When a student scores in the Below Standard category of 1, there is a good chance that her or his answers were mere guesses, or that the test was so difficult, they simply gave up. How do such tests help nine year olds who are struggling to learn English, or poor students starting school without the advantages of pre-school and the enriched experiences that affluence brings? How do we advance the cause of equity by giving them the message: You are below standard and not on the road to be ready for college?Once again, we have a lazy, irresponsible approach to reform. Make the tests harder, and pretend you have done something to bring students into the mainstream. But we are stuck in this mechanistic, punitive, test, punish and reward paradigm. Forget about the myriad challenges facing students due to poverty and wealth inequality; realities that disproportionately affect blacks and Latinos. Forget about addressing the funding inequities within the schools themselves. Forget about the reality of stereotype threat, whereas students viewed by society as cognitively inferior (read: blacks/Latinos) are more likely to be come self-fulfilling prophecies, consciously or subconsciously under-performing on culturally-biased tests already pre-designed to set them up for failure. Forget about what William Darity, Jr., Darrick Hamiton and Alan Aja argued in the Huffington Post is the real curricular atrocity, which is a dual, segregated ability grouped curricula, whereas white children are more likely to be taught in an enriched, inter-disciplinary setting. Focus instead on setting a higher bar through more high stakes testing, and demand that everyone clear it. Education is and always has been a civil rights issue. Children of color deserve far better than they are getting now.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 04:01:31 +0000
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