College Board to consider socio-economic factors in SAT results

The Environmental Context Dashboard considers factors like family income and structure, neighborhood crime, advanced placement courses and the average income of the school district.

News 12 Staff

May 16, 2019, 11:44 PM

Updated 1,800 days ago

Share:

The College Board, the organization that puts out the SAT, is making a change that is designed to help students in less affluent communities where there may be more crime.
The Environmental Context Dashboard considers factors like family income and structure, neighborhood crime, advanced placement courses and the average income of the school district. The program was tested at 50 colleges and universities, including Yale.
The College Board says it learned that when considering those factors, more students from disadvantaged backgrounds were more likely to be admitted to college.
Students and an SAT tutor News 12 spoke with disagreed with the change and raised equality concerns about it.
Students would be scored on a scale of 1 to 100. The College Board says a score of 50 would be average. Higher than 50 would mean the student has more disadvantages.
"The Environmental Context Dashboard shines a light on students who have demonstrated remarkable resourcefulness to overcome challenges and achieve more with less," says College Board CEO David Coleman.
Coleman says they are still in the testing phase but plan to make the program available to more colleges.


More from News 12