Standardized test scores for college entrance "appear to calcify differences based on class, race/ethnicity and parental educational attainment," says a national organization of college admissions counselors. In other words, SAT-type tests reward privilege. "That's not a meritocracy - it's a caste system."
SATs Stymie Race and Class Mobility
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
"Standardized tests tend to freeze already existing societal privilege in place."
There is a growing realization that standardized testing for college entrance does not serve the interests of educational excellence or reward merit. Rather, SATs, PSATs and their clones tend to freeze already existing societal privilege in place, allowing the already well-off to pass on that status to their children. The assessment comes from the National Association of College Admissions Counseling, and from no less than Harvard University's dean of admissions and financial aid, William Fitzsimmons.
Fitzsimmons says, "The test scores appear to calcify differences based on class, race/ethnicity and parental educational attainment." In other words, the children of white parents who make good livings and had good educations, tend to do well in standardized tests. But the tests don't reliably predict how well the kids will do in college.
The educators note the vast differences that exist in life and learning experiences that are available to children in the United States. "No one who visits the range of secondary schools we visit," they concluded, "and goes to the communities we visit...can come away thinking the standardized tests can be a measure of someone's true worth or ability."
The admissions counselors also urged that PSATs not be used to decide who is eligible for scholarships.
"Real education is grinding to a halt at schools across the nation, under the weight of relentless, ruthless testing."
This is very good news, the logic of which would be to finally destroy the rule of standardized tests - not just for college, but throughout the educational system. There is a huge body of study that shows race and class privilege is further embedded in society through the use of these tests, which have become a bulwark of rigidity, not mobility, in the United States. And that most emphatically means breaking the classist, racist grip of hyper-testing in elementary and secondary education, through the stifling No Child Left Behind Act.
The Bush regime and the plutocrats it serves understand perfectly well that class and race structures reinforce the rule of...people like themselves. That's one reason they have imposed the draconian and educationally counter-productive standardized testing regime on the U.S. public education system. The other, related motivation is to "prove" public schools are failing, in order to boost private schooling and bogus theories of "marketplace education."
In ways that are only now being understood, real education is grinding to a halt at schools across the nation, under the weight of relentless, ruthless testing. In the process, teacher creativity, innovation and just plan caring fall by the wayside.
Standardized testing does not encourage the deepening of democracy. Instead, it rewards privilege. This outcome is cumulative, adding layer upon layer of culture- and class-biased test results to all the other burdens and assaults that children of non-privileged parents will endure in their school lives. That's not a meritocracy - it's a caste system.
There will always be a place for properly constructed testing in society. But tests should never be wielded as weapons against those born with less, to benefit the already fortunate.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
If Fox News is the Republican ministry of TV propaganda, MSNBC is the mouthpiece of the White House and corporate Democrats. The last real journalist in an MSNBC host spot was Phil Donahue, fired for…
Elon Musk & DOGE are targeting one of Kansas City’s most prominent Black-led neighborhood councils—slashing a federal grant and threatening a vital food sovereignty movement.
Elon Musk is Donald Trump's right-hand man and viewed as an evil incarnate, but it was Barack Obama's administration which bailed out Tesla with a $465 million loan in 2009. Both wings of the duopoly…
Israel initiated a massive assault against the West Bank, displacing tens of thousands of people. As the terror and destruction go on, settlers continue to steal land as part of Israel's expansionist…
After the CIA orchestrated the 2004 coup in Haiti, the U.S. ushered in a genocidal paramilitary organization from the Balkans to violently remove all resistance to regime change efforts.
