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College Board revises plans for a single ‘adversity score,’ designed to level the playing field for low-income students

The new measure is based on a ‘variety of indicators’ about applicants’ neighborhoods, family situations and high-school environments

The College Board said Tuesday it will revise plans for a “landscape” score aimed at accounting for test takers’ socioeconomic backgrounds.

The new measure is based on a variety of indicators about students’ neighborhoods, family situations and high-school environments. The company offered 50 higher-education institutions the chance to use the score last year as part of a test and has planned to expand the measure to 150 schools this fall.

“The resource will no longer display a single ‘score’ combining high school and neighborhood information,” the College Board said in a statement. That single score was referred to by some student advocates as an “adversity score.”

The College Board released new details on how “landscape” works, including a description of the data, methodology and appropriate-usage guidelines that participating colleges should follow. “Beginning next year, schools, students, and families will be able to see the same information about high schools and neighborhoods that colleges see,” it said.

The College Board’s revision comes as policy makers, higher-education leaders and others grow increasingly concerned that our college and university system is reinforcing inequalities instead of acting as the engine of economic mobility it’s often pitched as.

“We listened to thoughtful criticism and made Landscape better and more transparent,” said David Coleman, CEO of College Board. “Landscape provides admissions officers more consistent background information so they can fairly consider every student, no matter where they live and learn.”

The College Board noted:

• Landscape does not alter or replace any information that students provide in their applications. It provides “consistent information” about an applicant’s neighborhood and high school.

• It does not replace the individual information included in an application, such as GPA, personal essay, or high-school transcript.

• It does not alter a student’s SAT score in any way but does show how an applicant’s standardized-test score compares with those of others at the same high school.

Standardized tests have become a flashpoint in this conversation, with stakeholders worrying that the tests are more an indicator of race and class background than anything else.

Several colleges, including the University of Chicago, have decided to make these standardized tests optional as admissions criteria amid concerns that the tests provide an edge to privileged students.

Without seeing the score, students would not have had the chance to address what they might have felt were inaccuracies, said Anna Ivey, a college admissions consultant who formerly served as dean of admissions at the University of Chicago’s law school. For instance, they’re more likely to have access to test prep and other resources that can help them achieve higher scores. The College Board listened to those criticisms in its revision and took them on board.

But many student advocates agree with the College Board and acknowledge that there is a need for some additional system to help level the playing field between low- and higher-income students.

A lot of data on students are already available to colleges through other parts of an application, including a student’s financial-aid form. In some cases, that information can even tip the scale toward wealthier students who can afford to pay a college’s full price, said Faith Sandler, the executive director of the Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis, which works with low-income students applying to college.

With more applications coming from more places, getting consistent information about every high school and neighborhood is challenging, the College Board also said. Admissions officers participating in the landscape pilot estimate they lack high-school information for about 25% of all applications. Landscape presents consistent high-school and neighborhood information so admissions officers can fairly consider each student.

“UCLA and other [University of California] campuses have considered applicants’ context for many years. We are excited about the research and additional information [the College Board’s] landscape will provide us as we continue our efforts to better understand the full range of academic and personal achievements of all students applying for admission,” said Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, vice provost of enrollment management at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Others say more needs to be done by the schools, too: Even when colleges do admit low-income students in larger numbers, that doesn’t mean they’re able to offer financial aid and other resources. “The schools have a business model that doesn’t allow full equity,” Jeff Strohl, the director of research at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.

Schools still face pressure from rankings and other sources to boost the average standardized test score of their incoming classes, said David Hawkins, the executive director for educational content and policy at the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, which includes high-school counselors and college admissions officers as its members. “This is a great example of how complex the admissions endeavor is,” he added.

Lawsuits alleging racial profiling against Harvard and the University of North Carolina are winding their way through the court system. (Both institutions have denied those allegations.)

(This May 16 story was updated on Aug. 27.)

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