The score was part of a larger rating system called the Environmental Context Dashboard that was provided to admissions officers along with a student’s SAT scores. We have acknowledged that we have perhaps overstepped.” That’s admitting that the College Board should keep its focus on scoring achievement. “So in that sense, we’ve adopted a humbler position. “I think it is a retreat from the notion that a single score is better,” Mr. He said that the company had always believed that students should be judged by more than a number, whether a test score or a disadvantage score, and that admissions officers should also consider context like personal essays, teacher recommendations and family background. The company had plans to roll it out more widely next year.ĭavid Coleman, chief executive of the College Board, said on Tuesday that the board had heard the criticism and was bowing to it. The tool was officially introduced this year and is being used by about 100 to 150 colleges and universities this fall, the College Board said. Many of them said it falsely suggested that a student’s achievements and challenges could be quantified as the math and verbal scores on the SAT are. The change was made after a storm of criticism from parents and educators followed the announcement of the plan last spring. The school and neighborhood scores will still be provided to admissions officers, along with other socioeconomic information. The adversity score was made up of the average of two ratings between 1 and 100 - one for the student’s school environment and the other for the student’s neighborhood environment - that indicate the obstacles a student might have overcome, like crime and poverty. The College Board, the company that administers the SAT exam, said on Tuesday that it would withdraw its much-debated plan to include a so-called adversity score on student test results, saying it had erred in distilling the challenges faced by college applicants to a single number.