by Glen Ford for the Black Agenda Report:

There is a growing realization that standardized testing for college entrance does not serve the interests of educational excellence or reward merit. Rather, SATs, PSATs and their clones tend to freeze already existing societal privilege in place, allowing the already well-off to pass on that status to their children. The assessment comes from the National Association of College Admissions Counseling, and from no less than Harvard University's dean of admissions and financial aid, William Fitzsimmons.

Fitzsimmons says, "The test scores appear to calcify differences based on class, race/ethnicity and parental educational attainment." In other words, the children of white parents who make good livings and had good educations, tend to do well in standardized tests. But the tests don't reliably predict how well the kids will do in college.

The educators note the vast differences that exist in life and learning experiences that are available to children in the United States. "No one who visits the range of secondary schools we visit," they concluded, "and goes to the communities we visit...can come away thinking the standardized tests can be a measure of someone's true worth or ability."

The admissions counselors also urged that PSATs not be used to decide who is eligible for scholarships.

"Real education is grinding to a halt at schools across the nation, under the weight of relentless, ruthless testing."

This is very good news, the logic of which would be to finally destroy the rule of standardized tests - not just for college, but throughout the educational system. There is a huge body of study that shows race and class privilege is further embedded in society through the use of these tests, which have become a bulwark of rigidity, not mobility, in the United States. And that most emphatically means breaking the classist, racist grip of hyper-testing in elementary and secondary education, through the stifling No Child Left Behind Act.

The Bush regime and the plutocrats it serves understand perfectly well that class and race structures reinforce the rule of...people like themselves. That's one reason they have imposed the draconian and educationally counter-productive standardized testing regime on the U.S. public education system. The other, related motivation is to "prove" public schools are failing, in order to boost private schooling and bogus theories of "marketplace education."

In ways that are only now being understood, real education is grinding to a halt at schools across the nation, under the weight of relentless, ruthless testing. In the process, teacher creativity, innovation and just plan caring fall by the wayside.

Standardized testing does not encourage the deepening of democracy. Instead, it rewards privilege. This outcome is cumulative, adding layer upon layer of culture- and class-biased test results to all the other burdens and assaults that children of non-privileged parents will endure in their school lives. That's not a meritocracy - it's a caste system.

There will always be a place for properly constructed testing in society. But tests should never be wielded as weapons against those born with less, to benefit the already fortunate.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Not to pick on Ohio, of course. The new study by Youngstown State professor, Dr. Randy Hoover, could be replicated in any state in the nation. The simple truth is that, regardless of the standardized test being used, the most reliable predictor of scores is family income. What surprises me most is that Dr. Hoover should be surprised--where has he been!

And what disappoints me most is the continued denial of state departments of education that economic privilege largely determines test scores. Do these numbnuts really believe that screening for cultural bias in test questions will change the advantage enjoyed by the advantaged? What will it take will expose the testing scam to those running it as the most reliable instrument for social sorting and continued oppression of the poor?

From the Dayton Daily News:

By Scott Elliott

Staff Writer

Sunday, August 31, 2008

DAYTON — A Youngstown State professor's study of testing data suggests Ohio cannot validly claim schools are improving or slipping based on state ratings and says the achievement gap between black and white students is exaggerated.

Randy Hoover's research showed Ohio has a large poverty gap in test performance between poor students and their wealthier classmates, regardless of race or ethnicity.

Hoover said the correlation of nonschool factors like median income with test performance was off the charts.

"This is an extremely high correlation for social science research," he said. "I've never seen anything this high."

Hoover's findings support a Dayton Daily News 2006 study of test performance and poverty in Ohio's 610 school districts that produced similar results. For that study, the newspaper's computer analysis of the impact of several student characteristics on test scores found median income of the district had by far the most powerful impact on its test performance.

Hoover's study went further. The three factors he found were most likely to predict test performance were the percentage of single parent wage earners, the percentage of poor children and the median family income in the district.

Combining those factors for what Hoover called the "lived experience index." He found they were responsible for at least 61 percent of a district's test performance.

. . . .

Karla Warren, a state education department spokeswoman, said the study does not fairly reflect efforts to ensure tests treat students of all wealth levels and ethnicity evenly.

"The Ohio Department of Education doesn't support the findings of this study, and we stand by our tests," she said. "Our tests undergo a detailed review process."

But Hoover argues the study shows Ohio draws invalid conclusions about the quality of school districts by using tests that largely measure how poverty impacts each district. . . .