I finally got around to reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Chapter 2 is disturbing, to say the least. Gladwell cites a study conducted by two psychologists, Claude Steele and Joshua Aaronson. They gave black students a series of sample questions from the Graduate Record Exam, a test that can either be a gateway or a barrier to higher education. The students were given a questionnaire prior to testing. Some questionnaires included one particular question and others did not. The question? What is your race? Those who were given that question answered half as many test questions correctly.
The mind is like a pinball game, it seems. Throw in one experience and it bounces off a series of psychological associations. Growing up in America, we are constantly bombarded with racist images. These get embedded in the unconscious mind. Just asking a black student to name their ethnicity, it seems, is enough to aggravate these unconscious wounds. And it was enough to taint the test results.
So many factors can influence the performance of black students and give their teachers, their parents, and the students themselves a falsely negative image of their capabilities. This is functional racism, a situation where students of color are discriminated against because the testing conditions are unfair even if the test-makers and test-administrators didn’t consciously plan to implement discriminatory practices.
I’m not against testing; but I am opposed to using a single, standardized test as the sole judge of a student’s capabilities. Tests should be part of an array of tools used to judge students and to help guide their progress. Test-makers will often claim that their tests are culturally unbiased–but our society isn’t. And societal conditions have as much influence on test results as the tests themselves.
Are standardized tests infallible? No!
Read Well Think Well 