One of the Major Reasons for Standardized Testing In Texas: Keeping out Black Students

[Batou667]

snibbedy snab

OK, I get it. It's a self-reinforcing cycle that means deprived areas get more deprived as those with the means to chase better opportunities move out to do so.

The part that I'm struggling to swallow is exactly how standardised testing was rigged to be culturally biased in favour of caucasians? I can see how changing the rules of the game in the 50s threw a curveball that would have initially been difficult to adapt to, hence fulfilling the short term goal of racist administrators, but this was 70 years ago; plenty of time for everybody to be on the same page. And, if SATs really do "favour whites", then why do Asian and Jewish applicants score so high?

 

[Batou667]

The people receiving short-cuts and handicaps are, broadly, those who are white and wealthy. Individuals who are, again broadly, non-white and not wealthy are systematically discriminated against to ensure they can't reach the same level as those receiving extra benefits.

Though it's rather obvious which group of people you fall into based on your ignorance and defense of the status-quo.

In what, specific way are nonwhite students discriminated against by college admissions? The fact that the college admissions process doesn't seek to eliminate any and all systemic disadvantage an applicant may have incurred in their life thus far? Like I said, that's not their job - or at least, not the purpose of standardised testing. You'll be encouraged to know that various forms of affirmative action, grants, loans, funds and scholarships are available exclusively to minority applicants - so there's your restorative justice, if that's your thing. The testing process? Nobody has yet been able to explain why that is biased against nonwhite applicants.

I'm white and not particularly wealthy, but never mind my presumed biases or yours for that matter. If we stick to the facts then identity politics will be irrelevant.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

IDK if it?s still generally accepted theory about the origins of human species being rooted in Africa, but my question would be, what caused some to disperse while others stayed? Did it eventually become too crowded or did some naturally seek out other habitats? Why did the people venturing north eventually end up building profoundly more advanced civilizations, while people closer to the equator remained more tribal?

A wild guess would be the common denominator is astronomical, literally. Various levels of sun exposure and radiation affects the brain chemistry differently, and naturally plays a vital part in modes of survival. But again, the why involving the vast parameters of human settlement is what?s largely missing AFAIK. It complicates the issue of true unity and equality if we are geologically predisposed to being so different.

Human beings are naturally curious and expansive, hence why we settled all over the globe, both hunting/gathering societies and budding agricultural societies benefit from claiming new territories that they do not have to trade with any neighbors.
As for the scope of their civilization, I believe that has everything to do with the soil.

Europe has vast swaths of fertile ground that could reliably produce crops every year, a lot of African soil is either too dry or unreliable to fully rely on for sustenance, greatly limiting their capacity to support larger populations.
Even so, civilization should not be measured by monuments or metropli, specialized professions like surgery were also present to an impressive extent, as well as inoculation being a practice we learned from them that eventually lead to the modern vaccination.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

snibbedy snab

OK, I get it. It's a self-reinforcing cycle that means deprived areas get more deprived as those with the means to chase better opportunities move out to do so.

The part that I'm struggling to swallow is exactly how standardised testing was rigged to be culturally biased in favour of caucasians? I can see how changing the rules of the game in the 50s threw a curveball that would have initially been difficult to adapt to, hence fulfilling the short term goal of racist administrators, but this was 70 years ago; plenty of time for everybody to be on the same page. And, if SATs really do "favour whites", then why do Asian and Jewish applicants score so high?

Oh, that's the easy part.

Actually, it's not that easy. Where to begin?

We can start with the practice of Redlining [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/redlining.asp]. For those unaware, it's the process of systematically denying mortgages to minorities because by virtue of being a minority, they are considered a higher and unwanted risk, regardless of actual personal solvency. The Federal Housing Administration [https://www.chicagobusiness.com/opinion/black-poverty-rooted-real-estate-exploitation] actually wouldn't even allow a mortgage loan to go through for anyone if just one black family was present in the area. So no blacks would be allowed to be in better areas, even if they had the jobs and money to be there.

But blacks needed to still live, as they had families and dreams. So they had to look for other means. Enter Contract For Deeds, which gave all the power to the the title holder... which would not be these black families. In short, they would be paying down money for a mortgage, but not build any equity, and would be subject to eviction for just the tiniest indiscretions. And there would always be another family to take their place when they did.

To put that into perspective for people who think "Oh my God, he's talking about something that supposedly ended in the 1960's, that's AGES ago", I need you to realize this: My dad was born in 1943. My Mother in 1946. By the time they should have been looking for a house, they could have been subjected to Redlining. It's by the grace of God that my dad went into the Army and then was able to use that to go to school for Architecture at just the right moment where people would have accepted a Black Architect in Manhattan.

Also, Redlining is still alive and well today [https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/09/redlining-is-alive-and-welland-evolving/407497/].

But going back on topic. If Contract for Deeds that blacks were forced into simply needed them to continue to play on time, it should be just as easy as keeping a job, right? That's simple. Well, yes and no. For most people, yes. But few jobs were socially acceptable to see Blacks in. One of those jobs were factory jobs. And we know how well that market is doing now [https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/entry/why-black-manufacturing-workers-disproportionally-felt-the-pain-of-factory]. When blacks came up in droves to get work in a factory, no one could ever foresee advancements in Logistics and overall disputes between Employers and unions ever affecting the majority of factories in the United States.

And yet, they did. Blacks were disproportionately affected by the lost of these jobs because these factory jobs were the only work they could get. So they stayed unemployed longer than White Counterparts. With money tight and family still needing to eat, they couldn't leave these areas because they simply couldn't afford to go. But business owners around the area could. The area would erode around these families, limiting their abilities to get jobs, good food to eat, and even education.

Don't worry, I won't go into it here, we just talked about it.

So, I went and looked up the "15 worst cities for black Americans [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/11/16/racial-disparity-cities-worst-metro-areas-black-americans/38460961/]". Do you know what most of them have in common? Besides unreal wealth gaps, unspoken yet accepted segregation, and the like? The vast majority of these cities saw their industrial backbone close, or are just closing the last of their factories now. Trenton [https://www.nj.com/mercer/2014/04/from_iron_to_steel_to_pottery_trenton_once_flexed_industrial_might_for_world_to_take.html], Minnesota [https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/del-monte-closing-sleepy-eye-plant-with-all-workers-losing-jobs] (truth be told, there was a lot happening in Minnesota that I couldn't pick just one), Chicago, Elmira [https://www.weny.com/story/40022097/report-despite-us-economic-boom-elmira-one-of-two-cities-still-in-recession], Rochester [https://rbj.net/2017/09/13/kodaks-decades-of-decline/]... it's exceedingly hard to transfer vocational specialized skills to another form of employment. And sadly, that is what the majority of factory jobs are.

Well, so far we have that blacks (as recently as most of our parents) weren't allowed to live anywhere but dangerous financial traps that bit quite a few families who were just trying to make ends meet, had the jobs that most Americans depended on taken away without afforded the opportunities to get more employment (we should also mention how hard it is to even get called back if your name sounds too 'black' [https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/9/18/16307782/study-racism-jobs]), horrendously limited educational mobility due to mis-allocation of funds, and unspoken but yet still accepted segregation.

And the topper - even though all these things are public record and still being done at some form today - is that most other Americans look at blacks disapprovingly. While ignoring these facts and/or simply not knowing them, they turn around and then blame blacks for where they are in life. That's a fun thing to deal with.

In a nutshell: Asians and Jews don't deal with this stuff. Sure, they definitely feel discrimination, but they have families, communities with financial power (both domestic and foreign) that can band together to help out. And, if they want to, they can move back to their country or a suitable country. It happens more than you think [https://www.ozy.com/opinion/the-rise-of-the-american-asian-repat/92322].

Blacks do not. And it's still acceptable to screw over Blacks. Give them less resources, hinder their movement out of areas, make their education laughable, don't hire them as much as you would other people... and then blame them for everything.

Because of disadvantages being heaped on Blacks that limits their overall potential (education notwithstanding), it's not so much that Standardized Testing was rigged to culturally benefit whites. It's culturally rigged to disadvantage poor Americans. It just so happens that a disproportionate amount of Blacks are poor due to outward social norms that families to this day are still feeling the brunt of.

And given how states somehow all seem to screw over Black education via funding and resources almost universally, basing Standardized testing on a level that poor schools (which most predominantly minority schools are) can not prepare their students for is a culturally rigged slight.

Sure, the practice of Standardized Testing had its traditions based partly in keeping blacks out, but overtime it did change. There will always be bigoted people in charge, but there is something to be said about exclusivity. If an employer hears you came from a prodigious school, your resume will be looked over more keenly. That had the benefit of a.) many people wanting to get into your school and b.) alumni being able to give generously to said school as they get better jobs with more pay. While the initial intention was to keep out blacks or other minorities... it just became good business to be exclusive.

So, while the implicit desire to keep minorities out of higher education may not be as prevalent as it once was, the societal ramifications are still felt along racial lines today, as racial lines still have a giant factor in how you and your family are doing socio-economically. If you're black, you're more likely to be in those poor neighborhoods with those poor schools and are still afforded less chances of economic mobility than other races.

Hey, sidebar... what the hell is a snab?

 

[tstorm823]

OK, I get it. It's a self-reinforcing cycle that means deprived areas get more deprived as those with the means to chase better opportunities move out to do so.

The part that I'm struggling to swallow is exactly how standardised testing was rigged to be culturally biased in favour of caucasians? I can see how changing the rules of the game in the 50s threw a curveball that would have initially been difficult to adapt to, hence fulfilling the short term goal of racist administrators, but this was 70 years ago; plenty of time for everybody to be on the same page. And, if SATs really do "favour whites", then why do Asian and Jewish applicants score so high?

I think you need to take a broader look at things. I understand the instinct to go "that's not racist", and superficially I'm inclined to agree that standardized tests aren't biased for white people's benefit, but ask the question instead, are standardized tests good?

The US education system is messed up in a lot of ways, but one of the big ones is that instead of offering education, they're offering credentialism. Some people go to college to learn, but even among those, basically everyone goes with the promise that they'll leave with the credentials to pay for they're debt in the future. Colleges sell children the promise that they'll be respected by employers and/or financiers in the future. And they do it in the laziest way possible, they try and weed out people who under-perform to begin with to protect the reputation they're selling students. And the first step in the weed-out process is cutting out people with low standardized test scores. And then if the goal of primary and secondary schools is to prepare students enough to pursue their own ambitions in the future, they have to be able to help kids get accepted to college, and now every high school is dedicating its efforts toward standardized test scores because the primary purpose of the education system has become supporting this lazy system of gatekeeping.

Basically that whole rant was meant to get to the point that while racial bias might not be built into standardized testing, the appearance of racial disparity is likely a symptom of real problems. If instead of educating kids, the education system is just singling out the students whose circumstances already have them on the path to success, it's a consequence that racial inequality gets passed through. That's what thes UT people in the 50s identified, that they didn't have to design a racist system to exclude black applicants, they just needed one racially blind in the right way as to pass through existing disparities.

Now I'm with you, I don't think it's the job of universities, even public ones, to try and erase all racial disparities. I think prioritizing racial equality over quality of education would be an utterly self-defeating decision. But that assumes the priority of universities is education in the first place. If disparities in race are just being passed along by racially blind systems, AND those systems basically exist to carry through childhood disparities so that employers can distinguish between job candidates, then we have a problem.

Just as one last comment, I understand there are people without the family and community to prop them up who work their way to the top through their own personal talents and efforts, I don't mean to dismiss them. But while those people aren't excluded from the college system, they are taken advantage of to prop up the reputations being used to sell the people just riding the wave of their life.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

The part that I'm struggling to swallow is exactly how standardised testing was rigged to be culturally biased in favour of caucasians?

They weren't, that's the point. That's Jim Crow laws work, especially in the post-civil rights era -- find a palatable policy position that sounds legit, even preferable, that by coincidence or side effect disadvantages black and brown people, and support and implement it. Critics have to contend with an appearance of propriety or legitimacy, and racists have plausible deniability in the form of denying the racist outcomes were the intent while being able to obfuscate that racist outcome. The whole idea is to avoid "rigging" things, as you put it, because that creates a trail that can be used to definitively prove racist intent, and challenge the laws on solid equal protection/due process grounds.

Racists figured out if they set acceptance standards to a given level, it would as a side effect exclude the majority of black applicants. Just like how racists figured out if they implement voter ID laws, but then close BMV offices or restrict hours such that black folk can't easily get approved identification, as a side effect they don't get to vote. Just like how racists figured out if legislatures implement stop and frisk on reasonable suspicion, while implementing mandatory minimums and disproportionate sentencing laws for drugs and forms of drugs black people tend to use more than whites (for instance, crack versus powder cocaine in the '80s), black people just happen to get mass incarcerated.

Same shit happened during Jim Crow, just less covertly. Literacy tests worked to disenfranchise black voters because more black people were illiterate than whites, and that was a double dip because the "white trash" didn't get to vote either. Same shit as poll taxes. It effectively circumvented the Fifteenth Amendment; black people weren't getting turned away because they were black, they were getting turned away due to conditions they just happened to be more likely to satisfy.

It's not just racist shit either. For example, why do you think regulations for abortion-providing facilities have become so strict in the past decade, in some cases well exceeding regulations for hospitals, urgent care facilities, and clinics that provide outpatient surgical procedures? Jack up regulations for abortion clinics via TRAP laws, as a side effect women can't get abortions because clinics are forced to close.

 

[Batou667]

Hey, sidebar... what the hell is a snab?

Spoiler

 

[Batou667]

respectful snip 1

respectful snip 2

respectful snip 3

OK fellas, I hear you. That sounds like a real FUBAR of a situation.

The angle I was approaching this from is that, in the UK where I live, schools are allowed to be selective, and that's a (mostly) cheerfully accepted fact. In the case of universities they understandably want to massage their pass rates and reported postgrad employment rate to attract (paying) applicants: the simplest way to do this is to only enrol the applicants most likely to pass. That's just business. The educational establishments are motivated by profit and they set the rules of the game in a way that ultimately benefits them, but the rules are more or less fair in that all applicants[footnote]Overseas students are particularly valuable to universities as they pay fees several times those of UK students, but that's another discussion[/footnote] have equality of opportunity: apply and your grades and/or entrance exam results will decide the outcome for you, not your skin colour.

Evidently this is just part of a much bigger picture in the States, and I hope you guys are able to go some way to fixing it... just out of interest though, has the internet not made access to education and employment a fair bit more equitable? It's difficult to redline a person's access to Khan Academy or screen people who work from home, for example.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

OK fellas, I hear you. That sounds like a real FUBAR of a situation.

The angle I was approaching this from is that, in the UK where I live, schools are allowed to be selective, and that's a (mostly) cheerfully accepted fact. In the case of universities they understandably want to massage their pass rates and reported postgrad employment rate to attract (paying) applicants: the simplest way to do this is to only enrol the applicants most likely to pass. That's just business. The educational establishments are motivated by profit and they set the rules of the game in a way that ultimately benefits them, but the rules are more or less fair in that all applicants[footnote]Overseas students are particularly valuable to universities as they pay fees several times those of UK students, but that's another discussion[/footnote] have equality of opportunity: apply and your grades and/or entrance exam results will decide the outcome for you, not your skin colour.

Evidently this is just part of a much bigger picture in the States, and I hope you guys are able to go some way to fixing it... just out of interest though, has the internet not made access to education and employment a fair bit more equitable? It's difficult to redline a person's access to Khan Academy or screen people who work from home, for example.

Well, first off, when you say schools do you mean Primary Education and Secondary Education? Or are you talking about Higher Education?

Secondly, I mean sure, I still use Khan today. Brush up on my skills. I love it. But think about what that means. It's mandatory that children get an education. That suggestion is that children still need to report to a place that is woefully inept of training them in the basic skills the Country considers required for a growing mind for hours each day... and then going back home to actually learn the things their assigned school district can't teach them.

That's utter madness. Why even make schooling mandatory if they aren't doing anything. Which, coincidentally, is what a lot of children in the school system come away thinking, losing interest in education that has no real interest in them.

 

[tstorm823]

That's utter madness. Why even make schooling mandatory if they aren't doing anything. Which, coincidentally, is what a lot of children in the school system come away thinking, losing interest in education that has no real interest in them.

That's the thing that kills me most. There are just so many kids with genuine curiosity about the world who think that they hate learning because they equate learning to school and to them school is basically half-day prison, so they think learning is like prison. I'm not saying I know the solution here, but it's really a problem.

The angle I was approaching this from is that, in the UK where I live, schools are allowed to be selective, and that's a (mostly) cheerfully accepted fact. In the case of universities they understandably want to massage their pass rates and reported postgrad employment rate to attract (paying) applicants: the simplest way to do this is to only enrol the applicants most likely to pass. That's just business. The educational establishments are motivated by profit and they set the rules of the game in a way that ultimately benefits them, but the rules are more or less fair in that all applicants[footnote]Overseas students are particularly valuable to universities as they pay fees several times those of UK students, but that's another discussion[/footnote] have equality of opportunity: apply and your grades and/or entrance exam results will decide the outcome for you, not your skin colour.

All of that is pretty much equally true in America. But what's different is the circumstances at both ends. The US has a broader range of experiences feeding students into higher education to account for, and then also a weird business culture where a college degree is viewed as a prerequisite for basically any employment outside of menial labor and specific trades that require their own training programs. So like, the colleges are perfectly happy to take the attention they get as the pathway to a well-paying job, but all they really do to that end is weed out applicants. If you're an educational institution preparing people for "the real world", you should be able to take an under-capable but an enthusiastic student and turn out a competent person on the other end to declare qualified. But if they're taking only the already qualified applicants, they're basically preserving existing inequities to pass along to businesses. If a degree is required for a good life, and we have state schools, they shouldn't be weeding people out based on existing ability.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

IDK if it?s still generally accepted theory about the origins of human species being rooted in Africa, but my question would be, what caused some to disperse while others stayed? Did it eventually become too crowded or did some naturally seek out other habitats? Why did the people venturing north eventually end up building profoundly more advanced civilizations, while people closer to the equator remained more tribal?

May have to ask for what exactly you qualify as "advanced civilisation" versus what you qualify as "tribal" here

 

[Schadrach]

(we should also mention how hard it is to even get called back if your name sounds too 'black' [https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/9/18/16307782/study-racism-jobs])

I've always wondered about the studies on that and whether they are actually examining "normative" names or race as perceived by name.

I guess the real question is what list of "white" names and "black" names they use.

For example, despite Anthony, Brandon, Justin, and Isaiah being in the top 30 most common names for black boys (based on data from Virginia, Colorado, Arkansas, Texas, and New York City - the only places in the US that keep that stat conveniently), I imagine they're too "white" sounding and they're more likely to use "black" names like "Shaniqua", "La-a" (pronounced "Ladasha"), "Malik", "DeShawn", and similar.

Likewise, I suspect the list of "white" names is full of "John", "Mark", "Michael" and the like while being surprisingly free of names like Szymon, Mikolaj, Wojciech, or Kacper (all white names that are non-normative in the US - specifically I took those from a list of common Polish names, we could pick another primarily white origin that doesn't sound like common American names if you'd prefer).

What would be interesting is not to see how the DeShawn Freemans of the world compare to the John Smiths, but how they both compare to the Wojciech Wysockis. I suspect poor Woj would fare more in line with the "black" names than with the "white" ones (implying it's about how "normal" names sound rather than racial animus towards black names), but I might be wrong on that.

And then there's "Isidore Heath Hitler" and his children "Adolf Hitler", "JoyceLynn Aryan Nation", "Heinrich Hons", "Eva Lynn Patricia Braun" and "Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie" (5 of his 9 kids - used his current last name, but not the last names of the kids - he changed his last name to Hitler after their birth) who I'm also guessing aren't going to go on a "white names" list for a study like this. Also (if it wasn't very obvious) a white neo-Nazi and his white children.

Poverty trapping. Few discussing this want to hear it, but the same shit happens in impoverished, rural, white districts, and its mechanism of action is pretty much the same; it's just absent the racial dynamic. This thread could go on to be a thousand pages and we'd barely scratch the surface at the myriad of ways impoverished kids can get locked into catch-22's, so for now I'll just focus on the big one: school funding.

Public schools are funded at least in part by local taxes. Low property taxes, low property values, impoverished citizens, low school funding, and poor schools are reliant on state and federal funding. State/city cuts its budget, or doesn't allocate a proper level of funding, poor schools suffer more and students get subpar educations. Poor districts constantly suffer brain drains, so funding levels stay rock-bottom, and the kids that get subpar educations generally can't get out due to lack of opportunity. Due to America's black population being concentrated in low-income urban areas, black Americans as a class suffer educationally.

But but but, that's painting it as an issue of class (and tax distribution) moreso than race! You can't do that, too many of the people who want to talk about race deathly want to avoid class (beyond simply equating white=rich and black=poor), for reasons totally unrelated to many of them being pretty well off and not liking the idea that they're the "oppressor" in the way that probably matters the most.

But seriously, if we wanted to see how much this is race rather than poverty, just compare to somewhere like Beattyville, KY. Very white, but also very poor. How do the schools in places like that compare to poor black areas?

The part that I'm struggling to swallow is exactly how standardised testing was rigged to be culturally biased in favour of caucasians?

Because black and latino people don't do as well on standardized tests, therefore it's racist to set a guideline requiring too good of a score on one. That's literally it. You don't have to show how a test question is racially biased for it to be a racist test question, that fewer black or latino people get it right than white, asian, or jewish people is in and of itself all the proof required.

There was a thread on here a few years back where a latino man had successfully sued a fire department for it's "racist" testing, and the actual test got posted in the thread and no one could explain *how* it was racist, just that it necessarily was because too few latinos passed. After all, if it wasn't racist then latinos would pass as often as whites.

If 60% of men but only 30% of women could answer "Why is the sky blue?" correctly, then that would be a sexist question, despite there being nothing that would indicate beforehand that the question is sexist. And yes, that does mean it's impossible to write a question that *isn't* sexist or racist without having a large number of people try to answer it and see if the "right" proportions of people answer it correctly. It's entirely possible that 6*8 is sexist in a mysterious way 5*5 isn't.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Because black and latino people don't do as well on standardized tests, therefore it's racist to set a guideline requiring too good of a score on one. That's literally it. You don't have to show how a test question is racially biased for it to be a racist test question, that fewer black or latino people get it right than white, asian, or jewish people is in and of itself all the proof required.

Well, that was outstanding.

We had a few threads on how the majority of active shooters are white. Should we just heap a bunch of bias and just assume every white male will shoot us up as well? Makes just as much sense as you citing one guy from a thread a few years back.

 

[Batou667]

Because black and latino people don't do as well on standardized tests, therefore it's racist to set a guideline requiring too good of a score on one. That's literally it.

I don't have the first clue about whether this is the reasoning used, but I think you may have hit the nail on the head regarding peoples mistaking, or equating, equality of outcome with equality of opportunity and deducing that there *must* be an inherent bias. I know a little bit about aptitude testing and it's accepted that some forms of assessment are culturally biased, particularly written questions that rely on an assumed bank of vocabulary and knowledge. "Culture fair" testing was created to address this, one example would be the purely pictorial series of shapes found in some varieties of IQ testing (no words, not even any numbers) - in the UK such tests form a common component of selective secondary school admissions exams.

If a particular group was consistently underachieving in a culture-free method of testing, I think the onus would be on them to demonstrate how it's biased, it's not enough to simply throw out the accusation and expect to be catered to.

 

[tstorm823]

Because black and latino people don't do as well on standardized tests, therefore it's racist to set a guideline requiring too good of a score on one. That's literally it. You don't have to show how a test question is racially biased for it to be a racist test question, that fewer black or latino people get it right than white, asian, or jewish people is in and of itself all the proof required.

There was a thread on here a few years back where a latino man had successfully sued a fire department for it's "racist" testing, and the actual test got posted in the thread and no one could explain *how* it was racist, just that it necessarily was because too few latinos passed. After all, if it wasn't racist then latinos would pass as often as whites.

Ok, but there's a difference here. If your test is measuring the capabilities of potential firefighters, and you disregard standards for the goal of racial equality, you could potentially cause someone to literally die in a fire. It's not that it's wrong to want racial equality there, but it's wrong to set aside the mission of the fire department to that end. There's no reason to believe any given role will have a perfect demographic breakdown in quality candidates, and it would be wrong to lower the quality of firefighters to force that to happen, but that's because they're performing an important role for society.

School is different, or at least it should be. School isn't a place for the student to benefit others, school is supposed to be for the benefit of the student. Nobody dies in a fire based on slightly less pre-qualified students going to college. School is supposed to be the place people go to become qualified. It's not the same thing. If someone says "you know what, I'm not as qualified for these careers, I should go better myself" and the state school says "no, you're not qualified to better yourself", there's a problem with that.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

There are just so many kids with genuine curiosity about the world who think that they hate learning because they equate learning to school and to them school is basically half-day prison, so they think learning is like prison. I'm not saying I know the solution here, but it's really a problem.

Or, depending on the region, them thinking that school solely exists to provide a Friday night football team.

And they're correct. Because in some regions that's all the damn town WANTS.

 

[Batou667]

Well, first off, when you say schools do you mean Primary Education and Secondary Education? Or are you talking about Higher Education?

Secondly, I mean sure, I still use Khan today. Brush up on my skills. I love it. But think about what that means. It's mandatory that children get an education. That suggestion is that children still need to report to a place that is woefully inept of training them in the basic skills the Country considers required for a growing mind for hours each day... and then going back home to actually learn the things their assigned school district can't teach them.

Well, I suppose my focus was on higher education (reflecting the OP post) but in most cases I have no beef with primary and secondary education being selective either. British public schools (which despite the name are private, yeah, it's stupid) are usually fee-paying and selective. Faith schools, of which there are still a lot, are allowed to use a long and convoluted hierarchy of priorities when deciding admissions, including whether the applicant and their family are regular churchgoers. Even as an atheist I struggle to care too much about that: their house, their rules; they get to set the tone of the establishment, especially when a large percentage of funding comes from the Church. My attitude toward paying money, and jumping through hoops, to attend your first pick of establishment is a bit like paying for private healthcare rather than accepting free NHS treatment. The basic provision is a right, if you want a premium version of the service the provider is within their rights to be selective.

Evidently though the basic service is in many cases not good enough, and I gather that's equally true both sides of the Atlantic. That's something the state needs to be held accountable for.

 

[Batou667]

So like, the colleges are perfectly happy to take the attention they get as the pathway to a well-paying job, but all they really do to that end is weed out applicants. If you're an educational institution preparing people for "the real world", you should be able to take an under-capable but an enthusiastic student and turn out a competent person on the other end to declare qualified.

Great point, I completely agree. In his books, Robert Kiyosaki criticises the education system for training young people to be good employees, not good leaders. I'm possibly even more cynical: I think school is good at teaching kids to be students, but has very little input in developing key life skills. It's a reductive system where individual disciplines are taught to a frankly unnecessary level of fidelity (since leaving school, how many times have you needed to recall the molecular structure of an alkane? Integrate a function? Know what a subordinate clause is? List Henry VIIIs wives?) while leaving the big picture of personal development entirely to chance. The end result is kids, kids, of 18 or 21 entering the workplace with a head full of book smarts but no clue how to manage themselves in the present, much less plan for the future. And in the case of college education, they'll be graduating in considerable debt. It's a perverse situation.

 

[tstorm823]

Great point, I completely agree. In his books, Robert Kiyosaki criticises the education system for training young people to be good employees, not good leaders. I'm possibly even more cynical: I think school is good at teaching kids to be students, but has very little input in developing key life skills. It's a reductive system where individual disciplines are taught to a frankly unnecessary level of fidelity (since leaving school, how many times have you needed to recall the molecular structure of an alkane? Integrate a function? Know what a subordinate clause is? List Henry VIIIs wives?) while leaving the big picture of personal development entirely to chance. The end result is kids, kids, of 18 or 21 entering the workplace with a head full of book smarts but no clue how to manage themselves in the present, much less plan for the future. And in the case of college education, they'll be graduating in considerable debt. It's a perverse situation.

Ok, so here's the race perspective. The men in the OP from Texas who implemented standardized tests for admission were doing so the same way literacy tests were administered at polls. There's not a direct causal relationship between race and literacy (or rather, knowledge of arbitrary questions about American government), but there was certainly a correlation, and that correlation was abused to limit the opportunities afforded to a certain race.

So when you see that things in school are often arbitrary to a degree, as arbitrary as reciting the preamble is to voting, it's reason to ask why? How much of it was established by well-meaning but misguided people, and how much of it was done deliberately to exclude "undesirables". How frequently did someone with power think "well my children are experts in classical music, and I want them to have an easy life, so lets test them based on that." And how often did that coincide with "our children are more knowledgeable in British history than the black kids or the Irish kids, so lets make that the standard for a good career later."

So where you see things in school aren't racist but are unnecessary and unhelpful in the future, it could be rooted in racism that those unnecessary and unhelpful things rose to prominence to begin with. You don't need the race perspective to question things that are stupid, and it generally proves counter-productive to even acknowledge it because people who would otherwise agree "yeah, there's no reason to make children memorize soliloquies" will understandably go "what's racist about teaching Shakespeare!?" But it's relevant that race can be an underlying thing. There's a principle often referenced by conservatives called Chesterton's fence.

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

The principle is effectively "don't tear something down if you don't know why it was built in the first place." If we apply it to different situations mentioned in this thread that might cut out minorities, we'll find different results. With the previously mentioned firefighters test, we'll conclude it was implemented to have more capable firefighters who save people, and then decide it's worth keeping. If we instead question why knowledge of alkene structures might work to determine future career success, the answer isn't so obvious. And if we dig around and find out the purpose of using standardized test scores at the University of Texas was to keep out black students, we can talk about tearing that fence down.

 

[Schadrach]

Well, that was outstanding.

I live to serve! /s

We had a few threads on how the majority of active shooters are white. Should we just heap a bunch of bias and just assume every white male will shoot us up as well? Makes just as much sense as you citing one guy from a thread a few years back.

I mean, I used him as an example of precisely that logic being applied, but you reference it in this thread as well - setting a higher testing standard was done at at least one university specifically to maintain segregation because setting that higher standard would exclude most black students but only a small number of white students. Because statistically black and latino students tend to do worse on standardized tests. Asians tend to do better on them than whites.

Let me try this: If I were to give you a sample test question, could you tell me if that question is racially or gender biased? Could you do that without asking it to a whole bunch of people of diverse backgrounds and seeing if "enough" of each demographic answer it correctly? Is 6*8 a biased math question for a 5th grader? Is ∫√tan(x) dx a biased calculus problem (note: in case the symbols don't render right on the forum, that's supposed to be the indefinite integral of the square root of the tangent of x, dx)[footnote]That one looks simple but was intentionally chosen to be painful to solve - for the curious, see https://www.symbolab.com/solver/integral-calculator/%5Cint%20%5Csqrt%7Btan%5Cleft(x%5Cright)%7Ddx .[/footnote]?

And yes, the majority or Columbine/Sandy Hook/Aurora style spree shooters are white men. I could of course turn that around on you and point out that black folks are disproportionately represented among murderers (the most recent stats peg 53% of murderers as black), robbers, and rapists (and actually most other crimes except for the ones involving alcohol) - especially black men (especially on the murder part) - but then I'm well aware that we're talking about the demographics of a tiny number of bad actors and not the general populace. That most killers are black doesn't mean most blacks are killers - killers are a tiny fragment of the population.

If a particular group was consistently underachieving in a culture-free method of testing, I think the onus would be on them to demonstrate how it's biased, it's not enough to simply throw out the accusation and expect to be catered to.

The idea of "disparate impact" means that if a given racial demographic underperforms on a method of testing that the method of testing is the problem. If it were a fair method, then all races would pass at a similar rate.