Explain how standardized tests are biased

Lol! The first test "sample" simply shows, satirically, the cultural bias that exists (or did so when I was in thegame) in testing. In Special Ed in my day we were disallowed from administering intelligence tests because of cultural elements.

I always drift back to a scene in an old movie that gave me a chuckle and a tear when I think about cultural disparities that have large consequences:

in Out Of Africa when the native man responds to the missionary's pitch for Christianity:

"But we already have a religion and gods..."

Micheal wassfu wrote:

do you seriously think schools in poorer neighborhoods get better teachers? I agree with everything else you're saying but even with more funding the quality of education in these schools is still way worse. Plus the middle and elementary school curriculums leave a lot to be desired for many lower income kids, for example kids not learning how to read, which leads to less interest in actually trying to do well in school because of how much of a struggle it is.

100%. And I’m speaking as a teacher that has been in both low performing low income schools and high performing high income schools. The low income schools have better teachers as a whole, of course there are good and bad individually in both, because the pay is so much better. Take private schools for examples, teachers in this area, get paid half as much as the low income school and don’t even have to be certified. But they look like they are good teachers because of the students. Thus, what I said about statistics backing up what you want to believe. In the 15 years I’ve been in education, the majority of private school teachers who have transitioned to the public school are by far the worst. They are surprised you have to motivate, build relationships, and actually explain things to the majority of kids, because most private school kids just do it. While I don’t think curriculum is the greatest, it’s also not the reason for kids staying in poverty. Those people are living the fast lifestyle, just about feeling good in the moment. They aren’t interested in investing in their children, or even the work needed for marriage. That’s why there are so many single parents, people involved in drugs and other illegal activities, etc. Its a terrible cycle, but it’s not because of white privilege, some racist system or other nonsense that you here from the woke group. It’s about choices made by those people. But again, easier to be the victim then to hold yourself accountable.

They aren't. If you are asking everyone the same question the test isn't biased. The test is a standard test of assumed knowledge.

If a person doesn't have the requisite knowledge than their parent's, school, or community failed them. That isn't the tests fault.

If one person trains years for a marathon and finishes in 3 hours is it the race's fault that someone that spent years hurt and not training could only pull off 5 hours? Of course not.

The person that scores the highest deserves the rewards. As long as they didn't cheat they either worked harder for it or are naturally smarter.

I think you missed the joke. The “yacht renovation” question is an exaggerated example of what anti-test people claim are on tests, when in fact question like that simply don’t exist.

There’s one famous example of analogy question using the word “regatta,” but that was from decades ago and it’s a single example that gets cited over and over. It’s the exception, not the rule.

Couple things right off the bat.

The history of "IQ Test" (yes different then achievement/aptitude) is riddled with a dark racist history. People who were part of the eugenics movement would use these test to sterilize individuals who they deemed were not "fit" to reproduce.

I got an IQ test that was used up until 1981 (The WAIS 1) that is full of information that we (Current Psychologist) would not deem appropriate for assessing cognitive ability. For example about 6 questions of the 30 "information" questions have to due with questions about the bible. So asking questions about the bible put's a premium on being a specific population (Therefore it is biased towards that population). The older back you get on these test the worst examples like this get.

Now in terms of the technical build of these test it would take a lot more then a short post to explain "if" any standardized test is "biased" or valid. We have to look at what is the GOAL of each test.

Test have gotten better at attempting to be less biased but their will still inherently be what is considered a "Cultural Load" (think of the bible example).

Achievement test look at one abilities to met the academic expectations of a grade or age. (Can you read, write and do math at a level that is appropriate to your grade). One's achievement in schools is almost directly related to opportunity (Money). Doesn't matter your race, gender ectt if you grew up in a stable environment with opportunity you tend to meet the benchmarks. This might be hard for some of you to wrap your head around but look it up. Remember we are looking at a "opportunity gap" not an inherent achievement gap. Also you do not need a high IQ to score very well on Achievement test (Since remember Achievement is accumulated knowledge). Having a lower IQ will make this more difficult, conversely having a high IQ will make this easier. But again 95% of people have a "broad average IQ" and with that you are certainly able to learn and master most academic skills.

Aptitude (GRE/SAT) basically are used to see if a student will be able to met the demands of college academics. SAT in reality is mostly used to predict a students first year GPA.

IQ test while seeming to be very similar to achievement (They are often correlated) is it's own unique test that look at one's inherent cognitive "ability". In newer test there is often a "verbal" and "non-verbal "component. When the difference between those two domains is great we can make an assumption that "cultural load" may be affecting the test and then can go with a non-verbal IQ as a more accurate representation of a persons IQ.

In reality it is a very complicated topic. If you did well on your state testing when you were in school great! But also recognize what opportunity you may or may not have had. Discussions like this often increase stereotypes and overlook the enormous amount of systemic racism, and income inequality in this county that has perpetuated the differences in opportunities for all students in the united states.

ActualPsychologist wrote:

Discussions like this often increase stereotypes and overlook the enormous amount of systemic racism, and income inequality in this county that has perpetuated the differences in opportunities for all students in the united states.

At a certain point though, you have to reward positive parental choices that compound over generations. My great-grandfather was a day laborer. My grandfather a salaried maintenance/handyman. My dad did sales. I'm the first in my family to go to college, and I'm in a mid-level professional career. I'm working and saving so my daughter might be able to get an advanced degree and do something even better for herself.

Climbing up, little by little, a generation at a time. That's the way it's supposed to work.

I went to public school, and only one of my parents went to university. I'm an engineer now in my late 20's out-earning what my parents made. The excuse of private school vs public schools to me is a joke. My public school did have a majority of the students not really do much with their lives, but it's not because it's the public school. My opinion is they screwed around way too much during school and didn't take it seriously. They didn't put themselves into the position to get into a halfway decent college program or set themselves up for a good career.

Luckily for me my mom always told me how important school was growing up, and made me understand that if I do well in school I will do well later in life. I think there are too many low income people who are not told that by their parents, and their parents don't really care if they are doing well in school. Because their parents have that attitude it will likely be the same attitude with their kids. Same like rich parents probably got rich because they took school seriously, and so they make dang sure their kids are taking it seriously.

Math genius wrote:

ActualPsychologist wrote:

Discussions like this often increase stereotypes and overlook the enormous amount of systemic racism, and income inequality in this county that has perpetuated the differences in opportunities for all students in the united states.

At a certain point though, you have to reward positive parental choices that compound over generations. My great-grandfather was a day laborer. My grandfather a salaried maintenance/handyman. My dad did sales. I'm the first in my family to go to college, and I'm in a mid-level professional career. I'm working and saving so my daughter might be able to get an advanced degree and do something even better for herself.

Climbing up, little by little, a generation at a time. That's the way it's supposed to work.

Low intelligence parents tend to have low intelligence kids. This is the basic science that liberals deny.

The very idea of perfect racial equality of intelligence is EXTREMELY racist.

When all you have are excuses to support your claim, you just might be full of sht.

And then liberals pat themselves on the back for being "smart" enough to make such absurd and elaborate excuses for the dramatic differences in intelligence among ethnic groups.

Every dumb kid deserves to be told that they should set realistic career/employment goals, like just being able to hold down a landscaping or custodial job.

Instead we tell dumb kids that they are doctor material, but racism is holding them back. This drives them directly into a life of crime and violence, which they are already pre-disposed to do, because of their low intelligence and low impulse control.

Promoting the lie that intelligence is not hereditable is a crime....

LRC note. This post was reported for moderation and we moved some raciall insensitive aspects about it.

You guys might not realize it, but yes many POC do not believe that intelligence is at all hereditable. They sincerely believe that all children are born with the same native intelligence, and the only difference in intelligence outcome is privilege of opportunities.

And because stats now show that blck children of blck parents with $250,000+/year family income score the exact same on the SAT as whte children of parents with -$20,000/year family income, they had to invent the concept of systemic white supremacy, and the concept of generational trauma to explain the HUGE gap in intelligence of the races, even when accounting for family income.

It's all politically correct b.s.

Bad Wigins wrote:

You seem to be arguing that it's even more unfair for the Asians, but that's okay because they deal with on their own instead of complaining.

Help us imagine an SAT question where 70% of whites but 90% of blacks answer correctly. Example?

No I am not saying it is ok. It is what it is. If the asian focus on education is a good or bad thing I will leave up to you to decide. Same thing about doing busy work just to score better on a test. Is it worth spending a hundred hours to get a like 150 point boost to your SAT? On an individual basis, sure. On a society basis though we gain nothing from that time.

You can google this exact thread on the board from 3 months ago if you really care about the subject.

At a high level the question is always what are you looking for. Want a person who does great on the SAT? SAT test scores are great. For picking out students that will do well in school? They don't do better than using the rest of the data.

I’m a father of a child who scored 36 on the ACT and only 2000 on the SAT. We were able to afford 1 on 1 test tutoring which cost $3,500. My child had developmental disabilities due to being born at 25 weeks gestational age so they were able to work through getting medical approvals to receive additional time test accommodation (legitimate in their case but nonetheless the type of boost only a wealthy/more aware family would request). Oh, we also had the funds to take both SAT and ACT and many families don’t. I won’t speak to any racial disparities but there is a very strong correlation between family wealth and performance on standardized tests - our family outcome illustrated some of the reasons why. Although we benefited it has a tendency to perpetuate the cycle of wealthier students getting into better colleges and winning merit money. If you don’t “get that” I’m truly sorry for you. One thing I learned a long time ago is that human intelligence is universally distributed uniformly across races and places but our traditional ways of assessing intellectual capacity don’t always work.

The average blck adult reads at a 3rd or 4th grade level, even after 10-13 years of free education.

Only 50% of blck kids graduate high school. Principals report that most of them drop out because the school work is too difficult.

And of the ones that actually do graduate, it is often as mentioned earlier, with a reading level of 3rd or 4th grade.

Blck academic talent is generally so low that kids are simply passed on to the next grade every year, or "socially promoted" to the next grade. Because nobody wants the optics of a 3rd grade class full of 17 year olds still trying to learn how to read and write complete sentences for the 13th year in a row.

Same goes for math.

https://edsource.org/2017/at-cal-state-algebra-is-a-civil-rights-issue/582950

The culprit is Intermediate Algebra, a high-school level course of technical procedures that most college students will never use, either in college or in life. Many students pass a course on this content in high school (Algebra II), but when they arrive at a community college, more than 80 percent are required to take remedial courses repeating this material if they don’t score high enough on a standardized test. And the problem is, most community college students don’t take just one remedial course. To meet the Intermediate Algebra standard, they are often required to take two years of remedial courses that don’t count for transfer credit at CSU. By contrast, a CSU student who is required to take remedial math at CSU does not have to demonstrate intermediate algebra competency in order to take credit-bearing math courses.

As a result, every year, more than 170,000 California community college students are placed into remedial math based on how well they do on a standardized test in algebra. Over 110,000 of them never complete math requirements for getting an associate degree or for transferring to CSU or the University of California.

https://www.hoover.org/research/seattle-schools-propose-teach-math-education-racist-will-california-be-far-behindseattle

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/12/01/sat-math-scores-mirror-and-maintain-racial-inequity/

And science

Physics exemplifies the problem. African-Americans make up about 14 percent of the college-age population in the U.S., commensurate with their numbers in the overall population, but in physics they receive 3 to 4 percent of undergraduate degrees and less than 3 percent of Ph.D.s, and as of 2012 they composed only 2 percent of faculty. No doubt there are many reasons for this underrepresentation, but one troubling factor is the refusal of some scientists to acknowledge that a problem could even exist. Science, they argue, is inherently rational and self-correcting.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/racism-and-sexism-in-science-havent-disappeared/

Well apparently you did not read my entire post so I would refer you back to that. When did I ever say the garbage you are assuming?

But as a psychologist and given your explanations and assumptions I'll be the first to let you know that you are in fact a stupid individual. I don't want to hold you back and hide the truth from you. I am happy to provide some materials so you can work to overcome this stupidity you inherited.

it is funny that liberals believe that sexual preference should be embraced because it is inherited and hardcoded but intelligence is not. One is a preference and the other is an ability.

go r wrote:

it is funny that liberals believe that sexual preference should be embraced because it is inherited and hardcoded but intelligence is not. One is a preference and the other is an ability.

Let me clarify something. Achievement test (Different then IQ) Again read my post are most effected by opportunity. This is a learned set of academic domains.

IQ is inherited but is also effect by environmental exposures (Example Lead exposure while young, lack of nutrition ect..).

Someone can have a very high IQ and have very low achievement.

You must understand the relationship of all of these things to have a accurate understanding. When talking about standardized test.

I watched some thing recently where anti-racist academics were telling teachers/parents that children of color need to be told from an early age that if something goes wrong for them in life or they don't get the outcome they want, the problem is with society/racism, not with anything they personally did or didn't do.

Apparently telling them that personality responsibility is a myth gives them "psychological armor" to deal with racist society.

But someone with a very low IQ can't have very high achievement. Some races have higher IQs than others. Denying it is like denying that races pass on skin color.

And white and Asian children are taught that nobody is looking out for them. They are taught that there are no preferences for them and that if they want to be successful, they will have to work for it.

go r wrote:

But someone with a very low IQ can't have very high achievement. Some races have higher IQs than others. Denying it is like denying that races pass on skin color.

Imagine if we blamed "systemic black supremacy" for the Olympic sprinting and marathon outcomes.

Anybody who blamed a "systemic black supremacy" conspiracy for West African genes winning every sprint, and East African genes winning every marathon, would clearly be doing so from a racist, anti-black agenda.

And you will notice that nobody blames Asian Supremacy or Jwish Supremacy for the failure of blcks and (to a lesser extent) Ltinos to succeed academically and with using common sense in their life choices.

The reason Asians and/or Jws are not blamed for black academic failures is because it is whites who are the most envied and the most hated because of that envy.

Blck victims aren't sitting there wishing there were Asian or Jwish.