Protesters Call High School Exit Exam 'Racist' (Critics Say Tests Are Biased Toward Whites, Asians)

NBC - 4 ^ | February 26, 2003

[goose]

I am saddened, really saddened.

...meanwhile innocent black and latino bunnies, kittens, and harp seals are being runover by white SUVs everyday!

[finnman69]

Have you ssen the MTV ghetto rap videos these days with Jay Z and P Diddy on yachts and in helicopters landing on yachts and driving Ferraris?
These kids know what a yacht is.

[Lael]

Yes, heaven forbid we actually test and expect understanding of proper english and not ebonics or spanglish in our testing.

Notice that Asians are considered de facto "white", as though someone from Burma, Thailand, China, or Korea, etc. didn't have to overcome language or cultural barriers.

In other words, how come Asians are "Racist" because they can 'cut the Mustard'?

[Old Professer]

I didn't know there were any non-latino white people left in Los Angeles, let alone in the high schools.

[Roughneck]

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

. . .and very little minds I sucpect.

[Lost Highway]

Actually they are biased against stupid people regardless of race.

[jonathanmo]

If you can believe it...

"The problems with standardized tests often include a class or racial bias. For instance, the influential Standard Achievement Test (SAT) requires students to be familiar with terms like "conservatory" and "regatta." Another state reading test had a number of questions on a passage, with a chart, from Consumer Reports on frequent-flyer traveler benefits. As one teacher asked, "If students didn't score well, was it because they can't read or because they don't have the background knowledge?" (see "'High-Stakes' Harm," p. 14). Such tests can skew results in a dangerous way, given how scores are used to justify a wide range of stereotyping and tracking."

http://interversity.org/lists/arn-l/archives/mar1999_date/msg00009.html

[June Cleaver]

LOL . . . but geesh, making the tests easier to help them pass isn't going to help them. Take me back to the thread about RAISING A NATION OF DUMBIES!! hehe

[raybbr]

Anything that forces these cretins to think is considered racist. Just another cry of "wolf" from the "everything is racist if I'm not getting free money" crowd.

[scouse]

If a polo ball has an initial speed of 10 meters / second and it left the mallet and an angle of 30 degrees, how much time will it take to land? Express results in millichuckers.

This is a trick question and cannot be answered. You omitted the color of the pony.

[FITZ]

Very little time for studying too I'm sure.

[FITZ]

I didn't know there were any non-latino white people left in Los Angeles, let alone in the high schools.

It's the same here ---there are schools that are 95% or more hispanic and they've done everything they could to make them their schools, most classes are bilingual and only Mexican culture is taught, almost all school meals are tacos and enchildadas ---and the whites still do better. What more can be done?

[js1138]

Life is biased towards those who master the content being tested here. I pity the students, because Black "leaders" give only token support to education, the only real way out of the ghetto.

[MattAMiller]

I suspect that a close look would reveal that low scoring students tend to miss the same questions regardless of race.

In my experience smart people who know lots of stuff learn more outside of school than inside of it. Respect for education matters more than anything else.

[SauronOfMordor]

Presumably, some questions are racist to different degrees, while other aren't, and statistics would bear this out. Why not just toss out the questions on which blacks and hispanics fared disproportionally poorly, and tell us the results? Hmmm?

Except that any such questions have long been eliminated from standardized tests. Locating such questions is easy: for each group of test takers having the same score, separate the White and Black results, and see if any question was answered wrongly more often by Blacks. then scream.

The reason you don't hear screams about specific questions is because BOTH WHITE AND BLACK LOW-SCORERS MISS THE SAME QUESTIONS

[ladylib]

The LAUSD, from what I've read, has few textbooks for students. The administration does have beautiful offices, as well as fancy cars and other perks for their administrators. The district is corrupt.

[ZULU]

Testing SHOULD be culturally biased. It should be biased towards the type of society in which an individual is expected to live.

[Publius6961]

teacher: "2+2=4"

Nope.

"2+2 before"