For Immediate Release
August 28, 2019
Livingston, New Jersey: The Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE) welcomes the College Board’s decision of rolling back its previous plans for the Environmental Context Dashboard, as a responsible acknowledgement of legitimate concerns from the Asian-American community. This new development demonstrates its willingness to accommodate stakeholder input from our community.
In an official letter to its CEO David Coleman in May, the AACE urges the College Board to halt the national expansion of the “Adversity Index” system and warns its dangers of turning into intrusive, utopian social engineering with the intent to normalize every American child’s future. Rather, we support transparent and targeted programs to lift up truly disadvantaged children in the college admissions process. The newly launched Landscape initiative by the College Board is a step in the right direction because the tool will only provide colleges with un-manipulated high-school and neighborhood data of applicants and also allow students to access their information starting in the 2020-2021 academic year. Nevertheless, we strongly oppose its universal application to normalize every American child’s future.
Upon hearing the development, AACE president, Mr. Yukong Zhao commented: “We are encouraged to see that the College Board has taken in well-grounded skepticisms from the Asian-American community and specifically accommodated the AACE’s request to stop the precipitous expansion of the adversity score index. Going forward, the AACE will continue to monitor the College Board’s new developments and programs to ensure that they strictly comply with the principles of equal education rights and fair college admissions. Though we support the reasonable use of socioeconomic factors to help students from poor families, we believe most college admissions should be merit-based. We urge the College Board and all American colleges and universities to refrain from using corrosive and irresponsible acts of universal social engineering to manipulate every applicant’s admissions prospects.”
MEDIA CONTACT:
Dr. Wenyuan Wu, telephone: (786) 393-8028, email: admin@asianamericanforeducation.org.
Ms. Swann Lee, telephone: (617) 906-6380, email: swanleeca@gmail.com.
About the AACE: www.asianamericanforeducation.org
The Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE) is a non-political, nonprofit, grassroots national organization, the proven leader in fighting for Asian-American children’s equal educational rights. On May 15, 2015, the founders of AACE united 64 Asian-American organizations and jointly filed a civil rights complaint with the Department of Education (DOE) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to request that they conduct investigations into Harvard University’s discriminatory admissions practices against Asian-American applicants. As the largest joint action taken by Asian-American communities over the last few decades, this complaint is now being investigated by the Justice Department. Over the years, we have advanced the cause of equal education rights for the Asian-American community.