26, 2019

Not an Appropriate Solution

Solutions to big problems should be carefully thought out to provide an adequate

resolution to the dilemma at hand. College Board introduced the adversity score, a score meant

to measure the amount of adversity the student faces by looking at several external

socioeconomic factors, to provide a solution to the score gaps between the upper and lower

classes, but it has done nothing to bridge that gap. The adversity score should not be

implemented as it does not give enough information about a student to accurately measure

adversity, repeats information already available to colleges, and is not completely transparent.

Though the adversity score is meant to appropriately measure the barriers to a student’s

education, it does not include all the factors required to assess a student’s situation accurately.

According to Forbes, “Measuring neighborhood adversity is not the same as assessing an

individual student’s resilience or grit. There’s not a straight line from socioeconomic background

to SAT performance; assigning an adversity number suggests an influence that may not be

operating for individual students” (Nietzel). The factors College Board is using to measure

adversity do not appropriately reflect the obstacles a student might have to overcome. The fact

that the score is simply measuring the external factors that could be impacting a student, rather

than the varied forces that are actually acting upon that student, may end up giving the College

Board an incorrect idea of the student’s circumstances. Bob Schaeffer reiterates that external

circumstances don’t always tell the whole story: “A kid who grows up in an affluent
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neighborhood may still have overcome very serious adversity. And similarly, a kid in a poor area

may have had lots of opportunities … So, you’re trying to apply data derived from averages to

individuals, human beings, which can lead to erroneous decision-making” (Burke). Without

knowing the students, it is impossible for anyone to create accurate numerical representations of

the educational barriers they face. A clear example of the hidden struggles of a student in an

affluent neighborhood would be test anxiety. The American Test Anxieties Association (ATAA)

share stats that a whooping 16-20% of students suffer from high test anxiety (ATAA). This is

one of the many factors that College Board does not consider when calculating their adversity

score. However, it is a factor that can hinder a student’s performance during tests, which makes

students with high test anxiety perform around a whole letter grade below people with low test

anxiety (Text Anxiety). Without looking into internal factors, the adversity score is simply not

adequate to make such an impactful determination in its current state. In addition, there is

absolutely nothing to be learned from the adversity score that cannot already be found elsewhere.

Even with the variety of factors taken into account by the adversity score, there is no

novel information included in the score, rendering it unnecessary and redundant. According to

Laura Staffaroni one of the released factors that is taken into account is the median income of the

neighborhood the student comes from (Staffaroni). However, this same data is available to the

colleges through the US Census. As stated by the Unites Sates Census Bureau, “Income and

poverty” is one of the categories that is accounted for in the census: it is defined as “money wage

or salary income is the total income people receive for work performed as an employee during

the income year. This category includes wages, salary, armed forces pay, commissions, tips,

piece-rate payments, and cash bonuses earned, before deductions are made for items such as

taxes, bonds, pensions, and union dues” (US Census). Though one of the factors of the adversity
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score can be accessed through public records, College Board still wants to include it into the

report. One of the biggest factors that College Board advertised to be calculated into the

adversity score is already available to the public through the census, all the data based of this

group of statistics would be redundant since the universities can simply go through the census’

records and obtain it through there. It is also unnecessary since the colleges are not forced to take

it into consideration. Since the universities are not forced to look at the adversity score, giving it

to them is just an extra number they might not even look at. As stated by Staffaroni, “Just

because the College Board provides this data to colleges doesn't mean that admissions officers

have to take it into account” (Staffaroni). This renders the score completely unnecessary because

the universities can ignore it and not even glance at it. The addition of the score would just cause

more stress and anxiety among the test takers. Including it into the mix of stressors when the

information is already open to the colleges, and when universities are not required to take the

score into consideration, would be completely needless. Finally, the adversity score simply does

not tell the whole story – something made glaringly obvious by its lack of transparency.

The College Board has yet to inform the public on the type of raw data used to determine

the student’s adversity score, calling its integrity and transparency into question. As Forbes

points out, “the College Board has not revealed the factors or their weights in calculating

adversity scores” (Nietzel). Concerned citizens have no way of knowing what exactly constitutes

“adversity” under the College Board’s definition, because they will not release that information.

Thus, its trustworthiness and validity are questionable, since no one can know what it even

means without the context of the factors that determine a student’s adversity score. Marten

Roorda agrees: “we can’t review the validity and the fairness of the score. And even if that

changes, there is also an issue with the reliability of the measure, since many of the 15 variables
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come from an unchecked source—for example, when they are self-reported by the student”

(Jaschik). The data included into the adversity score is not fact-checked making the score

unreliable since students have the opportunity to fill out some factors and give themselves a

better adversity score. People can say students won’t lie on their forms, but the reliance College

Board has on the honesty of the students can easily backfire since most students would want to

make themselves look better in order to gain admission into more schools. There is no way to

know what one’s own adversity score would be since most of the factors used to calculate it are

not shared with the public. Thus, an adversity score could easily be misconstrued or

miscalculated, and since some factors will not be fact-checked, can furthermore affect the

transparency as the source is biased.

The College Board’s adversity score is not enough to solve the problem that it aims to fix

and therefore should not be implemented. Although people believe that the adversity score

introduced is an adequate solution for the score gaps between social classes, the score is not a

proper solution as it does not measure adversity properly, only offers information that is already

readily available to colleges and is not transparent. A better way to measure adversity would be

to couple the factors already taken into consideration with a psychological evaluation of the

individual student, because everyone has internal struggles that cannot be reflected through the

external factors that the adversity score uses to measure adversity.

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Works Cited

Burke, Michael. “College Board Revises Plans for Single ‘Adversity Score’ as Tool in

Admissions.” EdSource, EdSource, 27 Aug. 2019, https://edsource.org/2019/college-board-

backtracks-on-single-adversity-score-in-admissions-tool/616785.

Jaschik, Scott. “ACT Comes Out Against Adversity Index.” Inside Higher Ed,

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/05/21/act-comes-out-against-adversity-index.

Nietzel, Michael T. “Four Reasons The College Board's New Adversity Score Is A Bad

Idea.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 17 May 2019,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2019/05/16/four-reasons-why-the-college-boards-

new-adversity-score-is-a-bad-idea/#613bf8cf6c0e.

Staffaroni, Laura. “What Is the SAT Adversity Score? What Does It Mean for You?”

What Is the SAT Adversity Score? What Does It Mean for You?, https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-

adversity-score.

“Text Anxiety.” American Test Anxieties Association, http://amtaa.org/.

US Census Bureau. “Subject Definitions.” The United States Census Bureau, 7 Aug.

2019, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/technical-documentation/subject-

definitions.html.