You then ask information relating to the history of certain people in a certain culture. (U.S. and Western) You declare that people who don't "know" your cultural information are academically unfit and unintelligent.
Your bias and conclusions thus make you a racist.
If someone with a doctorate from Japan doesn't know who Brigham is, does that mean they received a bad education?
This is not random cultural information we are talking about. It is technical and crucial to the discussion. Don't try to distort it. That's deceitful.
Read your post again. If the doctorate is in the history of mental tests in America, then the Japanese student absolutly did NOT get a good education.
How am I supposed to respond when you throw irrelevant gibberish at me? In order to know something you have to know about that thing. Plain and simple. If you don't know, then don't attack other people.
So far I've contributed the fact that these tests have their roots in attempts of proving white superiority. That's a fact, plain and simple. BRussel and I are discussing what goes beyond that.
If you are at all a good teacher, you would know that sitting back and listening is important sometimes, and when someone presents you with new information that might contradict your belief system, you should take some time away from the consumer product forum and study it before blurting out names like 'racist.'
Brigham is an interesting character. He was accused of being racist, but on the other hand, he opposed the use of the test for college admissions, because he believed it was "one of the most glorious fallacies in the history of science, namely that the tests measured native intelligence purely and simply without regard to training or schooling. The test scores very definitely are a composite including schooling, family background, familiarity with English and everything else" (from here).
But I think you're being extremely unfair to all those liberals who wanted the SAT in order to make admissions more egalitarian and less classist when you say "standardized tests were created to be racist." I think the real story is how standardized testing was pushed by liberals, but then the tests themselves betrayed those liberals.
Perhaps, but you know it's not that simple.
Brigham's expressed goal was to create an objective statistical picture. HOWEVER, his biases and the biases of the testers skewed the tests from every angle. From the tests themselves to the interpretation of results to the testing environment, everything contributed to extremely warped results and conclusions. This thurned the bulk of effort into attempting to justify racial beliefs with numbers.
Gould goes over every part of the testing and pieces it apart, clearly showing how bias skews testing of this sort from every way.
That is actually why it is absolutely crucial to read Gould's work on the history of testing. Any science historian will tell you that the objectivitiy of science is an illusion at best, although studying what others have done wrong MIGHT bring us closer.
The influence of bias in testing is complicated, and actually very counter-intuitive at times.
But like I said, I will read more on the SAT in particular. In the end I think we are talking about two different things: intention versus execution and interpretation.
This is not random cultural information we are talking about. It is technical and crucial to the discussion. Don't try to distort it. It's deceitful.
Read your post again. If the doctorate is in the history of mental tests in America, then the Japanese student absolutly did NOT get a good education.
How am I supposed to respond when you throw irrelevant gibberish at me? In order to know something you have to know about that thing. Plain and simple. If you don't know, then don't comment attack other people.
So far I've contributed the fact that these tests have their roots in attempts of proving white superiority. That's a fact, plain and simple. BRussel and I are discussing what goes beyond that.
If you are at all a good teacher, you would know that sitting back and listening is important sometimes, and when someone presents you with new information that might contradict your belief system, you should take some time away from the consumer product forum and study it before blurting out names like 'racist.'
No, what you have done is both proven and not proven something.
You have stated that tests based on random cultural information can be biased. This might have not been known 100 years ago, even by well intentioned people. However the fact that we know and can correct for that today does not mean all aptitude and intelligence tests are racist.
Now as you stated, it is possible to get an education in a field and to be expected to know certain core information in that field. It is possible to demonstrate knowledge in that field in a manner that is not biased or racist. We can use those results to determine if the quality of education was good or if the student applied themselves.
The conclusion? Well as you stated...
In order to know something you have to know about that thing. Plain and simple. If you don't know, then don't comment attack other people.
The test they are giving is not an intelligence test or even an aptitude test. It is a content based test. They are not curving or norming the results. The scores do not yield different rewards for different results. (i.e. if you score in the 90% you get X, while if you score in the 80%, you get Y) If you get above a certain score, you pass. You are allowed many and multiple attempts to get that passing score.
As you said if you know the content, it shows, plain and simple. If they don't know, they shouldn't go around attacking other people.
As a good teacher, what I did was reflect your views back on you, let you see them, and then let you explain and draw conclusions instead of what you initially did which was attacking and name calling. I could have just lectured at you about it, but that wouldn't be as interesting to you or myself.
so he believes there's a bias to the math section as well in standardized tests?
It's a good point you bring up, however the one thing I do know is that it is more complicated than we think. While my first inclination is to agree, if there's anything I've learned about this topic is that it is rarely intuitive. That's actually what makes the Gould book so useful. I'm not going to condense 100 pages of details into a post, but know that it is not what you would expect.
I believe that we should test students and yet that the test should not be the full measuring device for final analysis: I think that the problem of creating an environment where students learn towards testing rather than learn towards character development or 'edumacation' is a real problem.
ANd yet and yet and yet . ...
Right. The problem is that there's not much else to do. There are schools out there with no grades and no tests, where students are evaluated individually by the instructors, but as wonderful as that sounds, it's not very practical. As you and others have noted, the problem with all of the standardized testing these days is that they've been disproportionately privilieged in determining a student's ablities. But then again, there's not much else to do.
Quote:
Strangely enough, in that I am lumped together with those Liberal Conspiratorial agenda mongering pinkos, I actually believe in the notion of the Western Canon . . . I think that it should be porous and ever shifting, but, there should still be a touchstone of a historical tradition that defines excellence with regards to critical and literate thought.
but I also believe in balance
The Canon should also include Confucius, Lao Tzu, Buddhist texts, Mencius etc etc, and more contemporaneously, Mishima, Tanazaki, etc etc . . ..
Holy crap! Harold Bloomian Western Canon AND Matthew Arnold (touchstones) in one paragraph! I'm with you. I like the idea of a canon. I like ED Hirsch's arguments in favor of "cultural literacies" that ought to be expcted of all individuals. The real problem with your more inclusive canon, however, is that it just gets plain unmanageable. Sure, I'd love to teach Plato, Aristotle, Lao Tzu, some of the Bible, the Gita, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Christina Rossetti, Malory, Boewulf, Pynchon, Graham Swift, Browning, Arnold, Tolstoy, Sade, Silko, Hughes (pinko commie that he was ), Thackeray, Richardson, Defoe, Rhys, Joyce, Woolf, Fitzgerald... You get the point. It's too much. Sure, David Denby and H. Bloom and whoever else can sing the praises of the Great Books model of education, and they can point to Columbia's system.
But the canon is about exclusion, not inclusion. It's about making decisions about the longevity, worth, and consistent interest of a piece of art. And that's when arguments about the canon being expanded as we do all of this literary archaeology of women, minorities, etc. happen.
As an aside: over Xmas, I interviewed for a professorship at a NY-area school. My work is largely archaeological... "reclaiming women poets" who have fallen through the cracks and need some renewed attention. Feminist literary history. That kind of thing. At one point, I was asked whether I would have any trouble teaching the big guns of the c19 in a British Literature survey. I told them of course not. They said they had worried that the obscure writers would be all I wanted to teach. And after that, we had a nice little conversation about how you have to know the canon before you can really understand the material that's outside it. There's a place for all these folks, but there are foundations that MUST be laid before we can experiment. Otherwise we do our students a disservice.
The real problem in all of this, as I once heard Mary Poovey argue, is that the canon isn't based on anything inherently "good" about the work. It's based on the current set of critical tools we're (i.e. lit profs) are carrying around. When our tools work well with pieces, it stays interesting. When they don't, it gets dropped.
BRussell, thanks for the link and the information. It's nice that even at AppleOutsider, where thing can become heated, there are still people who answer honest questions honestly, without derision and name-calling.
Thanks, and yeah, some of us need to work on our manners.
But you must have just caught me on a good day; I can be just as derisive a name caller as anyone.
now that said: SDW are you a parody . . .. where do you come up with this 'indoktyranate with that ther libayrul genda' talk . . . . you have got to be kidding me.
you and scott are like cro magnon men of ideology: blunted eyebrow ridges and knuckles all a-draggin
Quote:
There are some good arguments here, pro and con. (well... except that moronic bit about a 'conspiratyrany of Librls') I'd like to modify my notion a bit:
There you have it.
giant:
Quote:
I really, really, really, really hope that sdw's distorted and completely uninformed world view does not reflect any sort of mainstream mentality. Background education is extremely important when trying to understand the world around you.
I find it particularly fightening that the person who started this thread calling for accountability in education is so obviously undereducated himself.
Well, there we have it. Disagree with a liberal and this is what happens. It's not enough to just disagree with a conservative. First, we have to insult the individual's intelligence! Silly me. If only I was self-aware enough to understand the concept of my own worldview. If only I had the education to understand...then I might agree.
Because you see....anyone who is enlightened MUST agree with the liberal position on this issue or any other, right? This is a common tactic of the Left. It's like they go to school to learn it (*cough*). In fact, it's not even called a "liberal" position. Conservative positions are labeled as such while liberal ones are painted as being mainstream.
The fact is that a High School Diploma means nothing in today's world. It doesn't stand for any particular skill(s). There is simply no better way to assess. This debate comes up in education all the time. New forms of assessment are tried for awhile, then discarded, then picked up again. I haven't seen a better option as of yet.
Finally, the "teaching to the test" cry is really flawed. The question is whether or not the test is an accurate measure of what needs to be learned. Students should have to demonstrate certain skills. Though there should be some exceptions for disability and the like, if students cannot pass the test (thereby demonstrating the ability to read, comprehend, write, etc.) they should not recieve a diploma.
As a teacher I know that there is virutally no real accountability for students. In PA, we cannot even hold back a student without parent permission. Students begin to figure this out, whether consciously or not. I have also taught in a High School and I can tell you first hand that the level of general knowledge and basic skills among many students is pathetic.
EDIT: Oh, and anyone that says the NEA and AFT aren't cogs in the liberal political machine has his head up his ass.
Where your wrong is your assumption that to have a problem with the standardization of intelligence is automatically a sign of liberal political groups mobilizing for ulterior motives . . .the manner in which you start off with that assumption is reactionary . . . I react to reactionary\
it just strikes me that if the bias in the test were due to cultural references etc, then we should see a huge difference between math scores and all other scores.
math scores should be normal, while all other racially/culturally sensative scores would be lower. i have no idea if there's a resource that shows a breakdown of say SAT scores based on race, and broken into math and verbal skills, but i'm willing to bet both scores are low. which would indicate to me that the problem doesn't lie in the test, but everything leading up to the test.
it just strikes me that if the bias in the test were due to cultural references etc, then we should see a huge difference between math scores and all other scores.
math scores should be normal, while all other racially/culturally sensative scores would be lower. i have no idea if there's a resource that shows a breakdown of say SAT scores based on race, and broken into math and verbal skills, but i'm willing to bet both scores are low. which would indicate to me that the problem doesn't lie in the test, but everything leading up to the test.
Actually what you would see is asians kicking the hell out of everyone's scores including native speakers of U.S. English who were born in America and are white. Asians score highest of all on the SAT.
I have witnessed 13 year old Korean kids come to the U.S. without knowing a word of English and watched them score higher in the SAT than whites who have spoken English their entire lives. The real problem of standardized testing should be that you can, with enough memorization, pretty much beat any test without true knowledge. What is funny is that the tests are declared racists by groups who declare that there is no "true knowledge" to anything in life.
I think that the tests themselves should be thoroughly reviewed for mistakes and also in order to
" weed out culturally specific knowledge based answers".
You speak about culture as if it were a slab of stone..forever the same & not constantly changing & being re-defined by those both in a outside the " Culture" or am I reading you wrong ?
I am unconfortable about the notion that we need to
" weed out culturally specific knowledge based answers ".
It is impossible to find a culturally balanced point of view in real life...we are always bound to upset one person or another...
Majority opinion has to be respected even if it is unpallatable...it's a fact of life.
But that doesn't mean I just turn over & take it in the arse; it means I try to change things through legitiamate avenues.
The alternative is chaos with everyone setting their own agendas.
Where your wrong is your assumption that to have a problem with the standardization of intelligence is automatically a sign of liberal political groups mobilizing for ulterior motives . . .the manner in which you start off with that assumption is reactionary . . . I react to reactionary
How about some punctuation next time?
And come on pfflam, do you mean to argue that liberal groups don't, in general, oppose standarized testing? I referenced two groups, the NEA and AFT. Both are part of the liberal politcal machine, just as the NRA is part of the conservative one.
What you fail to realize is that I am MEMBER of the NEA (and PSEA and my local, which will be unnamed for the moment) Why? Because of the Fair Bargaining Laws in PA. If I'm not, I essentially have to pay dues anyway. The union does provide some protection...supposedly...so I choose to pay and the get the benefits rather than pay and not get them.
if you've never taught in a public school, you haven't seen it first hand. The battle against accountability for students AND teachers is raging. Teacher's unions oppose real accountablity. They are not just slanted to the Left, they are full blown liberal/leftist mouthpieces. 90% (or more) of the candidates they endorse are Democrats. Do you really mean to tell me that all those Republicans oppose education? They oppose vouchers because they will "drain public schools" of needed funds. Meanwhile, parent and their children are locked into a system that they can't get out of (especially homeowners).
They oppose many of the things that need to happen to fix education in this country.
But more to the point, these groups really do influence what is taught. One of the biggest areas is the environment. I have personally witnessed assemblies that are best described as "environmental hysterics". It's gotten so bad that principals and teacher's believe it as well. It makes its way into the curriculum. The NEA and AFT generally support (or have supported in the past) the Leftist side of almost every issue, from evolution/creation to prayer in school to condom distribution. They oppose, as do many teachers, the No Child Left Behind Act....actually referring to it as the "so called" No Child Left Behind Act in publications. I should send you a copy of my local union proganda rag. It's hilarious.
The public schools DO indoctrinate children, just as the liberal higher education system indoctrinates adults.
And come on pfflam, do you mean to argue that liberal groups don't, in general, oppose standarized testing? I referenced two groups, the NEA and AFT. Both are part of the liberal politcal machine, just as the NRA is part of the conservative one.
Why does the NEA/AFT oppose this type of testing? Because they represent teachers, and teachers are opposed to this. Why are teachers opposed to this? Because this type of testing basically says "we don't trust you."
You speak about culture as if it were a slab of stone..forever the same & not constantly changing & being re-defined by those both in a outside the " Culture" or am I reading you wrong ?
I am unconfortable about the notion that we need to
" weed out culturally specific knowledge based answers ".
It is impossible to find a culturally balanced point of view in real life...we are always bound to upset one person or another...
Majority opinion has to be respected even if it is unpallatable...it's a fact of life.
But that doesn't mean I just turn over & take it in the arse; it means I try to change things through legitiamate avenues.
The alternative is chaos with everyone setting their own agendas.
Comments
Originally posted by trumptman
You then ask information relating to the history of certain people in a certain culture. (U.S. and Western) You declare that people who don't "know" your cultural information are academically unfit and unintelligent.
Your bias and conclusions thus make you a racist.
If someone with a doctorate from Japan doesn't know who Brigham is, does that mean they received a bad education?
This is not random cultural information we are talking about. It is technical and crucial to the discussion. Don't try to distort it. That's deceitful.
Read your post again. If the doctorate is in the history of mental tests in America, then the Japanese student absolutly did NOT get a good education.
How am I supposed to respond when you throw irrelevant gibberish at me? In order to know something you have to know about that thing. Plain and simple. If you don't know, then don't attack other people.
So far I've contributed the fact that these tests have their roots in attempts of proving white superiority. That's a fact, plain and simple. BRussel and I are discussing what goes beyond that.
If you are at all a good teacher, you would know that sitting back and listening is important sometimes, and when someone presents you with new information that might contradict your belief system, you should take some time away from the consumer product forum and study it before blurting out names like 'racist.'
Originally posted by BRussell
Brigham is an interesting character. He was accused of being racist, but on the other hand, he opposed the use of the test for college admissions, because he believed it was "one of the most glorious fallacies in the history of science, namely that the tests measured native intelligence purely and simply without regard to training or schooling. The test scores very definitely are a composite including schooling, family background, familiarity with English and everything else" (from here).
But I think you're being extremely unfair to all those liberals who wanted the SAT in order to make admissions more egalitarian and less classist when you say "standardized tests were created to be racist." I think the real story is how standardized testing was pushed by liberals, but then the tests themselves betrayed those liberals.
Perhaps, but you know it's not that simple.
Brigham's expressed goal was to create an objective statistical picture. HOWEVER, his biases and the biases of the testers skewed the tests from every angle. From the tests themselves to the interpretation of results to the testing environment, everything contributed to extremely warped results and conclusions. This thurned the bulk of effort into attempting to justify racial beliefs with numbers.
Gould goes over every part of the testing and pieces it apart, clearly showing how bias skews testing of this sort from every way.
That is actually why it is absolutely crucial to read Gould's work on the history of testing. Any science historian will tell you that the objectivitiy of science is an illusion at best, although studying what others have done wrong MIGHT bring us closer.
The influence of bias in testing is complicated, and actually very counter-intuitive at times.
But like I said, I will read more on the SAT in particular. In the end I think we are talking about two different things: intention versus execution and interpretation.
Gould goes over every part of the testing and pieces it apart, clearly showing how bias skews testing of this sort from every way.
so he believes there's a bias to the math section as well in standardized tests?
Originally posted by giant
This is not random cultural information we are talking about. It is technical and crucial to the discussion. Don't try to distort it. It's deceitful.
Read your post again. If the doctorate is in the history of mental tests in America, then the Japanese student absolutly did NOT get a good education.
How am I supposed to respond when you throw irrelevant gibberish at me? In order to know something you have to know about that thing. Plain and simple. If you don't know, then don't comment attack other people.
So far I've contributed the fact that these tests have their roots in attempts of proving white superiority. That's a fact, plain and simple. BRussel and I are discussing what goes beyond that.
If you are at all a good teacher, you would know that sitting back and listening is important sometimes, and when someone presents you with new information that might contradict your belief system, you should take some time away from the consumer product forum and study it before blurting out names like 'racist.'
No, what you have done is both proven and not proven something.
You have stated that tests based on random cultural information can be biased. This might have not been known 100 years ago, even by well intentioned people. However the fact that we know and can correct for that today does not mean all aptitude and intelligence tests are racist.
Now as you stated, it is possible to get an education in a field and to be expected to know certain core information in that field. It is possible to demonstrate knowledge in that field in a manner that is not biased or racist. We can use those results to determine if the quality of education was good or if the student applied themselves.
The conclusion? Well as you stated...
In order to know something you have to know about that thing. Plain and simple. If you don't know, then don't comment attack other people.
The test they are giving is not an intelligence test or even an aptitude test. It is a content based test. They are not curving or norming the results. The scores do not yield different rewards for different results. (i.e. if you score in the 90% you get X, while if you score in the 80%, you get Y) If you get above a certain score, you pass. You are allowed many and multiple attempts to get that passing score.
As you said if you know the content, it shows, plain and simple. If they don't know, they shouldn't go around attacking other people.
As a good teacher, what I did was reflect your views back on you, let you see them, and then let you explain and draw conclusions instead of what you initially did which was attacking and name calling. I could have just lectured at you about it, but that wouldn't be as interesting to you or myself.
Nick
Originally posted by alcimedes
so he believes there's a bias to the math section as well in standardized tests?
It's a good point you bring up, however the one thing I do know is that it is more complicated than we think. While my first inclination is to agree, if there's anything I've learned about this topic is that it is rarely intuitive. That's actually what makes the Gould book so useful. I'm not going to condense 100 pages of details into a post, but know that it is not what you would expect.
Originally posted by pfflam
I believe that we should test students and yet that the test should not be the full measuring device for final analysis: I think that the problem of creating an environment where students learn towards testing rather than learn towards character development or 'edumacation' is a real problem.
ANd yet and yet and yet . ...
Right. The problem is that there's not much else to do. There are schools out there with no grades and no tests, where students are evaluated individually by the instructors, but as wonderful as that sounds, it's not very practical. As you and others have noted, the problem with all of the standardized testing these days is that they've been disproportionately privilieged in determining a student's ablities. But then again, there's not much else to do.
Strangely enough, in that I am lumped together with those Liberal Conspiratorial agenda mongering pinkos, I actually believe in the notion of the Western Canon . . . I think that it should be porous and ever shifting, but, there should still be a touchstone of a historical tradition that defines excellence with regards to critical and literate thought.
but I also believe in balance
The Canon should also include Confucius, Lao Tzu, Buddhist texts, Mencius etc etc, and more contemporaneously, Mishima, Tanazaki, etc etc . . ..
Holy crap! Harold Bloomian Western Canon AND Matthew Arnold (touchstones) in one paragraph!
But the canon is about exclusion, not inclusion. It's about making decisions about the longevity, worth, and consistent interest of a piece of art. And that's when arguments about the canon being expanded as we do all of this literary archaeology of women, minorities, etc. happen.
As an aside: over Xmas, I interviewed for a professorship at a NY-area school. My work is largely archaeological... "reclaiming women poets" who have fallen through the cracks and need some renewed attention. Feminist literary history. That kind of thing. At one point, I was asked whether I would have any trouble teaching the big guns of the c19 in a British Literature survey. I told them of course not. They said they had worried that the obscure writers would be all I wanted to teach. And after that, we had a nice little conversation about how you have to know the canon before you can really understand the material that's outside it. There's a place for all these folks, but there are foundations that MUST be laid before we can experiment. Otherwise we do our students a disservice.
The real problem in all of this, as I once heard Mary Poovey argue, is that the canon isn't based on anything inherently "good" about the work. It's based on the current set of critical tools we're (i.e. lit profs) are carrying around. When our tools work well with pieces, it stays interesting. When they don't, it gets dropped.
I love talking about canon formation.
Cheers
Scott
Originally posted by mrmister
BRussell, thanks for the link and the information. It's nice that even at AppleOutsider, where thing can become heated, there are still people who answer honest questions honestly, without derision and name-calling.
Thanks, and yeah, some of us need to work on our manners.
But you must have just caught me on a good day; I can be just as derisive a name caller as anyone.
Originally posted by BRussell
But you must have just caught me on a good day; I can be just as derisive a name caller as anyone.
So can mrmister, though he scared to admit it. He's just mad because I called him out for ridiculing sjo, among others.
Originally posted by Moogs
This is just another case of the man keepin' us down....
wonderful summary.
now that said: SDW are you a parody . . .. where do you come up with this 'indoktyranate with that ther libayrul genda' talk . . . . you have got to be kidding me.
you and scott are like cro magnon men of ideology: blunted eyebrow ridges and knuckles all a-draggin
There are some good arguments here, pro and con. (well... except that moronic bit about a 'conspiratyrany of Librls') I'd like to modify my notion a bit:
There you have it.
giant:
I really, really, really, really hope that sdw's distorted and completely uninformed world view does not reflect any sort of mainstream mentality. Background education is extremely important when trying to understand the world around you.
I find it particularly fightening that the person who started this thread calling for accountability in education is so obviously undereducated himself.
Well, there we have it. Disagree with a liberal and this is what happens. It's not enough to just disagree with a conservative. First, we have to insult the individual's intelligence! Silly me. If only I was self-aware enough to understand the concept of my own worldview. If only I had the education to understand...then I might agree.
Because you see....anyone who is enlightened MUST agree with the liberal position on this issue or any other, right? This is a common tactic of the Left. It's like they go to school to learn it (*cough*). In fact, it's not even called a "liberal" position. Conservative positions are labeled as such while liberal ones are painted as being mainstream.
The fact is that a High School Diploma means nothing in today's world. It doesn't stand for any particular skill(s). There is simply no better way to assess. This debate comes up in education all the time. New forms of assessment are tried for awhile, then discarded, then picked up again. I haven't seen a better option as of yet.
Finally, the "teaching to the test" cry is really flawed. The question is whether or not the test is an accurate measure of what needs to be learned. Students should have to demonstrate certain skills. Though there should be some exceptions for disability and the like, if students cannot pass the test (thereby demonstrating the ability to read, comprehend, write, etc.) they should not recieve a diploma.
As a teacher I know that there is virutally no real accountability for students. In PA, we cannot even hold back a student without parent permission. Students begin to figure this out, whether consciously or not. I have also taught in a High School and I can tell you first hand that the level of general knowledge and basic skills among many students is pathetic.
EDIT: Oh, and anyone that says the NEA and AFT aren't cogs in the liberal political machine has his head up his ass.
Originally posted by SDW2001
Where your wrong is your assumption that to have a problem with the standardization of intelligence is automatically a sign of liberal political groups mobilizing for ulterior motives . . .the manner in which you start off with that assumption is reactionary . . . I react to reactionary
math scores should be normal, while all other racially/culturally sensative scores would be lower. i have no idea if there's a resource that shows a breakdown of say SAT scores based on race, and broken into math and verbal skills, but i'm willing to bet both scores are low. which would indicate to me that the problem doesn't lie in the test, but everything leading up to the test.
Originally posted by alcimedes
it just strikes me that if the bias in the test were due to cultural references etc, then we should see a huge difference between math scores and all other scores.
math scores should be normal, while all other racially/culturally sensative scores would be lower. i have no idea if there's a resource that shows a breakdown of say SAT scores based on race, and broken into math and verbal skills, but i'm willing to bet both scores are low. which would indicate to me that the problem doesn't lie in the test, but everything leading up to the test.
Actually what you would see is asians kicking the hell out of everyone's scores including native speakers of U.S. English who were born in America and are white. Asians score highest of all on the SAT.
I have witnessed 13 year old Korean kids come to the U.S. without knowing a word of English and watched them score higher in the SAT than whites who have spoken English their entire lives. The real problem of standardized testing should be that you can, with enough memorization, pretty much beat any test without true knowledge. What is funny is that the tests are declared racists by groups who declare that there is no "true knowledge" to anything in life.
Nick
Originally posted by pfflam
I think that the tests themselves should be thoroughly reviewed for mistakes and also in order to
" weed out culturally specific knowledge based answers".
You speak about culture as if it were a slab of stone..forever the same & not constantly changing & being re-defined by those both in a outside the " Culture" or am I reading you wrong ?
I am unconfortable about the notion that we need to
" weed out culturally specific knowledge based answers ".
It is impossible to find a culturally balanced point of view in real life...we are always bound to upset one person or another...
Majority opinion has to be respected even if it is unpallatable...it's a fact of life.
But that doesn't mean I just turn over & take it in the arse; it means I try to change things through legitiamate avenues.
The alternative is chaos with everyone setting their own agendas.
Where your wrong is your assumption that to have a problem with the standardization of intelligence is automatically a sign of liberal political groups mobilizing for ulterior motives . . .the manner in which you start off with that assumption is reactionary . . . I react to reactionary
How about some punctuation next time?
And come on pfflam, do you mean to argue that liberal groups don't, in general, oppose standarized testing? I referenced two groups, the NEA and AFT. Both are part of the liberal politcal machine, just as the NRA is part of the conservative one.
What you fail to realize is that I am MEMBER of the NEA (and PSEA and my local, which will be unnamed for the moment) Why? Because of the Fair Bargaining Laws in PA. If I'm not, I essentially have to pay dues anyway. The union does provide some protection...supposedly...so I choose to pay and the get the benefits rather than pay and not get them.
if you've never taught in a public school, you haven't seen it first hand. The battle against accountability for students AND teachers is raging. Teacher's unions oppose real accountablity. They are not just slanted to the Left, they are full blown liberal/leftist mouthpieces. 90% (or more) of the candidates they endorse are Democrats. Do you really mean to tell me that all those Republicans oppose education? They oppose vouchers because they will "drain public schools" of needed funds. Meanwhile, parent and their children are locked into a system that they can't get out of (especially homeowners).
They oppose many of the things that need to happen to fix education in this country.
But more to the point, these groups really do influence what is taught. One of the biggest areas is the environment. I have personally witnessed assemblies that are best described as "environmental hysterics". It's gotten so bad that principals and teacher's believe it as well. It makes its way into the curriculum. The NEA and AFT generally support (or have supported in the past) the Leftist side of almost every issue, from evolution/creation to prayer in school to condom distribution. They oppose, as do many teachers, the No Child Left Behind Act....actually referring to it as the "so called" No Child Left Behind Act in publications. I should send you a copy of my local union proganda rag. It's hilarious.
The public schools DO indoctrinate children, just as the liberal higher education system indoctrinates adults.
Originally posted by SDW2001
And come on pfflam, do you mean to argue that liberal groups don't, in general, oppose standarized testing? I referenced two groups, the NEA and AFT. Both are part of the liberal politcal machine, just as the NRA is part of the conservative one.
Why does the NEA/AFT oppose this type of testing? Because they represent teachers, and teachers are opposed to this. Why are teachers opposed to this? Because this type of testing basically says "we don't trust you."
Originally posted by aquafire
You speak about culture as if it were a slab of stone..forever the same & not constantly changing & being re-defined by those both in a outside the " Culture" or am I reading you wrong ?
I am unconfortable about the notion that we need to
" weed out culturally specific knowledge based answers ".
It is impossible to find a culturally balanced point of view in real life...we are always bound to upset one person or another...
Majority opinion has to be respected even if it is unpallatable...it's a fact of life.
But that doesn't mean I just turn over & take it in the arse; it means I try to change things through legitiamate avenues.
The alternative is chaos with everyone setting their own agendas.
Or worse....Thought Police