[Cornel West] DeSantis’s Revolutionary Defense of the Classics

That's good for you, and I have nothing against Christianity, but just like you wouldn't want Islam forced upon you, I rather not have Christianity forced upon me. Thank you very much.

 

As public scholarships are being given specifically based on how well they scored on CLT, then that is an issue.

A tested rooted in religious values should not be a criteria for getting public dollars.

 

You are giving a test based on Christian values - then issuing a publically funded scholarship against that score. You don't see that as an issue?

 

I just watched the Good Times episode the other day where Michael did poorly on a standardized test. He explained to his mom and dad how biased the tests are. James and Florida went to the school and tore the dude a new one. This **** was happening on mainstream TV in the 70s and we still haven't resolved it.

 

Yeah there is a lot of room for bias here. As a scholarship administrator I can favor giving scholarships to CLT test takers for example - there's no mechanism to prevent that bias now. You are essentially flagging someone as Christian on their scholarship applications. Red flag big time.

Secondly it may be easier to score higher on CLT than SAT - that would also introduce bias. How can you compare CLT to the SAT given they are on a different scale and are composed of different students? That's a problem now as well.

Those are just two potential areas off the top of my head, I am sure there are many more. This has a great deal of potential for abuse. And what I have seen in how Florida is run, that potential will very likely become actualized.

 

That data isn't shared with the hiring manager in companies but rather by HR to do reports. However, the person evaluating someone with the gov will know if someone took a Christian valued test or a non-Christian valued one - and that gives in to bias.

The high school comparison point is excellent but not for the reason you may think. The whole reason for standardized tests is so you can compare students from different high schools. If you start splitting the tests for different groups, you defeat the whole point of standardized tests to begin with.

 

[MUSIC]What Are You Listening To?

 

That’s a good point about why we have standardized test. It also might be why CLT might not catch on and a lot of the handwringing both for and against it might not matter much if only a small self secreted group use it.

 

Unless a state like Florida starts giving out a lot of state scholarships to those who score high on it