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Showing Original Post only (View all)Standardized testing originated in the eugenics movement [View all]
As Wayne Au explains in his book, Unequal By Design, standardized testing entered the public schools in the early 1900s as a way to graft scientific management models used in assembly line production onto the classroom by Taylorists and eugeniciststhe pseudo scientists that believed intelligence is genetic and that whites were biologically superior to other races or ethnic groups. Au writes,
Looking back to its origins in the eugenics movement, Standardized testing provided the technological apparatus for the functioning of the production model of education
.It is no coincidence that I.Q testing, eugenics and standardized testing all become prominent during the same period....
The point I made to the Gates foundation policy wonks was this: While they claim to be part of a 21st century civil rights movement for educationadvocating policies they insist are specifically designed to close the achievement gapthe standardized tests they demand were designed by racist pseudo-scientists of the early 20th century...
The SAT exam, for example, was developed by Carl Bringhamthe Army psychologist and racist eugenicist who used WWI data to declare that whites born inside the United States were the most intelligent of all peoples and that immigrants were genetically inferior. Contrary to the assertions of corporate education reformers who claim to be crusaders against the status quo in education, there is nothing innovative about advocacy for standardized testing; it is merely the repackaging of eugenics for the post racial era where it is passé to espouse racist ideas. Sadly, American society todayfrom the prisons to the schoolsis dominated by institutional racism. The purpose of standardized tests are the same as they were then: to categorize, sort, and rank black students, students of color, and working class kids at the bottom, while demonstrating the intellectual superiority of the wealthy and white students who score better on the tests. However, that white students score better on the tests is not a comment on their superior aptitude to students of color and low-income students, but rather of their advantagesprivate tutoring, books in the home, parents with more time to read to their kids, coming to school healthy and more focused, and tests that are created to reflect the values and norms of an affluent, white society.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/13-4