I’m looking at this guy’s substack. He looks like a secret reactionary. “Anti woke identity politics”, yuk.
Honestly, it’s the substack of a non researcher. We don’t have to give a fuck about his non published findings. Also his Wikipedia page makes him look terrible.
this was a particularly funny post of his. i almost kind of get his frustration, there isn’t a cohesive left wing political project in the US, so you look silly acting like there is. This century’s “woke” is last century’s “hippie”; he’s getting mad at a shifting sense of what’s polite, what’s considered right and wrong; there’s no earnest political movement behind it, just cultural evolution.
I have no idea wtf they’re talking about. Standardized testing has always been a scam to sell more standardized testing. Idk or care if it accurately measures anything, that’s never mattered. It’s only ever been used to tear chunks out of public school funding so private firms can feast, and to re-implement segregation by starving “under performing” (minority) schools of resources. Literally no living human being except this nerd actually cares of standardized testing actually measures what it claims to measure.
It’s only ever been used to tear chunks out of public school funding so private firms can feast, and to re-implement segregation by starving “under performing” (minority) schools of resources.
The old “the purpose of a system is what it does”
In a socialist society, standardized testing could be useful, but as it is its purpose Is to segregate schools and steal money from children’s education.
dudes tilting at, i don’t even know, something less of a presence in real life than windmills
first two paragraphs: ‘oh i’m not talking about: literally every valid complaint about standardized testing—i’m talking about people (fucking WHO??) insisting the very concept of tests are invalid’
and then all this hogwash to disprove these definitely real ‘liberals’—which seems mostly to consist of explaining what and how assessments are. i’m sure a descriptive argument would get you very far with someone philosophically opposed to the idea lol
Right? He painstakingly goes over the minutia of how test are made, then at the very end admits that
[tests show] deep inequality along racial and class lines
but he has no broader analysis. He’d rather take apart the most vapid 150-character tweets than generously consider why people feel so negatively about tests.
Like, yes, test show racial and class inequality, and they have done for a very long time. But we’ve never done anything with that insight. Instead, the test are used to dole out grants and resources to the highest performing schools and students. We could use the tests as a tool for measuring and iterating on our institutions of education. But we don’t. We just use them to decide who gets full ride scholarships. Most people understand that, even if they can’t articulate it well. Even he understands that! He just isn’t interested in that conversation.
i kind of get it, when you know the subject and people talk about it in ignorant ways it can stick in your craw. but before you pen a 30 page screed you gotta step back and think whether you’re dealing with some clumsy rhetoric or deeply held conviction. maybe ‘tests’ is generally implied to mean ‘standardized tests’ and it isn’t spelled out every time? use some context clues instead of fabricating a mass anti-intellectual movement?
De Boer
But jokes about racist sounding names aside: Of course they’re predictive! The entire smokescreen of “meritocracy” is built on these numbers. If access to higher education “certifications” and employment were suddenly gatekept by, say, one’s 100m sprint time, that would be remarkably predictive too
This person writes like a reactionary 16 year old that gets dunked on so hard on Twitter that they go have straw men shower arguments in their head and then save them for eternity on their little blog.
