2024 April 15 State Testing is Modern Redlining
Today I have to get to school early to set up for state testing. I hate participating in something I find completely unethical. We as teachers should just refuse. One refusal seems meaningless, but if we did it together, changes would have to be made. Every year I tell myself I will not do things I don't believe in. Thank goodness this is my last year of teaching.
Why is it unethical? A ridiculous amount of resource$ goes into a test that is biased and plays into the unconstitutional school funding system. Districts receive grades based on student performance and everyone acts surprised that when all is said and done, the map is identical to the socioeconomic status map. Our country does not value diversity, and it certainly doesn't value economic diversity. Rich people benefit off of inequity. Rich people band together in communities of "good schools". Rich people won't buy houses in areas with "bad schools". When schools like Cleveland Metropolitan School District get low test scores, everyone's bias is confirmed. I'm going to say the quiet part out loud...the stereotype that the district gets...the stereotype that the city gets...Cleveland is a poor city with dumb people who live there. They call it "disadvantaged" but get mad when anyone points out the greedy advantages that go to suburban schools.
I'm going to back up my claim that the test itself is biased. We know from the failures of testing IQs around the world, that tests generally favor people with similar demographics as test makers. (Some folks are still misinformed that races of people have different IQ levels. I'm glad I was taught about testing bias in IQ testing. But look at how long misinformation persists even when it has long been disproven. People love to hang on to their stereotypes).
As a Spanish teacher, I often teach Standard American English grammar side by side. I am very careful when I bring this subject up. Many of my students are African-American and flip back and forth between Standards American English and African American Vernacular English (AAVE). AAVE is a language with its own rules and grammar. When we get to Spanish "being" verbs, for example, I make sure to highlight the AAVE differences in the word "be". There is a whole separate "habitual be" form that people who grew up speaking only Standard American English don't use. An example of habitual be is "She always be studying. That's how she's so good at it." There are many other ways AAVE is different from SAE. When I do this lesson, I always have at least one student tell me that AAVE is "ghetto English" and my heart breaks. Imagine internalizing that your mother tongue is not good.
State tests are written in Standard American English. For most white kids, who don't use AAVE, the test is written in their mother tongue. There is no translation or extra mental load necessary. When they write their essays on a computer, they don't get so many red underlines saying their grammar is wrong. The state writing tests are graded by computer. Who do you think gets a higher grade in grammar? White kids with no AAVE background have no code switching to do. They have less chance of "mistaking" the grammar. Does the computer even measure "good writing" if it cannot understand the complexity of deep thoughts? Absolutely not. In this case, white kids have an advantage. Mostly white suburbs get higher grades on state report cards, and everyone's bias is confirmed. Meanwhile these brilliant young Black poets get the message that they don't write well.
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