Diversity is Neither the Problem nor the Solution (SAT’s New ‘Adversity Score’ )

the question I really want to ask is how
much different with the university system be if it were actually trying to help students instead of merely judging them instead of sifting them if higher education in both high school and university if it existed to actually try to create capacity in the students create the competence to do things in the students if that was their goal if that were their highest priority instead of judging them and assigning them a numbered grade working from the premise that the institution creates opportunities which is of course only one side of the coin the other side of the coin is that they constrain opportunities the news today being reported by The Wall Street Journal the New York Times just in the last few hours is that a new system will assign bonus points will assign higher scores will give higher grades to student applicants reflecting the poverty of the neighborhood they grew up in now all students are unequal and there's a huge question in education I've even been asked this in job interviews lately education for small children high school students University students there's a question of how the educator and how the institution will genuinely help students who begin at different levels of ability so that they can finish with sufficient if not equal competence this is most extreme and most easily demonstrated in language education I read the autobiography of a refugee from Myanmar who managed to go to university in England in the United Kingdom so obviously he had a descent at disadvantaged background he grew up in Myanmar and then he became a refugee he had to run away and live in the goal and ran away to a refugee camp this is his story and obviously also his ability in English was not equal to students in England who spoke English as their first language I think English was maybe his third language having spoken two different languages in Burma now called Myanmar how how would you help this student is the way to help this student giving him a higher score giving him a higher grade because of his disadvantageous background his childhood in poverty coming for refugee camp no not if the purpose of education is to actually create competence actually to give this kid the ability to do real things for the rest of his life in this case the guy was actually a major in English literature now in his autobiography this particular guy's name is Pascal cool way in his autobiography he notes that he would not have been able to complete his university education without a special intervention from a tutor this is tutor in a very formal sense really a supervisor I guess you'd say who wrote a letter saying look this kid is smart this kid is talented but obviously he does not have the level of ability in the English language to do this at the same speed as the other students so in his case what you want to do is lower the requirement for the number of courses being taken simultaneously right most universities have this you have to take eight courses simultaneously or maybe four courses per semester whatever it is there's some minimum number of course you have to take the sentences look for this kid if he's really gonna do all this reading in English he can't read as quickly as as the native speakers in English so in his case bring it down to a lower number of courses and give him extra hours of tutoring and assistance and then he's going to be able to do it he's gonna be able to succeed and he did that's what happened okay we see that's actually helping the student and it takes time and consideration and effort and resources on the part of the professor now let's say in theory we're talking about students from poor de 7 disadvantaged neighborhoods the United States who went to a bad high school and they have very very limited ability in chemistry maybe their their high school didn't teach chemistry at all or was just awful it's just an absolutely terrible high school level education in chemistry and then they want to go to university and they have to take a number of chemistry courses because they want to be a doctor they want to be a nurse they want to be a dentist oh let's even say they want to be a chemical engineer whatever that's the field that want to go into but their high school has prepared them very poorly does it help them to boost their score to give them a higher grade to give them a higher grade in the entry exam through this this new system they've unrolled the adversity score recognizing their hardship to let them in to the course say well given your poverty given the neighborhood we're going to pretend that you're competent in chemistry we're going to pretend you have a level of ability in chemistry high enough to succeed in this course when you don't well bad news now you've been led into the university you've been led into the chemistry course for the medical program with Chemical Engineer program whatever majors you've been you've been given access you've been quote-unquote given the opportunity but now you're gonna sink you're not going to swim or you're gonna have to work ten times as hard as all the other students because you're starting from up from a different mark you're not starting from the same starting line and you're racing to get to the same finish line and you're expected to compete and to be assigned a grade and for that grade to sit on your permanent record and determine your fate for the rest of your life so what does the system exist for is it just to judge you is it like judging your soul as if you're born with an innate ability to do chemistry and that's all they want to evaluate or is it actually here to help you stack here to build build your capacity one of the very simplest changes for these institutions that wouldn't require assigning more teachers or more more quality face-to-face time to professors and students which there's almost none of one of the easiest ways they could change this would be allowing students to take the same course twice okay if you went to a bad high school you don't really have the background in chemistry you need to do university level chemistry do the course twice take the whole course maybe you get a c-minus maybe get a deep whatever it is and then the university can say okay do it again all of us all of us I think I could say even if you're naturally brilliant and gifted in chemistry if you did the same chemistry course twice I think you would learn more you'd gain real more more more capacity more ability you'd probably memorize more at the more of the text you'd practice more you'd come out at a higher level ability than if you just did the course once but if you started at a real disadvantage where you were struggling to learn the vocabulary and the key words and struggling to do the equation struggling to do this stuff and then you've given a chance to do it again that could be a really positive thing that would change the whole Western life we've mentioned a few times on this channel that my girlfriend who didn't grow up coold on quote disadvantaged you know her father was a successful businessman you know they had a house and two cars you know they had a they reached the American suburban middle-class ideal lifestyle in the greater Detroit area in Michigan her whole life was really ruined for a decade because she had one bad experience with one chemistry course at one University and she knows if she had just taken the same chemistry course at another University the way they test the way they teach the number of students per class the actual format for the exams it would have been much better for her at the first seat on the street than has it happened the University she was she was enrolled in I could tell stories like that out of my own out of my own experience too but in this system you get one chance sink or swim and the type of disadvantages and advantages people have are not always going to show up on these forms right look whether or not you really grew up speaking English whether or not you grew up speaking the language being studied at University of Victoria I took the level 1 Japanese class there was a lot wrong with the Japanese classes Japanese language the class started being a certain length which I guess would have been three and a half months and then they cut it in half to make it an intensive course and then they cut it in half again to make it an intensive summer course so this was supposed to be like four months of learning in only a couple of weeks and this is with memorizing huge amount of vocabulary which in Japanese includes very complex brushstroke patterns okay and what do you know everyone who did well in that class either one was ethnically Japanese or two was ethnically Chinese even though Chinese is a very different language you have a huge advantage starting a level one Japanese course if you're already completely fluent in Chinese - Xu Guan becomes toe Shogun and toe Shogun is written absolutely identically brush stroke for brush stroke with - Xu Guan so oh it's not an even playing field and I talked about this the professor's helped this with several professors said look so I think I was like 36 years old the time it's like look I'm older than these other students I've studied like eight languages or something I'm an incredibly disciplined student of languages with a lot of experience I'm waking up at 6 a.m. and studying for hours before I come to class and I can't do this I can't succeed and remember once that professor to me oh but look at Amy it needs to be great I said Amy's mother is Japanese she literally grew up singing karaoke in Japanese yes she's doing great the push is someone who starts with zero ability in Japanese which is what the course was listed for can't can't succeed in this course here's thing at the end of the course I requested to take the same course again look I don't know this material only had like 3 weeks to learn this material instead of like three and a half months so I need the opportunity to take this course again and I said if I can't take it again like I if I can't actually change my grade do the course gonna do better then let me audit the course let me take the course without getting a grade so it's because how can I continue how come my career when I haven't learned what's in the level one Japanese course this completely sets me up to fail in the level two Japanese course and the rest of my life the rest of my career and I was told absolutely not because the system doesn't exist to help people it doesn't exist actually build capacity in the students and most real capacity can be objectively verified like can you speak Japanese or not do you know this material or not can you do this equation involving chemistry or not you know if you if you raise my grade because of my verse that course they could have done that they could have said okay everyone who's fluent in Chinese is your first language we're gonna lower your grade by 10% everyone who grew up if your mom was Japanese we're gonna lower your grade by 20% and you people you know people who actually speak English and came this close with no prior ability in Japanese we're gonna raise your grade by somebody you could do that you could do that that would be like this new ACC sorry SAT adversity score system right but that won't change the inequality in your actual capacity your actual ability to speak English read and understand Japanese do chemical engineering whatever it is that you're supposed to be actually teaching so I know it doesn't sound terribly theoretically sophisticated it's not but there's actually a paradigm shift that would transform the whole system if it's focus and purpose we're creating ability in the students and we're not quote-unquote creating opportunity and at the same time constraining opportunity by the assignation of grades