Recent Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) criminal charges involving standardized testing have renewed public scrutiny over the tests’ role in reproducing inequities and wealth-based privileges. ...Although some continue to call for the eradication of standardized testing, this article presents a different perspective with a threefold purpose. First it provides a critical review of the existing literature on standardized testing including the newest development: geographical bias in testing or the systemic and systematic ways in which place-based resources influence test-takers’ performance. Second, it discusses the goals and consequences of the College Board’s recently unveiled “adversity score,” designed as a tool to “boost admission prospects” of students facing additional challenges in their neighborhoods and schools. Finally, it offers a conceptual and methodological framework and policy insights to shift the role of these tests as reproducers of inequalities to enhancers of equity and opportunity into what is termed true college access: enrollment with realistic prospects of success.
Hong Kong’s public housing estates are transforming into areas of growing poverty, with more divorced households. They are increasingly weak neighborhoods for motivating children to higher ...aspirations. There are doubts about the wisdom of continuing the development of more public rental housing units to solve our shortage of housing units. A far better solution is to build subsidized homes for ownership so that families have a stake to stay together and work for a better future. By keeping families together, more children will be prevented from falling into a state of disadvantage that will be detrimental to their future upward social mobility. Why foster and concentrate the poor and the divorced in publicly subsidized ghettos? Poor children deserve a better deal. A city of homeowners is also less politically divided.
