Facing Criticism, College Board Backs Away From ‘Adversity Score’

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The College Board is walking back the single, overarching “adversity score” that it had planned to attach to students’ SAT scores after it drew broad criticism.

The proposed score was part of an Environmental Context Dashboard, a program the organization had tested at 50 colleges over the last year in an effort to help admissions officers gain broader context about each applicant’s socioeconomic background when evaluating SAT scores. The adversity score did not factor in race.

Rather, it grouped together data from the Census Bureau and public records about crime rates, median income, and parents’ education levels in each student’s environment. Those measures, combined with such other data as the academic rigor of a high school or receiving free or reduced-price lunches, were used to create a student’s overall adversity score.

In the new program, renamed Landscape, there’s no overall adversity score, but all the other contextualizing data points remain the same. The College Board is also offering new guidelines about how to use the program and details about its methodology.

In a news release announcing the changes, David Coleman, the College Board’s chief executive, said on Tuesday that they would make Landscape “better and more transparent.”

“Landscape provides admissions officers more consistent background information,” Coleman said, “so they can fairly consider every student, no matter where they live and learn.”

While some admissions officers involved in the pilot program said it had helped them diversify their enrollment, many others weren’t convinced of the program’s effectiveness. Some said the adversity score could oversimplify students’ experiences and cause them to face more bias.

Even with the removal of the overall adversity score, some remained skeptical. Robert A. Schaeffer, public-education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest), endorsed the College Board’s decision to listen to the critiques of what he called a “simplistic score” but said it still fell short.

The revised program, he said, doesn’t do enough to help disadvantaged students make it into college. In order to diversify a student body, Schaeffer said, admissions offices should aggressively recruit in underserved areas and make more scholarship money available to applicants who need it most.

The shift in the Landscape program “doesn’t eliminate any hurdles,” Schaeffer said. “In reality, it just provides a bit more information to put the hurdles in context.”

Grace Elletson is an editorial intern at The Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter @graceelletson, or email her at grace.elletson@chronicle.com.