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Protesters Call High School Exit Exam 'Racist' (Critics Say Tests Are Biased Toward Whites, Asians)
NBC - 4 ^ | February 26, 2003

Posted on 04/11/2003 11:04:18 AM PDT by Michael2001

LOS ANGELES -- Demonstrators urged the Los Angeles school board Tuesday to reconsider the use of tests they say are racist and unfair to blacks and Latinos.

Some people believe the California High School Exit Exam and other standardized tests are culturally biased toward whites and Asians.

"We are concerned about the racist tests that are going on in the schools today," said Paige Leven of the Coalition for Educational Justice.

The demonstration was timed to coincide with proposal from school board members Genethia Hudley Hayes, who is black, and Jose Huizar, who is of Latino descent. They want state officials to explore the "legal, financial and policy implications of establishing a moratorium on the high stakes consequences of the (high school exit exam)."

At the same time, Hayes and Huizar want to continue using results from the exit exam as a "diagnostic tool."

Whites and students of Asian descent typically score better than blacks and Latinos on standardized tests. Huizar said the gap was at least a "20-25 percent disparity."

Last spring, the school board voted 4-1 to consider alternatives to the Stanford 9 and high school exit exam after Hayes and Huizar suggested the tests were biased against nonwhites from poor families.

But Superintendent Roy Romer said the two tests are required by state law.

Tuesday, Hayes and Huizar proposed that the district consider adopting or expanding "alternative or interim assessments to improve the quality of information available to individual classroom teachers."

The alternatives would include "language arts performance assignments" for grades 2-9 and quarterly assessments in math.

Hayes and Huizar also want to create a task force to devise an "Opportunity to Learn Index that would provide public information on ... students' equitable access to tools, resources and materials that inform the educational conditions under which they are assessed."

Demonstrators said many inner-city students were disadvantaged.

"We have very little funds. We have very little books," said Victor Banuelos, an 11th-grade student at Los Angeles High School.

Hayes said she was concerned that the district was considering offering two kinds of high school diplomas -- one saying the student passed the exit exam, and the other saying he or she did not.

The school board will vote on the Hayes-Huizar proposal in two weeks.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Miscellaneous; US: California
KEYWORDS: education
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To: Michael2001
Racist Tests? I insist all tests be reviewed by a ministry of sensitivity. Certain numbers adding up together while excluding others certainly is evidence of discrimination. I'm sure the problem exists in subjects other than math. Vowels, why do vowels receive special treatment and get to be included in most words? They must be white or Asian.
121 posted on 04/12/2003 8:20:53 AM PDT by RGSpincich
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To: MattAMiller
"Respect for education matters more than anything else."

BINGO!

122 posted on 04/12/2003 8:36:29 AM PDT by headsonpikes (Help me decide: Is the Left morally corrupt and intellectually bankrupt, or vice versa?)
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To: HardStarboard
These tests are racist because they ask questions based on the knowledge required to make a living in this free society.

In the schools here they've changed questions to be racist the other way ---if you have $3.00 and tacos are $0.50 a piece, how many tacos can you buy ---and still they get the same results ---the white and asian kids still do better ---what else can they do? They're giving the standardized state tests in Spanish now also ---but it isn't helping the drop-out rate.

123 posted on 04/12/2003 8:47:59 AM PDT by FITZ
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To: honeygrl
If they gave them bigger books, they'd complain they were too heavy to carry back and forth to school.
124 posted on 04/12/2003 8:49:25 AM PDT by FITZ
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To: FITZ
"and the whites still do better."

Could it be possible that more (though certainly not all) of white and Asian parents place a higher emphasis on education and actually expect their children to pass their classes?

125 posted on 04/12/2003 9:07:06 AM PDT by Ches (Mrs.)
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To: zuggerlee
What the article did not point out is that on average white students from blue collar families outperform black and hispanic children of college educated white collar parents.

Source??
Link???

126 posted on 04/12/2003 9:10:02 AM PDT by george wythe
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To: FITZ
I weighed my backback that I carried around all day at school once... it weighed 30Lbs. I weighed 100lbs. Think I could sue the school for not having lockers in a place that I could actually get to in time to make it to class on time which caused me to have back problems already at 25? :) It's not like they are actually using their money to educate children anyway.
127 posted on 04/12/2003 10:05:33 AM PDT by honeygrl (Soylent Green is PEOPLE!)
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To: Starboard
{cleaning up the "white" words...regatta & yacht}

Come now. Poor minorities would surely know what these words mean. After all, the NEA has made cultural diversity a number one priority in the government schools.
128 posted on 04/12/2003 11:55:48 AM PDT by Kuksool
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To: Kuksool
Poor minorities would surely know what these words mean.

Obviously when they give certain tests, the child must look down at their skin or remember their last name before they answer the questions. If they read a book and know the answer, it's up to them to forget it to remain true to their heritage. For the multiculturalists, it's important that hispanic kids know who Emiliano Zapata was but never learn who Thomas Jefferson was, black kids can know who Jesse Jackson is but they shouldn't know about any famous whites.

129 posted on 04/12/2003 12:37:29 PM PDT by FITZ
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To: Michael2001
The Union is going to complain about any method of actually measuring whether or not teachers in public education are actually doing the work they are supposed to be doing. Simple.

The education system is racist, not the tests. Vouchers would solve this problem.
130 posted on 04/12/2003 6:57:11 PM PDT by bdeaner
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To: newyorkronin
A full voucher system where corporal punishment is used to instill proper behavior is the only hope for de-ghettotizing and restoring order.

I agree with you 100% that the Unions must go, and the voucher system must be put in place if we are going to see any positive change in the education system.

HOWEVER, I disagree that corporal punishment is necessary; and, moreoever, it would never ever fly in our current, letigious society, even if it would be productive. There are many ways to discipline and garner respect from children without beating them.
131 posted on 04/12/2003 7:05:15 PM PDT by bdeaner
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To: sit-rep
I dare one to layout the following display...

Whites and Asians who listen to rap music? _________

Blacks and Latinos who listen to country and rock-n-roll? _______

I think the answer to number one will parallel the whites and asians who fall in with the failing blacks and latinos. I think the answer to number two, will show blacks and latinos who listen to country and rock-n-roll will be graduating in the top 50%...

Justa hypothisis...


Are you having loose associations today or what?

Seriously, one's taste in music surely has no effect on performance in school. If there is any correlation between the two, it would be due to some third factor, e.g., black kids who listen to white music because they are adopted by white parents who live in wealthy neighborhoods with good school systems. But I know a lot of bright kids who like rap music. One of them is my younger step-sister, now a Senior in high school, who got a perfect score on her SAT and just got accepted to Penn.
132 posted on 04/12/2003 7:10:04 PM PDT by bdeaner
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To: cyborg
My sister has black friends who are teacher aides in public school that are predominantly black. The teachers could care less about black students. The white teachers assume that since many of the black students don't want to learn, then ALL of them don't want to learn.

I agree this is a big problem. There is a lot of empirical research that shows how teacher expectations effect student performance. If the teacher has low expectations for black students and high expectations for white students, that is going to have an impact. We know this without a doubt. The findings have been replicated in many, many studies.
133 posted on 04/12/2003 7:11:44 PM PDT by bdeaner
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To: FITZ
What more can be done?

ETAE

El Testo Aptitudino Espanol

134 posted on 04/12/2003 7:13:33 PM PDT by reg45
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To: Warrior Nurse
Newton's 3rd law of thermodynamics

Newton devised a third law of dynamics (or motion) in the 17th century. The third law of thermodynamics wasn't devised until about two hundred years later. You are the weakest link - Goodbye!

135 posted on 04/12/2003 7:23:36 PM PDT by reg45
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To: reelfoot
Can anyone explain to me how you can make math racist? How about chemistry? Physics?

You've obviously never read Allan Sokal's "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," which begins:

"..But deep conceptual shifts within twentieth-century science have undermined this Cartesian-Newtonian metaphysics; revisionist studies in the history and philosophy of science have cast further doubt on its credibility; and, most recently, feminist and poststructuralist critiques have demystified the substantive content of mainstream Western scientific practice, revealing the ideology of domination concealed behind the façade of ``objectivity''. It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical ``reality'', no less than social ``reality'', is at bottom a social and linguistic construct; that scientific ``knowledge", far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential; and consequently, that the discourse of the scientific community, for all its undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities. These themes can be traced, despite some differences of emphasis, in Aronowitz's analysis of the cultural fabric that produced quantum mechanics; in Ross' discussion of oppositional discourses in post-quantum science; in Irigaray's and Hayles' exegeses of gender encoding in fluid mechanics; and in Harding's comprehensive critique of the gender ideology underlying the natural sciences in general and physics in particular..."

Did you catch all that? The community of the scientific value, for all its marginalized discourse, cannot emanate a counter-hegemonic epistemological narratives with respect to privileged status asserting from dissident or undeniable communities.

136 posted on 04/12/2003 7:26:26 PM PDT by maxwell (Well I'm sure I'd feel much worse if I weren't under such heavy sedation...)
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To: maxwell
That gobble-dee-gook is harder to read than Ebonics!
137 posted on 04/12/2003 7:32:45 PM PDT by reg45
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To: fiddlinjim
Stupid people shouldn't breed.
138 posted on 04/12/2003 7:36:16 PM PDT by POGIFFMOO (illegitimi non carborundum)
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To: reg45; reelfoot
And let us not forget Luce Irigaray's famous article ``Is the Subject of Science Sexed?'', quoted in above by Sokal, in which she points out that...

"..the mathematical sciences, in the theory of wholes [théorie des ensembles], concern themselves with closed and open spaces ... They concern themselves very little with the question of the partially open, with wholes that are not clearly delineated [ensembles flous], with any analysis of the problem of borders [bords] ..."

[snortle] I don't think I can keep from laughing out loud any longer... God, Sokal makes me proud of the profession... For those of you who are curious, check out Sokal's self-expose, "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies", which starts out--

"..to test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment:
Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies -- whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross -- publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes."

(All emphases mine)

139 posted on 04/12/2003 7:41:25 PM PDT by maxwell (Well I'm sure I'd feel much worse if I weren't under such heavy sedation...)
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To: familyofman
"Can anyone explain to me how you can make math racist?

Buff and Bubba are on the 14th hole at Agusta (a par 5) with Buff six strokes up. How many points must Bubba shave per hole if Bubba is to have a greater than 50% chance of "pencil whipping" Buff by the end of the round.

140 posted on 04/12/2003 7:42:22 PM PDT by Smedley
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