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

[Agema]

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.

One might point out that the vast majority of the population will be employees, rather than leaders. I think a (school) education system should encourage forms of flexibility, adaptability, creativity and initiative. These are applicable to leadership; leadership can be exercised through all manner of extra-curricular programs for those willing.

We also have HE, professional development, etc. In HE, students are encouraged to creativity, initiative and think for themselves. In the working world, there are all manner of leadership training programs. In this sense, all sorts of systems exist to give those who want the opportunities.

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?

They might not need much of that information, but learning it requires abilities and skills (memory, attention, "intelligence", application, time management, etc.) which they end up representative of.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

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)?

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.

Admitted to the first part.

And I can, easily. Once someone gives me about 5 million dollars to do a lengthy comparison of the average Poor/Minority school system against Affluent/White schools. For now, the judgement is around Algebra 1 [https://edsource.org/2018/latino-african-americans-have-less-access-to-math-science-classes-new-data-show/598083].

The data, based on the 2015-16 Civil Rights Data Collection survey of U.S. public schools reveals the following:

-African-American students make up 17 percent of the overall 8th grade enrollment, but only 11 percent of those enrolled in algebra 1.
-Latinos made up 25 percent of the overall enrollment but only 18 percent of those taking algebra 1.
-Eighty five percent of white students passed algebra 1 in 8th grade, while only 65 percent of African-American students did. Asian and Latino students were nearly tied, at 74 percent and 72 percent respectively.

Smith pointed to several reasons for the disparities, including:

-Funding inequities that leave some schools with well-equipped classrooms and science labs and others without.
-A shortage of experienced math and science teachers at schools that serve students of color.
-Inadequate preschools and daycares that leaves many low-income, African-American and Latino students unprepared for kindergarten and unable to catch up academically.
-Low expectations, or "the belief that black and brown children can't do math and science," Smith said.

The study breaks down math and science course enrollment and passing rates by race and ethnicity, gender and disability. It involved 17,337 districts and 50.6 million public school students.

In California, some programs stand out for narrowing the math and science achievement gap. In San Diego, a math and science tutoring program called Pathways links college undergraduates with local K-12 students, most of whom are Latino and African-American. The program has shown to be effective at raising students' academic performance.

Well, to be fair, the Fed has weighed in themselves:

The federal survey found that high schools that had majority African-American or Latino enrollment were less likely to offer math and science classes at all levels except algebra 1, especially at the advanced levels. Only 38 percent of predominantly minority schools offered calculus, compared to 50 percent of all high schools. Just over half - 51 percent - offered physics, compared to 60 percent of high schools overall.

What does that mean? Let's go to the leading SAT prep course, Kaplan [https://www.kaptest.com/study/sat/sat-math-topics-what-to-know/]

The questions you will see on the SAT Math test may include some concepts that you've forgotten or that seem unfamiliar to you. SAT Math content covers topics taught in typical Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, and some Pre-Calculus classes. While this may seem like a lot, it's important to know that much of the information you learn in these classes overlaps from year to year. With review, you?ll become more and more familiar with these skills.

Once again, most poor and predominately minority students will readily get to Algebra I. 2/5 of the math section they can possibly get, and that's not even counting if they had good teachers and materials to learn the curriculum. Just because you weren't taught the material doesn't mean you can not grasp it. But Standardized testing takes a shot of 'your performance', when it can easily be interpreted as a snapshot of what you were taught. How you actually can learn isn't dependent on that, but it will be used to judge if you can get into a college or not.

Most poor and minority students are having their lives continually dictated to them, and are being judged by the failings of one of the richest countries in the world judging them less deserving of funds for a quality education.

So to roughly answer your question, around 3/5ths or over half of the Math Problems are at least biased against Poor and Minority Schools. Because they can't help the conditions they were put in, they can't go out and buy the study guides, they might not have access to the internet, and they most likely damn sure can't find the help at home.

 

[Schadrach]

*snip*

You do it again here, and even more explicitly - you're treating race and class as interchangeable to recast something that is primarily about class (and the funding structure of the school system) as being about race.

Just ask yourself this, do you think that the children of rich black parents suffer from those problems? What about the kids in, say, Beattyville?

And if you ask yourself why it matters, because it changes what kind of solutions would work. For example, if it was primarily about race some explicitly race-conscious change to school funding might help (where funding gets tied specifically to having "enough" black students), or more elaborate busing where some percentage of black and white students get sent out of district to whichever school that is primarily the other race is closest. Would trading students between a poor white district and a poor black district do much good?

Or would something like having the state distribute school funding equally per student across all schools in the state do a lot more for more students than any kind of race-focused solution?

If we wanted to talk about racial breakdowns in schools I attended, there weren't any black kids in my elementary school, there were only a handful in my junior high (which had two or three elementary schools feed into it), and I went out of district to a large high school that was a product of consolidation. The high school had about triple as many students as my "normal" high school would have and a much higher proportion of black students. It was also better funded, better supplied, and offered a better course selection. Despite being blacker, because it also spanned over into some of the wealthier (but not the wealthiest) neighborhoods in the area.

 

[Batou667]

One might point out that the vast majority of the population will be employees, rather than leaders.

That's hardly the point, though, surely? If the school system was designed to produce good docile worker drones then we would dispense with the fairly useless and non-vocational modules like ancient history and replace them with Shelf Stacking 101 and Introduction to Telesales. A decent school experience should leave children or young adults informed and equipped to go into a leadership role if they so choose. In reality though an underfunded and overpacked school with poor teachers don't WANT the threat of headstrong pupils challenging the system.

Perhaps I just had a particularly dismal school experience - and admittedly this was a couple of decades ago - but if there was a unifying theme to my secondary education it was the expectation of conformity. Obedience. A one-size-fits-all system that bore more similarities to prison than the world of employment we were supposedly being prepared for. The punchline to the whole sick joke is when you get to the end of this production line and you receive your identical certificate while dressed in identical uniform to the cohort of people your own age and from the same geographic catchment area, and you get told that you're a special unique beautiful butterfly and now is the time to spread your wings. Go! Frolic! Follow your dreams! ...but teacher, you spent the last seven years crushing my dreams.

To paraphrase a bit of social media "bumper sticker" philosophy I saw recently, school is the place where you're told to make decisions about your adult life while also being required to raise your hand to ask permission to pee.

My experience in higher education wasn't much better. Slick prospectus, mediocre teaching, start your life as a graduate in debt and the "alumni employment services" was an email newsletter with a list of positions copy-pasted from the Reed website.

They might not need much of that information, but learning it requires abilities and skills (memory, attention, "intelligence", application, time management, etc.) which they end up representative of.

I've heard that argument before and I see the logic, but if all we are interested in teaching are skills divorced from any concrete facts, then why make any attempt at all to provide a diversity of teaching material? You could use a simple deck of playing cards to teach everything from arithmetic to psychology to manual dexterity.

Another social media post that resonated recently: school didn't teach me how to apply for a job, start a business, fill in a tax return, shop and cook for a family, grow food, handle failure, understand banking or register to vote. But thank f**k I was taught Pythagoras' Theorem!

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

...If the school system was designed to produce good docile worker drones then we would dispense with the fairly useless and non-vocational modules like ancient history and replace them with Shelf Stacking 101 and Introduction to Telesales...

Frankly, those modules serve an important purpose in our Prussian-system-on-crack, post-NCLB education model. It's not so much what is taught, but the way it's taught. Dates, names, places, events all stripped of context or any sense of continuity, to be rote-memorized and regurgitated on request by figures of unimpeachable authority. Think about humanities and social sciences not as beds for critical thought and debate, but rather a denuded and bland set of factoids, and you strip children, teenagers, and young adults of the capability to think critically for themselves. It's the same shit Bradbury called out in Fahrenheit 451 -- decontextualize the world, fill people's heads with useless garbage, and train them to resist thinking too hard about it, and the end result is an easily controllable mass of worker drones.

To put it another way, when I was in undergrad one of my favorite history profs had an entire 100-level class he hated teaching. He was also the one who created the class, was one of two profs who taught it, and at my university it was one of two classes that satisfied the history general requirement for any Bachelor's the university awarded. It was a survey course on the history of the 20th Century, and the entire reason the class existed was because kids were coming into the university without the first goddamn idea what actually happened in the century they were born in. I took it because I needed the credits to fill out my intro-level requirement, unofficially TA'ed it for funsies, and otherwise slept through it, but I can see why he hated it -- nine-tenths of the class was just getting kids to think about this shit, as opposed to just barf factoids on demand.

Was funny listening to kids get pissed off about that class, that they were expected to write essay exam answers about why shit happened, and how historical events in the 20th Century related to one another, as opposed to just drop a bunch of names, dates, and places and expect to skate.

Another social media post that resonated recently: school didn't teach me how to apply for a job, start a business, fill in a tax return, shop and cook for a family, grow food, handle failure, understand banking or register to vote. But thank f**k I was taught Pythagoras' Theorem!

Well, you can't exactly create standardized test modules for civics and home economics, now can you.

 

[Satinavian]

And I can, easily. Once someone gives me about 5 million dollars to do a lengthy comparison of the average Poor/Minority school system against Affluent/White schools. For now, the judgement is around Algebra 1 [https://edsource.org/2018/latino-african-americans-have-less-access-to-math-science-classes-new-data-show/598083].

Still seems like it is a reason to improve poor/minority schools, not a reason to get rid of standardized testing.

I mean, i can't say our school system is perfect but :

- Children of your elites go to regular public schools. Private schools are the domain of alternative teaching methods and their adherents and not something that provides a better education.
- Schools in poorer areas get the same money as those in richer areas.
- There are schools that provide different qualification, with only some allowing direct university access (we don't have colleges), but children are theoretically asigned to schools based on their own abilities at the age of around 12. There is a lot of debate about how well that works, but most of the best schools (winning most national contests etc.) are in poorer areas. The reasons for that lie in history.
- There still is a tendency of minority children getting to schools that provide lesser qualification. But research suggest that this is mostly because of language problems and how much parents help with homework and not because their primary schools offer a worse education.

Of course my own school expercience was even different with the first years under communism. But i am still convinced that even our current school system is superior than the US one. Except maybe that the US schools provide afterschool activities and our schools don't. That might be a drawback because when the children are longer at home the home becomes more important to their development which hurts children from dysfuctional families a lot.

Another social media post that resonated recently: school didn't teach me how to apply for a job, start a business, fill in a tax return, shop and cook for a family, grow food, handle failure, understand banking or register to vote. But thank f**k I was taught Pythagoras' Theorem!

I had "grow food" in school garden class im primary school, "apply for a job" a.k.a. wriing an application in at least two language classes, how voting works in politics, what kind of buisiness organisations exist and how they work and how banking works in economics & law. That only leaves handling failure, shopping and cooking. But considering that everyne had to cook on school camping trips that seems to have been covered at home well enough. But considering most of the class grew up in a country where fast food did not exist and pre-cooked food was not vailable, that is no surprise.
None of those things was optional. And while still the majority of school subjetcs were academical, i never felt unprepared later in life. This whole "academic or life skills" debate is just a pretext to find reasons for not providing a proper academic education. It is easy to get a good education and still everything necessary to navigate daily life.

 

[Seanchaidh]

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.

One might point out that the vast majority of the population will be employees, rather than leaders.

Currently, that is the case. It doesn't have to be like that, though. The professional managerial class can have some of their empowering labor distributed to others and pick up some of the slack on rote drudgery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_job_complex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics

 

[SupahEwok]

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.

One might point out that the vast majority of the population will be employees, rather than leaders.

Currently, that is the case. It doesn't have to be like that, though. The professional managerial class can have some of their empowering labor distributed to others and pick up some of the slack on rote drudgery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_job_complex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics

Seems like typical anarchist pie-in-the-sky utopic modeling that breaks down in most practical scenarios (janitors can't be doctors even if doctors can do janitorial work, how do you track who does a "fair share" without oversight, who gets to decide what work is "empowering" and what isn't, how do you implement it amidst a global system), but what do I know.

 

[Satinavian]

This employees vs. leaders is not a sensible discussion. Most emloyees are professionals with years of expert training and often a degree or two.

Low-skill untrained workers is not what the industry jas much use for. That is bad for those that don't valuable skills because market does not provide a good compensation for them. But just because they are exploited does not mean that there is some interest in having even more of them for hire.

But experts as employees still have to be responsible and make important decisions all the time. Even if they don't have a couple of underlings.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Still seems like it is a reason to improve poor/minority schools, not a reason to get rid of standardized testing.

I mean, i can't say our school system is perfect but :

- Children of your elites go to regular public schools. Private schools are the domain of alternative teaching methods and their adherents and not something that provides a better education.
- Schools in poorer areas get the same money as those in richer areas.
- There are schools that provide different qualification, with only some allowing direct university access (we don't have colleges), but children are theoretically asigned to schools based on their own abilities at the age of around 12. There is a lot of debate about how well that works, but most of the best schools (winning most national contests etc.) are in poorer areas. The reasons for that lie in history.
- There still is a tendency of minority children getting to schools that provide lesser qualification. But research suggest that this is mostly because of language problems and how much parents help with homework and not because their primary schools offer a worse education.

Of course my own school expercience was even different with the first years under communism. But i am still convinced that even our current school system is superior than the US one. Except maybe that the US schools provide afterschool activities and our schools don't. That might be a drawback because when the children are longer at home the home becomes more important to their development which hurts children from dysfuctional families a lot.

Apologies for taking so long to reply.

At the end of the day, of course all schools in America need improvement. Especially our impoverished schools.

But then we have to talk about the sum cost of these actions. Either the current type of Standardized testing needs to go now, or the schools need to radically change over night. And like I said, I have family who works in school systems of poor, minority areas.

The one of the current shames of Western New York (according to my family who works in the school system) is the Rochester School System. First off, a number of the schools are in Receivership [https://13wham.com/news/local/five-rcsd-schools-leave-receivership-status-14-schools-in-good-standing], meaning they are performing so badly that the state government boots out their superintendent in efforts to right the ship.

Sadly, the school district slips more when it uses its Receivership to illegally displace 130 teachers [https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/education/2019/05/22/rcsd-accused-targeting-union-teacher-transfers-rochester-ny-schools/3766385002/] in what the teachers believe to be in the efforts of union busting.

Meanwhile, the fun doesn't stop there, as the Superintendent came to find out just this month that his Chief Financial Officer straight up lied to him that the budget was balanced in last May [https://www.wxxinews.org/post/rcsd-finance-chief-resigns-district-considers-layoffs-bridge-budget-gap]. It wasn't. They overspent by 30 million dollars. The solutions are the same. Halt desperately needed new hiring, commence with the lay-offs, and combining classrooms and their limited resources must be shared with even more students.

And through this... these children go through constant states of flux with little to no support and then are told their entire lives will be decided by a test that they were in no means prepared for.

Let's put a capper on this. I would like to introduce you to Kodak Park Elementary School [https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/local/communities/time-to-educate/stories/2018/06/06/worst-public-schools-america-rochester-ny-rcsd-kodak-park-school-41/550929002/]. At the time of the article written in 2018, considered the worst school in New York State. And around now? Closed and renamed to Rise Community School 41

"Maybe it's a good thing," Angela Rivera says.

Her children go to Kodak Park School 41, which she can almost see from her front yard on Desmond Street in northwest Rochester. The school is closing at the end of this year - forced into closure by the state for failure to make academic progress - and she doesn't know what the future holds.

She loves the school and its principal, so much so that she has remained in the parent-teacher organization even after the president quit in disgust, leaving her as the only parent representative in a school of 510 students.

Her first-grader, though, came home with a bump on his head one day earlier this month, and no one at the school could explain to her how it got there. Her daughter wants to learn more about science, but the coursework is heavy on the math and English that dominate state testing.

School 41 is representative in many ways of the Rochester City School District, which makes a strong case as the worst district in the country over the last 20 years.

Its features and flaws are well known:

-A student body that is overwhelmingly poor and segregated by race, with massive concentrations of homelessness, disability, trauma and lack of English skills.
-A tottering, ever-changing district bureaucracy unable to serve them.
-A mostly white teaching corps, in many cases unequipped to connect with children from a very different background.
-A city government by turns supportive, combative and complicit.
-A surrounding suburban core that has kept its distance from the troubled district they share borders with.

...

Rochester combines that punishing poverty with extreme racial and economic segregation.

A 2014 analysis by the UCLA Civil Rights Project found New York to be the most segregated state in the country, and Rochester to have not only the poorest children in New York but also the most intense metro segregation in the state.

"In the 30 years I have been researching schools, New York state has consistently been one of the most segregated states in the nation - no Southern state comes close to New York," lead researcher Gary Orfield said then.

A 2016 study determined the steepest economic gradients in the country between school districts - that is, the lines that mark the starkest wealth divides.

Of the top 50 such borders in the country, three surround Rochester. Cleveland is the only other city in the country with 50 percent childhood poverty and three borders on that segregation list.

It seems, then, that the students walking into Rochester schools each morning - more than half in dire poverty, and racially and economically segregated - bring with them perhaps the weightiest collective challenges in the country.

...

If Rochester is the worst school district in New York, Kodak Park School 41 is, by one measure, its worst school.

In 2017 fewer than 10 percent of students at any grade level were proficient in math or English, according to the state test. Most were lower than 5 percent. As a result, the district has decided to close it and reopen under a new name, yet to be determined, in the fall.

That will happen without Principal Lisa Whitlow.

She started as the school's leader in August 2015, just weeks before classes began and a few months after the state Education Department had included the school on its inaugural receivership list. It was her first assignment as a building principal.

Unlike at other schools, state receivership at School 41 did not come with any additional state grant funding, so Whitlow spent much of her first year scrounging some up. She made School 41 one of the early sites for the district's new emphasis on restorative and trauma-informed practices.

Suspensions went down dramatically, replaced with visits to a help zone, or to "calming corners" in classrooms. Attendance and instructional time rose. Partnerships with outside organizations were growing.

The change was disrupted the summer after her first year, though, when the school's start time changed by nearly two hours as part of a larger district shift. About three-quarters of the school's teachers left and many of the replacements were novices, Whitlow said.

The new staff was willing but unseasoned; test scores did not improve enough.

The new school in the School 41 building will be the first of what RCSD is calling "RISE schools," a kind of ready-made replacement model for other schools that need to close because of state sanctions or other reasons.

There will be an emphasis on science, technology, engineering, math and the arts, former School Chief, now Deputy Superintendent, Beth Mascitti-Miller said, with project-based learning and "family pods," where adults are expected to get to know their children intimately. The model contains school reform elements that have been popular and successful elsewhere, including East High School.

School 41 is in its last weeks of operation and Whitlow, along with at least 50 percent of the teaching staff, is waiting to see where she'll land in the fall.

"Everyone was all-in. We did everything we could," she said. "It just didn't meet the numbers they needed."

"Closing the gap isn't just going to happen quickly. ... It's not as simple as, 'Let's just change everything over and all pass the test.' If it were that easy, we wouldn't be here."

This perfectly highlights the problem. Given no more money, but expected to make changes. Staff leaves because they are asked for more without more money. Novices come in that can not meet the needs of the most needy children because they don't have the experience. Curriculum is based on passing the State Testing, not the SATs or the ACT.

Again, I agree, Schools need to change. But the issue is that the impoverished and minorities will suffer continually under these decisions. If it's the thought that the parents need to be able to pay more in taxes to afford better schools, we have to remember that a lot of the time the parents went to the same type of schools. How they supposed to get jobs that will afford higher taxes or better school districts if they come from the same environment that struggles to teach basic math?

Economic downturns make these... pockets of Poverty Realities and Repeating Cycles. That's the part that makes standardized testing racially biased. I think the Department of Education said it the best [https://www2.ed.gov/offices/OPE/AgenProj/report/theme1a.html].

Because America's racial and ethnic minorities are the fastest-growing sectors in the country and they make up a disproportionately large segment of the economically poor population, tending to their educational needs is in everyone's interest. The level of their educational achievements will dramatically affect the future of our nation.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

This perfectly highlights the problem. Given no more money, but expected to make changes. Staff leaves because they are asked for more without more money. Novices come in that can not meet the needs of the most needy children because they don't have the experience. Curriculum is based on passing the State Testing, not the SATs or the ACT.

Not to mention when schools and school systems are caught in a never-ending churn of state and federal administrations that are more interested in "fixing" education as a vehicle to move to climb the bureaucratic/electoral ladder, or chasing/destroying "legacies", and the instability itself is more harmful to schools and kids within them than any individual plan could likely ever hope to be.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

This perfectly highlights the problem. Given no more money, but expected to make changes. Staff leaves because they are asked for more without more money. Novices come in that can not meet the needs of the most needy children because they don't have the experience. Curriculum is based on passing the State Testing, not the SATs or the ACT.

Not to mention when schools and school systems are caught in a never-ending churn of state and federal administrations that are more interested in "fixing" education as a vehicle to move to climb the bureaucratic/electoral ladder, or chasing/destroying "legacies", and the instability itself is more harmful to schools and kids within them than any individual plan could likely ever hope to be.

There are times I wish for a Like button in this forum. This is sorely one of those times.

In America, unless you're apart of the elite party, the school system will end up failing you in ways we can not even begin to mention. The Impoverished are almost destined to be nothing more than Impoverished for their entire lives, unless they give themselves over to serving the elite. Cops, Firefighters, that sort of thing.

This, of course, means whites can suffer these horrible conditions. No one who can look at the facts objectively can ever hope to deny that salient fact. Better allotment of resources can not be just shifted towards minorities, because it will harm the fabric of this society if we continue any marginalization of our youth.

The reason I felt it necessary to even make this topic is the denial that a great many people cling to that everything's fair because they don't want to believe in or acknowledge any real kind of divide in the world. In the hopes that if we ignore the facts and shout them down, we don't have to do anything to fix it. This situation is one that, historically and currently, affects a disproportionate amount of the minority population. Due to a history of overt redlining, denial of funds for schools and job opportunities for the parents to try to afford something better.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Standardized testing exists in racially homogeneous nations just as much as it does in a melting pot like America. I can't help but see it as an excuse to say that it's something that people came up with in any notable part so that they can get to discriminate.


Testing is mainly important in countries with strong social welfare systems, where you get public universities like Tokyo U. being the best schools in the country, and so you get a ton of students participate in the testing to get access to high quality free education.


I can see them using it in part because of its racial outcomes and them taking those outcomes into consideration, sure, but to just throw away a practice that is both fair and recognized worldwide because it can be weaponized against some people is to diminish our species as a whole.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Standardized testing exists in racially homogeneous nations just as much as it does in a melting pot like America. I can't help but see it as an excuse to say that it's something that people came up with in any notable part so that they can get to discriminate.


Testing is mainly important in countries with strong social welfare systems, where you get public universities like Tokyo U. being the best schools in the country, and so you get a ton of students participate in the testing to get access to high quality free education.


I can see them using it in part because of its racial outcomes and them taking those outcomes into consideration, sure, but to just throw away a practice that is both fair and recognized worldwide because it can be weaponized against some people is to diminish our species as a whole.

Without insult, that is simply hyperbole.

The nation didn't suddenly have better Engineers out of the gate because of Standardized testing. Nor Doctors or Lawyers. Standardized Testing hasn't brought out anything unique to it's implementation. It's now simply tradition. I had to go through it when I was younger, now so do my kids.

Lastly, and probably most importantly... You're God Damned Right we should get rid of a practice that IS CONSTANTLY being weaponized against a particular Demographic Without Fail. If you want your best and your brightest leading, you have to realize they come from all walks of life. If you set a gate that favors one side of the population, you are leaving potential leaders and game changers on the table.

That is horribly damaging to consider allowing, especially when stated as "but to just throw away a practice that is both fair and recognized worldwide because it can be weaponized against some people is to diminish our species as a whole."

You can not have something 'fair' that is being weaponized against a segment of a population. Which is proved by the very government who monitor the educational conditions of the populous who must take those tests.

You understand that, right?

 

[Seanchaidh]

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.

One might point out that the vast majority of the population will be employees, rather than leaders.

Currently, that is the case. It doesn't have to be like that, though. The professional managerial class can have some of their empowering labor distributed to others and pick up some of the slack on rote drudgery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_job_complex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics

Seems like typical anarchist pie-in-the-sky utopic modeling that breaks down in most practical scenarios (janitors can't be doctors even if doctors can do janitorial work,

Janitors could, in fact, go to medical school (or whatever other specialist training they might prefer) if society resolved to structure itself in this way and provide the educational opportunities necessary. We could have more doctors and they could all do janitorial work such that there is no such person as someone who is only a janitor. A hospital could in fact consist of janitor-surgeons, nurse-administrators, oncologist-accountants, and so on (as an example; since what a balanced job is would and should be decided democratically rather than by some guy beforehand, I'm not going to claim that any of those would necessarily satisfy.)

how do you track who does a "fair share" without oversight,

Not sure why this would be a particular problem for ParEcon. There is oversight; the worker's council in which everyone participates.

who gets to decide what work is "empowering" and what isn't

The people who have to do the work, democratically. If there is disagreement over what is empowering and what isn't, a reasonable expectation is that people would put their money where their mouth is and be willing to do what they claim is empowering and to cede what they claim is disempowering to others who disagree and think it empowering.

how do you implement it amidst a global system), but what do I know.

You'd face more or less the same challenges as any domestic business with respect to foreign competition?

This employees vs. leaders is not a sensible discussion. Most emloyees are professionals with years of expert training and often a degree or two.

Low-skill untrained workers is not what the industry jas much use for. That is bad for those that don't valuable skills because market does not provide a good compensation for them. But just because they are exploited does not mean that there is some interest in having even more of them for hire.

But experts as employees still have to be responsible and make important decisions all the time. Even if they don't have a couple of underlings.

So train everyone in a specialty and have everyone pick up some of the "low skill" rote labor.

 

[tstorm823]

So train everyone in a specialty and have everyone pick up some of the "low skill" rote labor.

I honestly can't tell if you're aware of the skill people have at rote labor. The quotation marks indicate that you are, but the sentiment tells me you're not considering it. A surgeon can't be dropped into the role of a janitor or secretary every other day and expect to perform well at both. Both sides of that require experience and practice to stay good at the task at hand. Forcing everyone to have two or more specialties would not help anyone at all.

 

[Seanchaidh]

So train everyone in a specialty and have everyone pick up some of the "low skill" rote labor.

I honestly can't tell if you're aware of the skill people have at rote labor. The quotation marks indicate that you are, but the sentiment tells me you're not considering it. A surgeon can't be dropped into the role of a janitor or secretary every other day and expect to perform well at both. Both sides of that require experience and practice to stay good at the task at hand. Forcing everyone to have two or more specialties would not help anyone at all.

I put it in quotes because there is indeed much rote labor that people can manage to be rather awe-inspiringly good at. One might say there are high skill ceilings for some tasks that are conventionally spoken of as "low skill" or even "unskilled". But that doesn't necessarily mean those tasks are fulfilling or empowering, and it also doesn't mean that people who are specialized in something else cannot learn to do them adequately or proficiently. The point of a division of labor consisting of balanced job complexes is to allow everyone to have a reasonable degree of influence over their own situation. You can be astonishingly quick at preparing tacos and that seems likely not to prepare you very well to participate in decisions over how your restaurant should be managed. And yet it is still an excellent skill for someone who works in a restaurant (at least one that serves tacos) to have. So keep doing that and also do some accounting or whatever else might give more insight into the needs, capabilities, and possibilities of the workplace. There may indeed be some inefficiencies that result. There may indeed be more innovation because tasks are spread out among greater numbers of people. Either way, the former is a small price to pay for truly respecting the principle of democracy.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

There are times I wish for a Like button in this forum. This is sorely one of those times.

Well, I was approaching it from the perspective that one year, you'll get some numbnuts governor, president, or legislature(s) that decide to "fix" education. From there, it can take years to get some kind of legislation put together and passed, years to implement that legislation, and years after that to see any kind of meaningful return, positive or negative.

By that point if not sooner, the next group of numbnuts are in office, and decide the previous package wasn't working or working fast enough, and go back to square one by working on the next set of "reforms". The only legislative acts that ever seem to get implemented quickly and see immediate returns are budget cuts, and the only common thread is that candidates for elected office want to campaign on education but do nothing but destroy previous efforts at reformation, and absolutely it's the minority schools that rely on federal and state funding that are the most to suffer.

 

[Satinavian]

Apologies for taking so long to reply.

At the end of the day, of course all schools in America need improvement. Especially our impoverished schools.

But then we have to talk about the sum cost of these actions. Either the current type of Standardized testing needs to go now, or the schools need to radically change over night. And like I said, I have family who works in school systems of poor, minority areas.

Obviously the school system needs change, not the testing.

Those test is to make sure that the people have the foundation needed to enter higher education. They are not meant to be a value judgement.

If the school system is not able to prepare the children for higher education, if it is not an expensive school, then the failure is there and it has to be repaired there.


What would even be the point of getting rid of the entrance exams ? Would the students that have been utterly failed by the school system have any chance whatsoever to get a university degree ? I mean, pretty much every science or engeneering degree starts with university level calculus in the first semester and build on that foundation later. If you don't understand that enough to use it after 4 months and without extra tutoring etc, you can basicaally pack your stuff and go home.
Which is why we have around 50% dropouts of science students in the first year. (And yes, most of that is because of calculus or other math topics) And that is with requirements that roughly equate to entry tests. We certainly don't want to have more students that can't make it.

We do however have other avenues that can lead to university, even for those that didn't finish school with the correct qualification. But that usually means later entry.


Ok, i have heard that the US universities treat their student more like "paying costumers" and really don't want to fail them. But i am not sure, how much of that is actually true.

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

What would even be the point of getting rid of the entrance exams ? Would the students that have been utterly failed by the school system have any chance whatsoever to get a university degree ? I mean, pretty much every science or engeneering degree starts with university level calculus in the first semester and build on that foundation later. If you don't understand that enough to use it after 4 months and without extra tutoring etc, you can basicaally pack your stuff and go home.
Which is why we have around 50% dropouts of science students in the first year. (And yes, most of that is because of calculus or other math topics) And that is with requirements that roughly equate to entry tests. We certainly don't want to have more students that can't make it.

One thing I would like to point out is that when Americans talk about the standardized tests, they aren't referring to university entrance exams like the ACT or SAT. They are talking about annual exams given to the students pretty much every grade level in both primary school and high school. The curriculum in many schools has been reshaped to force teachers to "teach for the exams", tailoring what is in their classes not to prepare the students for anything except the upcoming annual exam.

Ok, i have heard that the US universities treat their student more like "paying costumers" and really don't want to fail them. But i am not sure, how much of that is actually true.

It depends on the individual university, but I can tell you from my experience teaching college-level classes, that grade inflation has been a problem in many universities for years. Some schools actually enforced a hard limit on how many A grades an instructor was allowed to give out in any given class because it had become such a problem. Thankfully, the little private university I was employed at did a very good job in preventing the problem from getting widespread in our institution.