The reason I did not want to bother to respond is because your comment was so simplistic, so uninformed, that I couldn’t add much. You have to put some work it, to study a bit, to understand the situation.
First of all, your brilliant insight that Black (and Immigrant and Latinx) kids don’t pass the test as well is self-evident. Piles and piles of data tell us that students from these communities do badly on these tests. I’m not insulting them to say so. I’m challenging the test.
You have to study the use of tests – going back to the eugenicist IQ tests of a hundred years ago. They are culturally biased, they fail to look for or understand the brilliance of youth from marginalized communities.
Colin Lankshear (1997) explains how the dominant group pretends that educational success rewards effort and achievement, pretends to be a meritocracy, when their own discourse and knowledge priorities, learning styles, and pedagogical preferences make up the ‘official examinable culture’ of school. He continues, “Their notions of important and useful knowledge, their ways of representing the truth, their ways of arguing and establishing correctness, and their logics, grammars, and language are established as the institutional norm by which academic and scholastic success is defined and assessed.”
A group of students in New York created a test called “SAT The Bronx” – one based on their own cultural experience and ways of knowing, a test that most white middle class students would fail. So the question is who gets to define excellence. The cultural hierarchy reflected in these tests deems the belief systems, epistemologies, practices, and ways of using language of low income and so-called minority community as deficits.
And make no mistake. These belief systems, these gatekeepers, were not created by God. They were created by humans, basically old white men 100 years ago. But our discourse, our culture, is changing – for the better. And a California judge ruled last year that the SAT was a biased test and could not be used for admission to the UC’s. By viewing the knowledge of Black and Brown people as assets rather than deficits, we will be a smarter and more democratic country.
Finally, I have known many students at Lowell and many students on the AP only track in other schools. The majority of them have learned, in the pressure cooker, to hate school and to get by with the least commitment possible. Most have learned to cheat – read the cliff notes, copy homework, hire expensive tutors to do their work. And they take this kind of cynicism about education to college, careers, and personal life. It’s not a good look and not good for them. I have taught Lowell students at Cal who said they were never asked their opinion, never allowed to commit deeply to a topic. It was all about prep for the next test. A revamped Lowell would be best for everyone.
