Posted on 04/07/2015 7:33:31 PM PDT by reaganaut1
A federal judge is questioning whether a new exam for aspiring teachers in New York is discriminatory against minorities, a case that could derail the states efforts to create a more rigorous set of tests for entry into the profession.
Black and Hispanic applicants have been passing one of the exams, intended to measure reading and writing skills, at lower rates than white candidates, prompting concerns of decreased diversity in the teaching ranks.
The judge, Kimba M. Wood of Federal District Court in Manhattan, has asked the state for extensive documentation on the development of the test, which was first given during the 2013-14 school year.
The request came as part of a long-running case brought in 1996 by black and Hispanic teachers against New York City. In 2012, Judge Wood ruled that an older state-certification test, which was intended to measure teachers knowledge of the liberal arts and science, was racially discriminatory.
Although compensation has not yet been awarded, the city is expected to have to pay back wages to several thousand teachers who were demoted to being substitutes from the early 1990s to 2004, or were never hired as full-time teachers because they did not pass the older test.
The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Joshua Sohn, a partner at Mishcon de Reya New York, said that he did not know if the new test, the Academic Literacy Skills Test, was discriminatory. But, he said, given the fact that blacks and Hispanics are passing the test at lower levels than whites, the court has an obligation to ensure that the historical discrimination is not continuing.
The State Education Department declined to comment on the judges request, citing the pending litigation.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Since the average IQs of American Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks are 100, 90, and 85, any academic test will have a "disparate impact".
Perhaps there just might be a reason other than bias, NYT.
Think about it.
Oh, forgot, you are journalists.
Too bad you didn’t get a real major in college.
Is that THE Kimba Wood, of failed appointment to US AG, because she turned out to be too sane for Hillary?
And too good looking to be trusted anywhere near Bill IIRC
Why do we continue to insist upon sacrificing excellence on the altar equality?
“A federal judge is questioning whether a new exam for aspiring teachers in New York is discriminatory against minorities,”
It must be a real and hard test that actually does what it’s
supposed to do.
“Black and Hispanic applicants have been passing one of the exams, intended to measure reading and writing skills, at lower rates than white candidates, prompting concerns of decreased diversity in the teaching ranks.”
Diversity trumps actually being qualified for the job.
So we dumb down American society to accommodate diversity.
We are only allowed to be as smart as the dumbest teacher
that barely passed the teacher test. That’s how they set
speed limits, so the dumbest drivers who barely passed the
driving test can drive safely. It’s why government only
hires the unemployable. Diversity = a dumb society.
Doesn't anyone ever say that maybe it is because the whites paid attention in school and actually prepared for the test???
If we eliminate Asians and other minorities from the statistics and compare just White and Black students, we find that 5.8 percent of all White SAT test takers scored 700 or above on the verbal portion of the test. But only 0.79 percent of all Black SAT test takers scored at this level. Therefore, Whites were more than seven times as likely as Blacks to score 700 or above on the verbal SAT. Overall, there are more than 39 times as many Whites as Blacks who scored at least 700 on the verbal SAT.
On the math SAT, only 0.7 percent of all Black test takers scored at least 700 compared to 6.3 percent of all White test takers. Thus, Whites were nine times as likely as Blacks to score 700 or above on the math SAT. Overall, there were 45 times as many Whites as Blacks who scored 700 or above on the math SAT.
If we raise the top-scoring threshold to students scoring 750 or above on both the math and verbal SAT a level equal to the mean score of students entering the nation's most selective colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, and CalTech we find that in the entire country 244 Blacks scored 750 or above on the math SAT and 363 Black students scored 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Nationwide, 33,841 students scored at least 750 on the math test and 30,479 scored at least 750 on the verbal SAT. Therefore, Black students made up 0.7 percent of the test takers who scored 750 or above on the math test and 1.2 percent of all test takers who scored 750 or above on the verbal section.
Once again, if we eliminate Asians and other minorities from the calculations and compare only Blacks and Whites, we find that 0.2 percent of all Black test takers scored 750 or above on the verbal SAT compared to 2.2 percent of all White test takers. Thus, Whites were 11 times as likely as Blacks to score 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Overall, there were 49 times as many Whites as Blacks who scored at or above the 750 level.
On the math SAT, only 0.16 percent of all Black test takers scored 750 or above compared to 1.8 percent of White test takers. Thus, Whites were more than 11 times as likely as Blacks to score 750 or above on the math SAT. Overall, there were more than 61 times as many Whites as Blacks who scored 750 or above on the math section of the SAT.
In a race-neutral competition for the approximately 50,000 places for first-year students at the nation's 25 top-ranked universities, high-scoring Blacks would be buried by a huge mountain of high-scoring non-Black students. Today, under prevailing affirmative-action admissions policies there are about 3,000 Black first-year students matriculating at these 25 high-ranking universities, about 6 percent of all first-year students at these institutions. But if these schools operated under a strict race-neutral admissions policy where SAT scores were the most important qualifying yardstick, these universities could fill their freshman classes almost exclusively with students who score at the very top of the SAT scoring scale. As shown previously, Black students make up at best between 1 and 2 percent of these high-scoring groups.
Did they write the test in English?
Asking teaches to sign their paperwork in cursive is racist!
All that and African-Americans comprised 76.3 percent of all NBA players.
And I could not get a tryout for the NBA.
Perhaps I was discriminated against!
Where’s my payout?
http://www.tidesport.org/RGRC/2013/2013_NBA_RGRC.pdf
I definitely can see their point if the test was written in cursive.
What a bunch of hoo-ha. I took that exam, and received 292 points out of a possible 300. Biased? Only if you can’t read, write, or use math very well.
They should make sample tests available to the public.
IQs need to be based on relevant experience to be accurate. An IQ test that focuses on agricultural data will be slanted towards those growing up on farms and have lower scores for those residing in cities.
The real problem isn't that their brains aren't capable - it's the lack of family structure and sense of responsibility that fosters actual studying and application of oneself.
Your facts are racist.
The entire test could be written in Ebonics and deal entirely with ghetto scenarios. The results would be the same. Asians and Whites would do best.
I agree - once again, I attribute it to family structure and sense of responsibility rather than "they're just too dumb". When I was in school in the '50s and '60s, we had a fair number of Blacks in school and they all did just fine. Then, Johnson's "great society" took effect and destroyed them - just as he intended.
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