The Racism of Lowered Expectations

A standard test to vet New York City's potential teachers was struck down by a federal judge because he believed the test illegally discriminated against racial minorities due to their lower scores compared to white applicant test scores.

The judge may have had a good point if he were dealing with the unfair literacy tests of Jim Crow, but this was the city's second Liberal Arts and Science Test (LAST-2) and it simply tested basic high-school-level knowledge of liberal arts and the sciences.

The test is straightforward and should be fairly easy to do reasonably well at, as it relies on factual knowledge and basic academic skills, which should have been acquired by anyone who expects to impart those skills and knowledge on students. 

Reality check: if you're going to teach something, you ought to know it before you teach it.

But since Hispanics and black applicants had a passage rate of about 54 to 75 percent of the passage rate for whites, this had to mean that the test is racist. How can we ever expect minorities to do as well as whites? It just isn't fair to expect that out of them.

Or is it?

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