Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

This is one of the most idiotic things i've seen in a long time

should we ban these words from the dictionary too?



Can't have little johnny upset because the word divorce was used in a test. What's next, parent's taking the test for their kids??
No wonder kids are growing up completely sheltered and clueless in life

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

They need to ban the word dump.
Highly offensive.

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

Posted by cds58019

I heard this the other day on the news and thought it was absolutely ridiculous. The best was the words "swimming pool" because not everyone is "economically privileged" in this day and age to have a pool. Yeah and?

Message edited 3/29/2012 1:51:47 PM.

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

Posted by cds58019

I heard this the other day on the news and thought it was absolutely ridiculous. The best was the words "swimming pool" because not everyone is "economically privileged" in this day and age to have a pool. Yeah and?

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

We are such an uptight PC freaking society. Give me a break.

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

Here is the ridiculous full list of words

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

Posted by Jonsgirl04

Posted by GoldenRod

Tests in general offend me, so they should ban all tests!




I'm glad they are taking "dinosaurs" out..... I was attacked by a stray dinosaur when I was little, and I'm still traumatized by it...

This just made me LMAO!!

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

Posted by GoldenRod

Posted by cds58019

I heard this the other day on the news and thought it was absolutely ridiculous. The best was the words "swimming pool" because not everyone is "economically privileged" in this day and age to have a pool. Yeah and?

Yes, you must be "economically privileged" to have a swimming pool....

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Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

I'm proud to say I'm a NYC teacher






It's stupid so it must be bloomturds idea?

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

Posted by GoldenRod

Tests in general offend me, so they should ban all tests!




I'm glad they are taking "dinosaurs" out..... I was attacked by a stray dinosaur when I was little, and I'm still traumatized by it...

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

This concept may be new to nyc but it is not new to standardized testing. I write these tests for a living and it makes my job extremely difficult. And frustrating. And kind of depressing.

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

I deal with standardized tests every day, and there are a LOT of issues involved. In a reading comprehension passage, are there terms you're expected to understand that some students don't? You'd be surprised. I teach some kids who weren't born here or whose -parents weren't born here and everything from idiomatic phrases to cultural events are lost on them, so it goes well beyond just words. I think there are some topics that may give students from certain backgrounds an unfair advantage, but you really can't eliminate for that. Another interesting thing is how the culture has changed, and just realizing what kids will and will not know. In our practice materials, there's a passage about the Cold War. The passage seems as clear as any to me, but I never realized all of the subtle assumptions the passage made until my kids started not understanding it. They don't understand the concept of a Cold War, and even little assumptions like that Russia was an enemy, not an ally are lost on them because they're not spelled out in the passage and these kids live in a different world.

I think a lot of these lists are silly, but the reality is that NYC is one of the most diverse places on earth and there are 2 things at play here 1) cultural relevance/understanding and 2) not using words that cause students phsycologicla stress.

On the second point, I do think sex, divorce, atomic bombs, alcohol, slavery, etc should not be on standardized tests for children. WHY even put those things on the test? Emotional or graphic topics don't belong there.

On the first point, I think we need to examine whether or not the word is really pervasive in our culture, whether an immigrant, poor person, rich person would know it, and how important it is to know. Swimming pool. I don't care if you can afford one or not, you know what it is. I think the Mercedes thing is tough because it makes it less relatable but I really don't think it's a big deal. For celebrities, it's tough. I don't think they should be on the tests. Not all children watch TV, some just came to the US so they don't know the celebrities and it is not at all important that they do. Being able to talk about a home, a school, a car, are important, but celebrities, no? Same for sports. Makes perfect sense. There are communities where sports are very prevalent, but some kids don't know the basic rules of baseball. We had this discussion here where some of us were shocked that others didn't know who Gary Carter was. It's the same thing.

Also in our prep books we for a very ling time had practice exercises that were meant to be fun ways to teach vocab and they referenced celebrities. I have been doing this long enough to see when the topics were relatable to now when they kids are like "who the heck is Harrison Ford?", "Who's Jim Carrey?"

So you have to be careful not to make assumptions about what cultural things are well known because we want the test to truly be about reading and math skills, etc and not rely on understanding a sport or knowing who a celebrity is, or having been exposed to a certain kind of music.

I went to a high school that required a test to get in. A high score on this test is the sole factor in admission to one of NYC's top high schools. When I was there we had a very small amount of black and hispanic students, about 6%. Now it's much lower, so low that the NYTimes did a story about it.

During my freshman year, we had a group protesting in our school for this reason, saying the test was in "white english" and discriminated against children of color. My reaction then is pretty much the same as it is now, which is that the elementary schools and junior high schools need to teach the kids better. The exam is color blind. MANY asian students who were not born in the US are able to get in, so I don't think it's the test's fault, though people try to blame it. I think in those cases it really comes down to the communities and schools who need to teach children. But this is a test to get into an elite high school, it's not a test every child has to take, and I still think people should look at that test and see if makes any cultural assumptions, etc that would make a white or asian child more likely to succeed than a black or hispanic child. But I think in all of this, you can nitpick over words ALL you want, the bigger problem is in the system.

Re: NY City wants to Ban "loaded" words from tests

Posted by mommy2Alex

Posted by DumpsterBaby

Posted by PearlJamChick

Shit like this is why some people are such namby-pamby types with no coping skills.

This country has gone politically correct to politcally absurd