Editor's Comment: When Standardized Tests Miss the Mark

Abstract

about to be seen as a person with a name, then POOF a statistic and to many a shame. . Asa Fludd, an African American llth-grader, wrote this for an essay contest that I judged. I reprinted this statement in my second Breaking Barriers (Toldson, 201 1) report, recited it during at least 50 speeches and repeat it here to reinforce the point that behind every statistic, there is a human spirit - a spirit that is as fragile as it is resilient.The Journal of Negro Education is pleased to release this special issue on testing and assessment in the Black community, co-edited by Donna Y. Ford at Vanderbilt University and Janet E. Helms at Boston College. In the issue, my colleagues and I will examine issues of fairness and racial bias in tests, which ubiquitously shape the experiences of millions of Black children and adults - more now than at any point in history.In the U.S., Black and Hispanic students carry the burden of scoring lower on essentially every known measure of or aptitude than Whites and Asians. These tests often serve as gatekeepers to specialized schools, gifted classes and elite colleges - or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, as determinants of special education, grade repetition and emotional-support classes.Some parents, who may have a low-scoring son or daughter, often recoil from any attempts to challenge the merits of tests and instead blame the schools for inadequately preparing their children. The schools respond by blaming the parents. When explaining the achievement test companies blame social inequities and cultural depravation (e.g., single-parent households and poverty; Educational Testing Services, 2012). And the cyclical blame game continues, with solutions for Black students' progress almost an afterthought.For this introduction in the special issue, I examine a national assessment of reading, as well as the finding that Black people are less proficient in reading. What is behind Black students' pervasively low reading scores, and are tests that have been designed by our nation's experts the best assessment of Black reading skills?FAILING BLACK STUDENTSWhen reporting on the gap, the media have largely ignored the more complex issues regarding the merits of testing, such as bias and fairness, choosing instead to accept the tests at face value. To illustrate, let's examine how and why, over the last two years, many media outlets have been reporting that nearly 90 percent of Black children from elementary school through high school graduation lack reading proficiency.Late last year, researchers at Harvard released the report Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete? which highlighted gaps between races within the U.S. as well as between the U.S. and 65 countries that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (Peterson, Woessmann, Hanushek, & Lastra- Anadon, 2011). For one section of the report, the team of four White research scholars removed all minority participants from their analysis because they found it worth inquiring as to whether differences between the United and other countries are attributable to the substantial minority population within the United States (p. 10-11).The report inspired coverage from Black media outlets, including BET.com, which published an article with this telling headline: Report: Only 13 Percent of 2011 Black Graduates Proficient in Reading (Wright, 201 1). The Harvard study found that less than half of White graduates were proficient in reading (40 percent), but this low percentage may matter little to those who consider White students to be the nation's benchmark.Similarly, in 2010, the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) found that only 12 percent of Black fourth-grade boys were proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of White boys (Lewis, Simon, Uzzell, Horwitz, & Casserly, 2010), as reported in the New York Times article, Proficiency of Black Students is Found to be Far Lower Than Expected (Gabriel, 2010). …