You RAAAAACIST!
A federal judge in New York has struck down a test used by New York City to vet potential teachers, finding the test of knowledge illegally discriminated against racial minorities due to their lower scores.
At first glance, the city’s second Liberal Arts and Science Test (LAST-2) seems fairly innocuous. Unlike the unfair literacy tests of Jim Crow, LAST-2 was given to every teaching candidate in New York, and it was simply a test to make sure that teachers had a basic high school-level understanding of both the liberal arts and the sciences.
One sample question from the test asked prospective educators to identify the mathematical principle of a linear relationship when given four examples; another asked them to read four passages from the Constitution and identify which illustrated checks and balances. Besides factual knowledge, the test also checks basic academic skills, such as reading comprehension and the ability to read basic charts and graphs.
Nevertheless, this apparently neutral subject matter contained an insidious kernel of racism, because Hispanic and black applicants had a passage rate only 54 to 75 percent of the passage rate for whites.
Once their higher failure rate was established, the burden shifted to New York to prove that LAST-2 measured skills that were essential for teachers and therefore was justified in having a racially unequal outcome. While it might seem obvious that possessing basic subject knowledge is a key skill for a teacher, District Judge Kimba Wood said the state hadn’t met that burden.
Vouchers, please.
Is this the same Kimba Wood who had to withdraw her nomination to be Bill Clinton’s attorney general because she employed illegal aliens to babysit her privileged white children?
What a victory for liberal paternalism! The little brown skinned folk still need looking after!
wiki
>Judicial career
On December 18, 1987, based upon a recommendation from Senator Al D’Amato,[3] Wood was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to a seat on the District Court for the Southern District of New York vacated by Constance Baker Motley. Wood was confirmed by a unanimous United States Senate on April 19, 1988, and received her commission on April 20, 1988. She entered on duty on July 28, 1988.[4] She served as chief judge from 2006 to 2009 and assumed senior status on June 1, 2009.
One of Wood’s most famous decisions was sentencing Michael Milken, known as “The Junk Bond King”, in 1990 to ten years in prison; the sentence was reduced to two years’ imprisonment and three years’ probation in 1991.[5]
In the Nannygate matter of 1993, Wood was Bill Clinton’s second unsuccessful choice for United States Attorney General.[6] Like Clinton’s previous nominee, Zoë Baird, Wood had hired an undocumented immigrant as a nanny; although, unlike Baird, she had paid the required taxes on the employee, and had broken no laws. Wood employed the undocumented immigrant at a time when it was legal to do so, before enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made the hiring of undocumented foreign workers unlawful.[7] The threat of a repetition of the same controversy nevertheless led to the hasty withdrawal of Wood from consideration.[8][9] Janet Reno was later nominated and confirmed for the post.[8]<
Can we apply disparate impact theory to the NBA and NFL drafts?
Peter Berkowitz on Liberal Arts education and the illiberal Universities.
The certification process for teachers in public education is only about protecting mediocrity, not about educating students. The system is specifically designed to keep qualified people out, not to provide teachers who’ve mastered the material they are teaching.
Mortars, please.
“Mortars, please.”
No. I say we take off and nuke it from orbit.
It’s the only way to be sure.
we would have to involve the Russians cause the failmerican space program sucks putindick
I see a clear “twopher” here …
Have the teacher candidates take the Common Core tests … then the judge can declare them racist.
Two problems solved.
It really is unfair, you are only supposed to ask them things they know, not things they are supposed to have learned.
I have an idea. Let’s have a group of Black scholars design an aptitude test they think would favor black students. Have Hispanic scholars design a test for Hispanic students. Give both tests to whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians and see the results.
The really ironic thing here in California is that the high school exit exam (CAHSEE) and the teacher qualification test (California Basic Educational Skills test CBEST) are both written to an 8th grade level.
So all they are expecting is that teachers know at least as much as the students are expected to know when they graduate. I know of people who have failed the CBEST after taking it six times.
gahrie
IMHO that is one of the reasons why college is lasting 5 years or more. High school students are taking a ton more “remedial” classes because they got short shrift in high school.
No wonder so many good & great teachers burn out. I just want to scream.
“I have an idea. Let’s have a group of Black scholars design an aptitude test they think would favor black students. Have Hispanic scholars design a test for Hispanic students. Give both tests to whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians and see the results.”
Or they could write the test in Spangbonics. That aughta even the playing field;^)
Emoji,
Or maybe even test in “Talk Backwards.”
My suspicion is that even when you “dumb down” a test, people who do well on tests still do much better than those who don’t. Also if the test could somehow be culturally biased toward Blacks or Hispanics, the Asians and White kids would probably still score higher.
I suspect it isn’t the content of the test that is the problem.
Everything on the internet convinces me I’ve always been meant to suffer Casandra’s fate.
The world is the bailiwick of Naked Emperors and their fawning sycophants, most of whom are too dumb to recognize their positions as useful idiots and too filled with “self-esteem” to ever confront their own moral and intellectual failures. They are pristine stooges. SOMA-soaked slaves caught in a Matrix lorded over not by machines but rather by insidious, evil, self-interested humans.
It’s a world perfectly fit for the types of people presuming to run it, in other words. Including those who presume to speak for “us.” Who are so used to stabbing friendlies in the back they now take it for granted that everyone else would, as well.
I spit on all of them, then rinse off the spit with a stream of extra hot piss.
The above is exactly why we miss your regular commentary Jeff.
It made my day.