College Board to Give Students ‘Adversity Score’ Based on Social and Economic Factors

By Anya Kamenetz | 16 May 2019

NPR — The College Board has begun using what it calls an Environmental Context Dashboard to provide colleges with more information about the social and economic background of students who take the SAT.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

The College Board is adding an extra score to the SAT, but this one has nothing to do with vocabulary or math. It’s meant to quantify a college applicant’s social and economic background. Anya Kamenetz from our Education team has been following this story. She joins us now. And Anya, tell us what this new score is, exactly.

ANYA KAMENETZ, BYLINE: Hi, Audie. Yeah. They’re calling it the environmental context dashboard, and it puts together factors like household income in a student’s neighborhood, whether they live in a rural area or a city or even the local crime rate. And they put it all together into a score from zero to 100, with 100 being the most disadvantaged.

CORNISH: Why this approach? Why now? […]