"Indeed, the announcement by the College Board last month that it was discontinuing Landscape, a tool that provided admissions officers with data about a student's high school and neighborhood- including median family income, local college-going rates and school resources-was so alarming because it marks a pivot in selective college admissions away from understanding students' achievements in the context of their backgrounds and toward judging everyone by standardized metrics like GPA and test scores."
"With such an approach, standardized measures are assumed to be neutral and free from the messy entanglements of social inequality. By contrast, contextual information-like whether a student had access to advanced coursework, stable housing or enrichment programs-is increasingly seen as subjective, political and even discriminatory. But the truth is just the opposite. Reducing the consideration of context in holistic admissions doesn't make the process more fair-it just makes it blind to the realities of inequality."
The administration's proposed higher-education compact would mandate standardized testing and require admissions decisions be based on objective criteria published online. The College Board discontinued Landscape, which supplied admissions officers with high-school and neighborhood information such as median family income, local college-going rates, and school resources. Shifting emphasis away from contextual data moves evaluations toward GPA and test scores, which appear neutral but fail to account for unequal access to advanced coursework, stable housing, and enrichment. Reducing context obscures inequality, allows wealth to masquerade as merit, and undermines fair access to higher education; contextual data reveals obstacles and potential.
Read at Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs
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