SAT to note the '& # 39; disadvantages & # 39; students to try to level the playing field: NPR

The College Board is testing a tool that could give millions of students who take the SATs a year a score measuring their economic hardships and other disadvantages, the nonprofit said Thursday.

The environmental background dashboard contains information on students' high schools, including the rate of teens enjoying a free or reduced meal, their home life and their neighborhood, such as average family income , the level of education, housing stability and crime.

The scorecard "highlights students who have demonstrated remarkable ingenuity to overcome challenges and achieve more with less," said David Coleman, executive director of the College Board, which administers the SAT. "This allows colleges to see the strength of students in a vast band of America who would otherwise be overlooked."

The scores will not be revealed to SAT test takers, but schools will see the numbers when reviewing college applications.

Fifty colleges and universities, including Yale, Florida State University and Trinity University, participated in a pilot program last year to test what some observers call an "adversity score".

College Council members have announced plans to expand the program to more schools this year, and this tool will be made available free of charge.

The first results of the pilot project show that, when the socioeconomic profile of a candidate is considered in parallel with the SAT scores, more low-income students see the acceptance letters from colleges and universities in their mailboxes.

"No single test result should ever be examined without paying attention to this critical context," Coleman said in a statement.

The College Board said that after the pilot project, admissions officials said the tool was very useful for assessing students "boundaries" whose acceptance was a partisan call.

One school official told the College Board: "This allowed us to rely less on stereotypes, assumptions or incomplete data and more on concrete facts and statistics."

The news of the pilot project comes as college admissions officers worry that the US Supreme Court could take up a case that would dramatically change the way schools use discrimination. positive to make campuses more racially diverse.

The new dashboard does not look at the breed, but rather at the "resourcefulness" of a student. Nevertheless, some school officials have stated that this tool would lead to greater racial diversity on university campuses.

Florida State University officials told the Wall Street Journal that socio-economic data has helped raise the non-white registration rate from 37% to 42%.

Tiffany Jones, director of higher education policy at The Education Trust, said she was supportive of schools that relied less on standardized test scores. However, she doubts that new dashboard data is making university campuses more racially diverse.

"I do not think this action of the College Board of SAT alone will radically change the opportunities for low-income students and colored students," Jones told NPR. "You can not use a proxy for the race – it's probably the weakest part of the strategy."

The influence of race and class on admissions to universities has been put in the spotlight. The scandal of university admissions frauds has uncovered the extraordinary efforts of many wealthy parents to get their children accepted in some of the most selective universities in the country.

And a highly publicized lawsuit in which Asian-American candidates accuse Harvard University of discrimination by forcing it to disengage itself from a higher bar, continues to be played out in the courts. The case is still waiting for the judge's decision.

This is not the first time that a SAT pilot is trying to take into account socio-economic data.

Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center for Education and Workforce, helped supervise the SAT in the late 1990s during a similar pilot project. Known as the Strivers program, this program assigns students a note that includes economic and race factors.

Feedback from schools, parents and commentators was quick and the program was killed quickly.

"We got ourselves," said Carnevale. "There was literally a national outcry."

He said that since the new College Board tonnage does not take racial factors into account, it could prove to be more popular.

NPR Education Correspondent Cory Turner contributed to this report.