The SAT Adversity Score; a defense

The College Board has announced that it will compute an adversity score for students that take the SAT which is designed to show their relative socio-economic status.

If done right then this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Affirmative action is intrinsically evil because it is based solely on race; a Black person raised in wealth--like Obama--is given an advantage over a white person raised in poverty--say a recent Ukrainian immigrant living in Appalachia-- simply based on their race.

But most people would agree that someone who got say a 1400 on the SAT after attending the disastrously poor Chicago inner city schools is probably more intelligent/competent than someone who got a 1400 after attending a suburban or private school.

Hence if the adversity score really models that difference it might form the basis for more accurately assessing the real capabilities of students rather than simply giving bonus points for the color of the students skin.

While this is denounced as heresy by many conservatives if the objective is to correctly assess the capabilities of students so as to direct them to the right form of education or work after high school then assessing a student's environment makes sense.

Clearly a student who had SAT tutors is going to score higher than an identically intelligent student whose parents either didn't care or couldn't afford them.  Given the current outrage over rich parents buying their kid's way into elite schools it's unclear how we aren't concerned about rich parents effectively buying their kids in by providing them with a better education.

Note no one is advocating allowing dumb kids who are poor an advantage over smart kids who are rich; the intent is to ensure that smart kids who have been denied a decent education due to the incompetent schools in Democrat run cities aren't pigeonholed as being dumb.

In any case assuming the metric is race neutral, ie a poor white has the same adversity score as a poor Black, then it would be a vast improvement over the current institutionalized racism of the various affirmative action programs that plague our nation.