Athletes have lower test scores

But the colleges are paying the price - as well as society - because good, smart people aren't realizing their potential. And one of the gatekeepers are standardized tests that do a very superficial job recognizing academic potential.

 

It does. But it should be the right ditch diggers. I don't want someone who could have cured cancer, given the opportunity, dropping my fries at McDonald's.

 

Different school districts teach different things. Those standardized test are culturally biased. That has been proven time and time again.

 

You're right.
But lets not retard the entrance requirements for Universities.
The problem begins in poor home enviorments and leaches to horrendous middle school years. By the time the kids you are most concerned about start taking the PSATs they can barely spell SAT.
The SATs test a baseline level of knowledge that we all agree approximate the average level of education for admittance to post-secondary education.

And, if you want to really address an issue for the kids you are posting about, figure out a way to dole out athletic scholarships only to kids that would otherwise gain blind admittance to the university. And lets not hear about ballet dancers and violinists. One, how many arts scholarships are given out compared to football scholarships. Two, those kids test pretty damn high nayway.

 

How can math be culturally biased? Formulas are formulas. They don't take on different meanings when you cross the tracks.

And English is a learned language. If people from certain areas aren't learning it properly, it's a failure of the schools they attend, not culture.

 

It's not a "failure of the schools." These people are making like $30,000 to teach kids who get no discipline at home, who don't even show up half the time, who bounce from apartment to apartment, changing schools every two months.

And you blame the schools? The teachers who should be candidates for sainthood?

Please.

 

The SAT and ACT are (allegedly) judging kids based on what will be learned at the next level.

The problem is that at most inner city schools, kids aren't being prepared adequately for the next level. Meanwhile, over at Suburban White Collar High, the kids are learning everything they need to know to succeed in college. They may not learn a damn thing about how the world actually works, but they'll crush the ACT/SAT and get into great colleges and universities. Meanwhile, the inner city kids, assuming they even make it college, are at community colleges and big public schools unless they're great athletes or were one of the ones inclined enough to work their asses off to make up for the disadvantages they received from society, their parents and their education system.

For a country that has so many innovative thinkers and educators and so much power and influence, we do a shitty job educating the masses. And it will be like that as long as we continue ludicrous practices like basing school funding on property taxes.

 

Well, of course, the answer is the front end. Early childhood education. Which our incoming president recognizes and plans to make a priority.

My thoughts on the SAT, ACT, etc., etc. are band-aids that don't address the symptoms, but are instead trying to compensate for and undo all the damage that has been done up to that point.

Probably a fool's errand in most cases, sadly.

 

I meant to use the blue font. I totally agree. It's the failure of the value system. But not testing system is going to account for that. The schools have no chance. None.

 

It's not the curriculum that's different. It's the quality of the educators and the resources which the educators and students are provided with.

Go to the library at a big suburban school and compare it to the one at Inner City High. Compare the after school services of each. Compare the extracurricular activities. Look at the amenities -- the cafeterias, the offices, the desks and the classrooms -- that have large effects on the learning environment.

The blame goes a lot of places -- parents, teachers, students themselves and the education system. But it is our job as a country to provide everyone with opportunity, and some of the inner city public schools don't do that. Sure, there may be one kid every year who heads to college, graduates in four years and gets a great job, but is that really the percentage we're shooting for?

Disregarding the out-of-school problems, some of these kids are so far behind suburban and private school students just because of the school they went to that expecting them to perform with 200 points of the suburban kids on the SAT isn't even remotely reasonable.

As I said in my original post, the American public school system doesn't serve to extend opportunities to everyone. It maintains the status quo. That's wrong, but it isn't changing as long as (rich, privileged, privately-educated) politicians are involved.

 

I more than agree with this line of thinking. We'll always need blue collar workers.

The problem is that we're taking kids with great minds and amazing potential and giving them no choice but to become ditch diggers.

 

Couple books that should be required reading:

"There are No Children Here" (reporter embedded himself with two inner-city Chicago kids and their mom for two years).

And another, name escapes me, that won the Pulitzer as a newspaper feature then was expanded into a book. I believe it was about a D.C. kid who went to Brown University. Heartbreaking opening scene in the newspaper story as he hides out from academic achievement day in the gymnasium, because as each achiever's name is announced, hundreds of kids mock him or her, shouting "Nerd!" etc., etc.