City Heights Students Are Mixed On New SAT ‘Adversity Scores’

Speaker 1: 00:00 Many colleges and universities will get more than just your typical sat score to determine next year's incoming freshman class. KPBS reporter Prius Sridhar explains that a new score is supposed to give schools more context about a student's background. It's 6:00 PM on a school night in city heights, but for many of the students here, the learning is just beginning. They're part of a program called reality changers. The targets, low income students who might be the first in their families to attend college. Angel Rios is a junior at Lincoln high school. Speaker 2: 00:35 That's my mother. Never really made it to college or past the high school level of education. She was never really, she never really pushed me to achieve or seek higher education. Speaker 1: 00:45 Once a week, 175 eighth to 11th graders meet to get standardized test prep tutoring and classes that help them with admissions, essays and financial aid applications. Many of the students, like Rio say reality changers has been essential to their journey to college. Speaker 2: 01:02 I didn't even know when to say no. I didn't know when the test was, but um, they helped me, you know, gain the information, the knowledge that I needed. Speaker 1: 01:10 The students say because of their backgrounds figuring out how to navigate. The college admissions process has been especially challenging. Now the college board is trying to do something about that this fall. They'll provide an applicant's environmental contexts dashboard in addition to their sat score. The dashboard includes a zero to 100 score based on data from a student's school and neighborhood like median family income, crime levels and percentage of students eligible for free and reduced cost. Lunches. Score is closer to a hundred indicate a student may have faced more hardship because of their environment. Doug, we'd Osi, he grew up in city heights but now attends La Jolla high school through the school choice program. She thinks it's a good idea for schools to consider where she came from. Speaker 3: 01:59 Being here and living in city heights and the expectations from people in Malaya are totally different. When you go to Loyola high school, everybody has a very high sat act scores because they get like they have the money in order for them to have sat prep, Speaker 1: 02:16 but not all the students at this afterschool program agree. Brittany Hernandez is a junior at Hoover high school despite having one of the top three gps in the reality changers program and winning a scholarship to study in Hawaii this summer. She still worries that she won't be able to keep up if she's accepted to a selective for your college. Studies show that children of college educated parents are much more likely to pursue and finish their degrees than students whose parents didn't attend college. Even now, how Speaker 3: 02:48 I got to high school and everybody says although they have easy classes, you have to pass, um, Hoover or you're kind of like the, and I'm scared leg. If I go to like Patrick Henry or Jolla, I might not Speaker 4: 03:00 perform as well Speaker 1: 03:01 in a statement to KPBS. David Coleman from the College Board says the new scoring quote shines a light on students who have demonstrated remarkable resourcefulness to overcome challenges and achieve more with less. Jordan Harrison is senior director of programs at reality changers. He says, well, including a score like this is a step in the right direction. He worries. It might be manipulated. Speaker 4: 03:25 I think I'm also weary of uh, how will, how will we not turn us into like an oppression Olympics, where now how does this adversity score turn into, well, how do I get my house in the neck? Another area code, Speaker 1: 03:35 but local schools like San Diego State University want as much information as they can get on applicants. Sandra, Tamara's Valdez is the senior director of enrollment services there. Speaker 5: 03:46 There's disparities when it comes to performance of the test scores and so this allows us to look at other factors that we consider in the admission process versus just that one sat score Speaker 1: 03:57 back at reality changers. Students are working to become the first generation of college students in their families. Last weekend, 350 students graduated from reality changers and 100% of them are going to college. 11th grader Angel Rio says he's proud to join those ranks next year. Speaker 4: 04:16 It kind of changes the standard of, you know, us just being another statistic because it shows that we can do more than what we are given. Speaker 1: 04:24 The college board will roll out the new scores at 150 colleges and universities this fall. Speaker 4: 04:30 Joining me is KPBS reporter, Prius, Urethra and prio. Welcome. Thank you. What prompted the college board to add this new environmental context index in its score? It, Speaker 1: 04:41 yeah, so they've actually been testing it out for the past few years. They started with a pool of five schools ranging in size, uh, the University of Texas at Austin, Yale, Trinity, where some of the first schools in that first batch. Then last year they moved on to 50 schools and then this fall it's going to be 150 schools. Now they're saying that, you know, they're basically doing this because they've always been focused on finding unseen talent. But a lot of people are speculating that this is in response to critics saying that standardized testing is obsolete, that it really isn't serving its primary function, which was sort of to level the playing field for students who are applying to college. Essentially. The reason that we have standardized tests in the first place is because colleges and universities were getting gps from students across the country, but they realized that a 4.0 from one student say in Florida might not be the same as a 4.0 from another student at a different high school in California. Speaker 1: 05:37 So the sats were supposed to provide a level playing field. It was a national test that everybody had to take. But what critics are saying now is that it's turned into, um, a disadvantage for students who come from poorer families because students who, whose parents might have the financial means are actually paying for them to get expensive test prep and they're actually scoring better on the sats. And now lots of colleges and universities across the country are deciding not to require it the sats anymore for admission. So a lot of critics are speculating that this perhaps is in response to all of that criticism, Speaker 4: 06:12 well kind of weight our colleges legally allowed to give factors like economic background and environment. Speaker 1: 06:18 Right? So this goes back to the whole affirmative action debate that we've been hearing for decades. And you know, back in the 70s, um, many universities across the country set quotas and essentially the definition of affirmative action is government mandated or institution mandated quotas. Let's say we're going to take 20% African American students into our incoming freshman class. And what a lot of people who were against that idea. We're saying that, listen, you know, you're placing so much of an emphasis on one characteristic which is race. So therefore a, this is sort of an alternative to that. This isn't saying it's just about race. It's looking at 15 different factors that are then determining this score. Speaker 4: 07:00 Who determines the number rankings given to schools and neighborhoods in this index? Speaker 1: 07:05 Right? So it actually is looking at a variety of things. Some of the things that they're looking at, our crime rates, poverty rates, the percentage of students at a certain high school that are taking AP courses, the average sat score from the student's high school. Now the college board isn't telling us exactly how they're calculating that number. Um, it's a zero to 100 number and the closer that you get to 100 the more disadvantaged background you supposedly come from. But they are using the data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the US census. So they're saying that this is all based in some sort of science, but exactly how that number is determined. We don't really know. Speaker 4: 07:45 You know, one of the students who spoke with, although she was doing great in the college prep course, was worried about her reformance in a university setting. And I'm wondering is this kind of insecurity is something that plagues kids who are the first in their family to go to college? Speaker 1: 08:00 Right. So a lot of the kids in reality, reality changers are very aware of the statistics and the studies that have been done. And there have been several studies that show that students have college educated parents are number one more likely to go to college and number two more likely to finish college. And so one theme I heard throughout my evening with these young men and women is that they didn't want to be a statistic and that's exactly why they've joined this program. Reality Changers, which is really focusing on giving them the tools so that they first get into college but then also succeed once they're there. Speaker 4: 08:34 And are they doing anything the reality changers to address that kind of insecurity that we heard from that one girl? Speaker 1: 08:40 Yeah. So they have an alumni network and they kind of pair kids with mentors who have gone through the program and then gone to college and successfully completed college. Because the idea behind that is that those kids are also coming from similar types of backgrounds. So they might be able to coach those students through their college years, perhaps better than someone who didn't have the same sort of challenges and obstacles. They also place a big emphasis on family because a lot of these kids, as you heard in the story, we're saying that, you know, my parents have the best intentions for me, but they simply don't understand how to navigate this admissions process. So reality changers also makes a point to meet with the families on a monthly basis so that the parents have a better idea of the steps that the kids need to take to get to college. Speaker 4: 09:22 No, we've all heard about the college admissions scandal and the amount of cheating and money that can go into the process. Is it fair to assume as one of the people in your report said that this new index will probably be manipulated to Speaker 1: 09:37 right. And I mean that seems so sort of discouraging to think about, but I think when you go back and think about the primary purpose of the sats was to level the playing field. But then of course, you know, parents want the best for their kids and so they're going to find ways that their kids can achieve higher on that test. And I think people worry that just adding this extra number, uh, into the equation isn't necessarily going to solve the bigger problem. The bigger problem is perhaps policy changes that are more systemic and address the disparities of different public schools across the United States. So yeah, this a man that I spoke to from reality changers was saying that, you know, he doesn't want to see people let me move to a zip code where there is a higher poverty rate so that then my child will get a higher score on the environmental context dashboards. So obviously it's too soon to say if those kinds of things are going to happen, but it's definitely something that's on the radar for folks who really invest their time in, in this kind of work. Speaker 4: 10:32 I've been speaking with KPBS reporter [inaudible] and thank you so much. Thank you. Speaker 6: 10:37 Okay.