NYC Dept. Of Ed. Wants 50 ‘Forbidden’ Words Banned From Standardized Tests
 

Here is the list. What say you? I think its frikkin ridiculous.

Here is the complete list of words that could be banned:
(The link I got it from loaded VERY slowly.
Google if you want I'm sure there are others)

ETA - I only saw 45 words. I guess math(s) should be added as well ;)

The general idea has some merit, in that it could be very unfair to throw traumatic or emotionally upsetting images into spelling tests.

If you are that upset by words like birthday (cause you're a JW) or evolution (cause you're a twit) then you have bigger problems than bad spelling.

Idea had some worth; execution got hijacked by nutters; result is, as you say, frikken ridiculous.

There they go again, banning witchcraft. It will be duckings and pressings next.

One must ask ... when the hell have pornography, rap music, video games, and parapsychology ever been part of a standardized test?

What is a standardized test when it's at home?
Because some of the above are ideas and concepts, not words, so it can't be spelling tests.

Standardized tests include a reading & comprehension section. There is a short essay to read, followed by 5-7 questions about the essay, with anywhere from 3 to 10 essays in a given test. They want the essays to be good, but not famous, because it wouldn't be fair if a student had already devoted a lot of time to understanding this one particular passage in class. Often they are short biographies of not-well-known-but-skilled-in-their-field people.

And no, there was probably never a risk of using one about Hunter S. Thompson, sex and drugs were never going to be in there. But video games, rap music, parapsychology... sure. They try to be hip and connect with the kids, which is dumb but it's what they do. A high school student might actually be interested in a short biography of a top video game designer, or a producer of rap music.

Personally? I don't really have a problem with the list. It's exhaustive, which is kind of irritating in the way that all government things must be exhaustive. But all of the topics generally fall into a handful of categories:

1.) Things which are just age-inappropriate (sex, drugs, etc.)

2.) Things which are mildly upsetting to legitimately large groups of people--not bringing them to tears, but upsetting in a frustration/anger type of way. Even low-level frustration is going to affect test scores. If a kid has been brought up to believe evolution is a lie, obviously that's something that needs to be worked on as a separate issue, but don't remind him about how frustrated he is with those liars in the scientific elite right in the middle of a test that's going to affect a school's funding. Likewise, if a kid's dad died on 9/11, reading about terrorism isn't going to make him unable to take the test, but it probably will distract him. It will get him thinking about his dad, rather than focusing on the test.

3.) Things which only rich people have. Swimming pools, vacations, computers in the home... There was a study done that showed that African-American students did measurably worse on tests where they were asked to declare their race in the initial identity information, and better when they were only asked for their name and not their race. Call it self-esteem or a victim mindset, the reality is that kids do worse when they feel worse is expected of them. And I think it's a reasonable logical leap to say that when they are reminded that they're poor (and thus "no good, never going to amount to anything, not going to make it to college like rich Susie is," etc. etc.) they're going to do worse as well.


All of it points back to a fundamental problem with standardized testing, which is a truly awful institution in my opinion. But if we're going to have to do it, I think it should be done as fairly as possible.

Homes with sw*mming pools

I'm so traumatized that you posted those words! I'm going to sue the cellar. I had to have the pool boy come over to check I read correctly, and now he's had to go for a lie down.

It's a recreational pool, people. Do I look like some sort of testoterized amazon to you? J'uanita, call my lawyer and bring me a mimosa and my medicine!

Aha, got it.
We have a couple of reading books that cross the above lines, but we're a different country and they are not in tests. Wild Weather for example, Birthdays and Birthday Celebrations. Celebrities, although these are sportspeople, authors and illustrators (Tiger Woods is in Training to be an Athlete. It says nothing about his extensive work on nocturnal emissions:))

The Quest where the old lady has collapsed and the boys have to go looking for a working phone, only to find that they are all vandalised. They return to see the ambulance there, the neighbour called from the old lady's landline as soon as the boys had left.

Witchcraft and sorcery are common themes. The Reception children (4-5) are introduced to Winnie the Witch. They love the story of her at he seaside, and how she turned her cat different colours so she could see him. Maths capacity homework set this term in Class 2 (6-7)included potion making spells. Numbershark includes a game where dragons breathe fire on a don and you see him crisp up if he answer is wrong - albeit in a very crude pixel animation. There is a lot of death in Numbershark actually, although it's mostly things like fish being gobbled up.

I have vetoed a book in which a burglar enters the house at night and is only scared off by the dog. I had three parents report anxious children after reading it. The other TAs were of the opinion that the Marys should rub some dirt in it, but I'd rather err on the side of caution. One the the parents was Tiger-Mum and she is not a moaner, trust me.

I get what you mean about not starting a child at a disadvantage though.
Of course I do, it's my job to assist Tiger and Marcus for that very reason.

I once worked for a company that wanted to make sure employees were not using offensive words for passwords. Since passwords are never meant to be shared, I really could not see the logic.

So someone created a list of combinations of dirty words that could fit into eight characters. The list had 100-200 entries and was by no means complete. When I came across it at first I was shocked and then I just laughed.:D

Yeah, there's definitely a difference between class and test. My son's teacher openly encouraged me to read Neil Gaiman's The Wolves in the Walls to the class, with illustrations that have been known to scare kids as old as 9 or 10. Kids have to be exposed to stuff. But if a child does poorly on this one test, taken one time during the year, the school has money taken away from them. Standardized testing is bullshit.

I think George Carlin would be offended.

Preach on sista!
The crap I have to go through right now to get some semblance of a "standardized test" for my son... sigh. :meanface:

Hang on.

We can't mention traumatic things in standardised tests, right?

Standardised tests are traumatic, right?

sooooo ......

Ha! really Zen. Whats the most traumatic thing for a school-aged kid? A TEST!
Why isn't that on there.

Another Fine example of Government over reach. Welcome to NY.

Yeah, there ya go. Limit the child's exposure to the actual/real world.

Cuz, God forbid that you actually raise your children.

Assimilate! The Government will educate your Children, please stand back! We will tell them what to think as we re-write history.

Since when do standardized tests have anything to do exposure to the real world?

The idea of standardized tests is to test all students on an equal level. If certain words gives some students a disadvantage, even subconsciously, then the test isn't standardized.


I'm sorry but this one actually makes sense.

Because sitting at a desk, in a silent room, filling in hundreds of bubbles with a number 2 pencil for hours... that's the ideal environment to expose the child to the actual/real world. :rolleyes:

They shouldn't have to take the test. But if they do, they shouldn't have to take an unfair test.

How is setting guidelines for their OWN TEST possibly overreach? You can disagree with it without it being overreach, you know. If they were telling the public not to use those words, that would be one thing. They are announcing that they will no longer use those words.


as for the motion itself, I support it. It seems a little silly to me to ban, say, birthdays, but fair's fair. There is clearly something broken about our standardised testing system. Minorities and less wealthy Americans consistently score worse on standardised tests even when all other variables are accounted for. "Standard" shouldn't mean "for middle class white people" - it should mean a test calibrated to be accessible to ALL students equally, to asses ONLY their academic progress and potential, not their socioeconomic group or anything else. Without standardised testing, it's too easy for students to be learning nothing at all, without oversight institutions being able to assess why, how, and who. But so far, almost all standardised testing systems used on a wide scale work badly for almost everybody and even worse for the rest.

Why do minorities score worse? Is it the academics, the questions, the cultural factors, what? I think that the facts indicate that ONE of MANY factors involved is that structural biases and flawed assumptions have led to a standardisation system that unfairly adds a cultural dimension to exams that shouldn't be culturally affected. The same way that an IQ test that only tests maths can leave behind people who are intelligent without being mathematical, or a blood pressure exam that only gave your diastolic pressure would leave you blind to systolic issues, an "academic" test that picks a "standard" that does not apply to some of the population, those parts of the population will not be accurately examined and assessed.

So: solve it! how can we effectively ensure that all students are meeting basic educational benchmarks, in a way that provides oversight of failed teachers, in a way that does not EITHER hold back from the curriculum being taught (instead of teaching to the test) OR unfairly introduce limiting or handicapping non-academic factors on the assessed?
I think that standardised testing in some form is REQUIRED for a schooling system that works. Some teachers just suck - its not always the students' fault when they don't perform well. There has to be a way to separate out bad teachers from bad classes. We just haven't written an effective test yet. This might be a step in the right direction, to remove at least a few potential handicaps from the potentially-culturally-biased or overly normative in a way that detracts from those outside the norm.
I dunno how many of you had modern standardised tests in school. Usually at least half of the tests are short stories, persuasive nonfiction, academic nonfiction, and historical nonfiction articles, followed by multiple-choice questions on the piece. If one of the sections was about Rap, or sports, or computers, and you had neither the experience nor the interest to adequately process, parse, understand, and respond to the article, that would be a terrifically unfair thing to test you on, when your language skills are what is being assessed.

edit: also note how many of the words on the list are things potentially triggering to New York City public school students suffering from ptsd, abuse, neglect, or poverty. If you're a 10-year-old hard-knocks impoverished inner-city kid suffering from abuse or neglect, living with violence and a lack of safety at or near home or in your neighborhood, the last thing you need is for your stupid awful test in the hot stuffy classroom to trigger potentially extreme emotional responses. Some people can shrug that kind of "twinge" off - some can't, so well, and when they soldier on and keep taking the test, their scores are negatively affected.


Please, opponents of this move... read all of that. I know, tl;dl, but really - respond to it. I'm just throwing out the logic that makes sense to me - i'm really curious what the response to those concerns is, and how better to deal with them.

I was completely confused. I thought the thread was about the banning of words, not, whether children should be tested.

You know, as in: "NYC Dept. Of Ed. Wants 50 ‘Forbidden’ Words Banned From Standardized Tests "

No, I have no children.

As an addendum to E's post, rather than a contradiction, I'd love to see the same test applied across national boundaries.

I know it won't happen just on a single Dwellar request (thank FSM, too much power etc) but I wonder how US children would fare if it was global and whether it would even be important. Bill Bryson writes about a humiliating defeat of an American team on University Challenge back in the ?1970s? but despite being an Anglophile, admits that the four contestants probably have FAR higher salaries now than the victors.

Self esteem, driving ambition, positive thinking, chutzpah.
Not all Americans have them.
Not all Brits lack them.
But you see what I'm getting at.

WHERE are they banning the words? On their own tests. That's the story here. That the NYC Dep't of Ed. wants to stop using those words on their tests, in an effort to be more fair.

American students prior to college (university) are taught zero about global affairs and cultural issues. I got more exposure to modern Europe through my Spanish language classes.

Sometimes I think we ought to do it the way the Japanese do. Education is only compulsory through junior high age, and high schools must be applied to, the way our colleges are. The way I see it, the application process serves as a type of standardized testing, except it examines the whole student, including essays and extracurriculars, not just multiple choice scores.

What age does that correspond to Clod? 'Cause in the UK it's only compulsory to age 16. After that education happens in colleges by application.

In the US, education is compulsory until 18 (Kindergarten plus 12 years.)

Except only sort of, because you can be a high-school dropout and no one really cares. Or you can get your GED (take a test and get a certification that is in theory equivalent to a diploma, but won't get you into most colleges,) or you can attend any of a number of weird charter schools that let you graduate early but are still technically a real diploma and not a GED. That's what my brother did: flew to California to enroll in a charter school that graduated him a week or so later.

Well, the alarmists win:

I agree with Clodfobble and Ibram.

I think standardized tests are a necessary evil. There are some truths about larger populations that cannot be perceived without some kind of uniform measurement, like a standardized test. This is not to be confused with the idea that a standardized test can tell everything about an individual, or even a lot about an individual. It is a tool. In this case, because it engages the intellect of the test subjects, it requires some careful consideration for the state of mind of the test subject. In my opinion, suggestions like this are valid.

We have standardised testing here in years 5,7 and 9. It gives schools a guide as to what they need to focus on, and also, since the results are available for all to see, gives parents and the community and idea of whether a school is doing the best it could be doing etc.

While these tests are traumatic for kids, the results should be used as a guide by parents and teachers because everyone has a bad day now and then, so the results aren't always a true indication of a child's skills or knowledge.

Over here standardized testing has more to do with securing state and federal funding than it does with assessing the students and planning educational goals for them.

Currently, my district suffers through standardized testing every single year starting in 4th grade all the way to 12th.

Standardized tests piss me off. I could have smacked my kid's teacher a couple of weeks ago. She had my son so worked up over the tests, he thought he might not pass 4th grade if he didn't get to sleep on time one night. It took close to an hour to convince him that he had nothing to worry about and the test wasn't for a grade.
Oh yeah, and he has yet to get a grade lower than an A- all year.