Standardized testing perpetuates inequality.
This issue is closely related to the previous one, and it’s a thorny problem. In the 19th century, the educationist and politician Horace Mann introduced standardized testing in the United States as a way of eliminating inbuilt privilege in the form of social class, wealth, or ethnicity. Ironically, then as now, standardized tests merely reinforced the advantage of those who were already privileged; socially- and economically-advantaged students outperform students from disadvantaged backgrounds for all the same reasons as I pointed out in the previous videoclip.
“… standardized tests are not really fair and helpful evaluation tools because they reward the ability to answer superficial questions quickly and do not measure the ability to think or create in any field. They also assume that all test takers have been exposed to a white, middle-class background.”
Institute of Education Sciences
