The Hypocritical, Racist Institution of Standardized Testing

Green Chameleon

Editor’s Note: The following article was written by Defiant writer Aaron Stigile and activist/organizer Therese Etoka.

Before we get into details, I suppose we should start off with some introductions. My name is Aaron, and I organize with the Sunrise Movement in Boise, Idaho. I also write for The Defiant Movement. I go to high school in Boise and have taken the PSAT and three AP tests in my student life. Therese, would like you to give a small intro?

Therese: Hi, My name is Therese Etoka and I am a rising junior at Connecticut College, an organizer with MALIKAH, a Communications Web Intern, and President of Student Refugee Alliance. As a Black, first-gen, low-income, woman of color, with a disability, (and other identities), I have very strong sentiments on standardized testing and the false ideas of meritocracy that they uphold. I took numerous AP tests, PSATs, SATs, ACTs, and other standardized exams before applying and attending college and felt that these tests were very inequitable, especially based on one’s background and upbringing. 

The first thing we should make clear, especially for readers who may not be familiar with today’s standardized testing, is exactly what standardized testing looks like today. 

Right now, the two main tests high school students take to apply to colleges are the SAT and the ACT. The College Board, an organization that has existed since 1899, runs the SAT and AP tests. The AP tests are classes that you can take in high school to earn college credit for certain courses, while the SAT and ACT are used by colleges for admissions processing. 

It's important to talk about who exactly runs these tests. The College Board runs both the AP and SAT tests. 

The organization categorizes itself as a non-profit, but they’re not exactly that. They’ve spent millions on executive compensation for the past nine years.

But The College Board still runs the show. They’ve been mired in scandals in the past, from studies concluding that test scores can be accurately predicted based on the length of essays to the selling of student’s private information without student permission. Those are only a couple of the scandals, and you can read about more on the College Board Wikipedia page. 

Then, there are the actual tests themselves. On AP tests, students are scored from 0 to 5, with 5 being the highest score and 0 being the lowest. The SAT, on the other hand, scores on a scale of 0 to 1600, with 1600 being the highest possible score, and 0, of course, being the lowest. The tests have very strict rubrics which students must follow in order to achieve high scores. An example can be found at this link for the 2020 AP History test. 

There are many problems to be had with this system, but to me, from a purely logical standpoint, the tests seem extremely counter-intuitive. If all students learn differently, then how can it be fair for kids to be expected to take a test in a strict essay and/or multiple-choice format, especially if that’s not the way all kids like to express their learning? And if these tests are standardized, as they are, who designed these standards and what biases are built into them? 

Those are very important questions to answer, and they’re a couple of which we’ll be diving into today.  

To start out, Therese, what is your opinion on standardized testing all by itself? Meaning, do you agree with the idea that a standardized test made up of an essay and/or a multiple-choice test can accurately judge how intelligent a student is? Why do you believe what you believe? 

Therese: My opinion on standardized testing is a very negative one because, from the start, these tests do not provide a student with the opportunity to showcase their true intellectual abilities. These tests do not take into account the various backgrounds and upbringings each individual comes from, and as a result, students without the same levels of access to the resources that more privileged students have, tend to perform poorly. 

Standardized tests promote a false idea that these exams “level the playing field”  by pushing forth the argument that race does not factor into one’s social position. Therefore, I do not agree that standardized tests with essays and/or multiple-choice questions can accurately measure how intelligent a student is because of the false use of meritocracy that privileges the few; these tests also do not incorporate different ways to measure all forms of intelligence. 

Just by considering the past discussion, one can conclude that standardized tests are unfair to students. Now we need to dig more into what Therese alluded to, about the myth that standardized testing “levels the playing field”. That can be done by analyzing the racist past and present that are deeply ingrained in the institution of standardized testing. 

From the very beginning, standardized testing was a systemically racist system. Carl Brigham, a creator of the first standardized tests in the early 1900s (which were originally meant for the military), stated that “The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence here of the negro.” Again- this is the guy who helped create the first standardized tests, and his work was obviously rooted in white supremacy. 

The test partially designed by Brigham was eventually moved from the military to colleges. In fact, it was one of the most prestigious colleges, Harvard, that started using it first. 

Over time, the issue of racism being built into standardized testing didn’t become better; it became worse. Questions to be included in the SAT were deemed as good questions if they replicated the outcomes of previous exams, and those outcomes were racially biased towards white people. Clearly, the racism instituted into the tests by people such as Brigham was never removed from the testing system, even though the tests have existed for dozens of years.

This form of systemic racism is still happening today. Math scores among students who took the SAT in 2015 showed that students of color scored on average much lower than white and Asian students. 

There are many systemic reasons for why this happens. There’s the continued segregation of schools, and schools being funded differently because of that, along with resource differentials between demographics that were designed to be that way. Then there are the studies which have shown that students with “similar academic backgrounds and achievements” gave answers differentiated by race. That proves white students gain an advantage in testing because they belong to the dominant culture in the country, and therefore there is an inherent bias in the questions and wording of them, due to expressions that are more common in the dominant culture,

Some will likely argue through an assimilationist school of thought that those who are discriminated against through standardized tests must simply learn to become a bigger part of the prevailing culture, in this case, the white culture, in order to do better on the tests. Therese, what do you think would be an anti-racist alternative to this assimilationist line of thinking about standardized testing?

Therese: The idea that students must “become part of the prevailing culture, the white culture” stems from the anti-Black and racist ideologies that this society was built on and continues to uphold in order to maintain white supremacy. By believing that students must assimilate to this school of thought, it further perpetuates the harmful systems that are used to marginalize communities. 

I think that an anti-racist alternative to this assimilationist line of thinking about standardized testing would be to formulate alternative holistic approaches that take into account the racial inequalities and inequities that exist within our education system. 

I think that creating a critical multicultural education that is built upon antiracist studies and culturally responsive pedagogy would allow for racially minoritized students and students with less access to these systems a better, more equitable opportunity to acquire access to the resources that privileged, white folks, who perform well on these standardized tests are given. 

Then in 2016, the College Board made changes to their tests, in order to make them less memorization and vocabulary based. It was their attempt at addressing some of the problems described by Therese.  But the racial differences still persisted, clearly showing a continuation of the built-in bias to the tests themselves. The College Board even tried adding an ‘adversity score’ which was temporarily implemented before being withdrawn due to backlash.

Therese, there’s a lot that can be said about this ‘adversity score’. Some will argue that the College Board was simply trying to make the test fairer through the score. What do you have to say about the score, and what the fact that it even needed to be implemented says about the tests themselves? 

Therese: Though the College Board has pushed the message that the “adversity score” was created to make the test fairer, I believe that the College Board still continues to profit off of students as a single number cannot quantify an entire student’s background and challenges one has faced. 

By creating this “adversity score,” the College Board was admitting that their exams did indeed have flaws and that certain students did perform better and score higher on their exams. The fact that this “adversity score” needed to be implemented proves that the College Board’s tests did need to be fixed itself. 

Yeah. There’s this idea that the tests can be fixed by adding to them in some way when clearly the actual tests themselves in their current existence is what needs to be fixed.

We also can’t forget about how these tests are ‘pay to play’. Tutoring and books for test preparation can cost hundreds of dollars, and taking the tests themselves costs schools funds that could be put towards materials and resources for students.

This places people affected by the racial wealth gap at a significant disadvantage.  

Therese, can you speak to how this ‘pay to play’ system runs hand in hand with other systems of systemic racism that exacerbate the racial wealth gap, especially given that having a higher education is seen as more and more necessary to succeed in the United States? 

Therese: These tests adhere to the “pay to play” system that runs hand in hand with other systems of systemic racism exacerbating our racial wealth gap. Having access to certain resources whether that be in terms of education, health, basic needs, etc., contributes to the well being of an individual and their family. If one is able to access their basic needs and beyond, there is a greater chance that a student will perform better. 

Because Black and brown folks are often working low wage jobs, enduring racism and oppression at both federal and state levels, and attending schools that do not have enough funding in comparison to schools in more affluent neighborhoods — test scores from Black and brown students correlate with these different factors that measure wealth. 

Students in wealthier, more affluent schools, and neighborhoods benefit from having easier access to resources that are in conjunction with these exams. As such, families living in more affluent neighborhoods tend to make a higher income and live closer to resources that benefit their ability to continue to accrue wealth. 

That completely accurate description of the racial wealth gap and systemic racism also explains just how fake the narrative of the United States meritocracy (that you referenced earlier) is. Clearly, people who are systemically discriminated against can’t just “work hard” and all of a sudden find themselves at the top when the society they live in is structured to hold them down. 

With all of that being said, do you support the end of standardized testing? Are there policy initiatives you support in terms of education reform, such as College For All and others? 

Therese: I do support the end of standardized testing because to continue to push students to take these exams is to uphold the idea of these racist views of intelligence; ending standardized testing admits that these tests have been used to disadvantage low-income folks and communities of color. 

Evidence shows that these tests are particularly harmful to students of color, and by ending them, I feel that there is a greater chance to remove these barriers that bar the most marginalized folks from having equal access to opportunities that their white counterparts are afforded. 

Additionally, I do support initiatives that call for education reform and an end to school segregation. I support initiatives that call for the reimagining of our education systems and how they measure students, and this includes a better salary to teachers. 

On that note, Congress members such as Rashida Tlaib have called for the elimination of Student Debt because of it being a “racial justice issue”.  I believe Tlaib is completely correct in that statement because of many of the reasons you described, Therese. 

  There has also been grassroots resistance to standardized testing. Would you support boycotting of standardized tests, or students organizing to put pressure on elected officials to remove standardized testing? 

Therese: I would support the boycotting of standardized tests and the pressures students place on elected officials to remove standardized testing, because as Dr. Ibram X. Kendi stated, “The use of standardized tests to measure aptitude & intelligence is one of the most effective racist policies ever devised to degrade Black minds & legally exclude Black bodies.” 

Thank you so much for your time, Therese. Hopefully, we all can help end the terrible form of systemic racism that is standardized testing, and move on to a world where education is designed for every person to flourish in their own way which isn’t based on a racist discriminatory standard. 

I highly encourage readers of this piece to visit the various links in this article and to do extended research in their own time. Also, author and activist Dr. Ibram X. Kendi was mentioned- his books and articles are must-reads.