Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane flunks again.

In his column in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, cialis tadalafil Eugene Kane implies that white kids do better than black kids on standardized tests because the groups don’t share the same cultural references and the tests are biased in favor of the white kids’ culture.

For example, sildenafil cialis he points out that black kids would be more likely than white kids to know that “5-O” is inner-city slang for police.

(On the other hand, buy I wonder how many of those kids would know that “5-O” is a reference to Hawaii Five-O, the exceeedingly white-bread cop show set in Hawaii in the 70s? Also, doesn’t everybody know that “5-O” means police?)

I’m not exactly sure what Mr. Kane’s point is.

Does he want standardized tests to have more inner-city-specific questions like “What invisible force makes it possible for the metal detector to find the gat in your backpack” or “Bobby has three bags of crack. If Bobby swallows two bags, how many bags does he have left?”

(Before you call me a racist, aren’t those questions exactly in line with the argument Mr. Kane was making?)

Standardized test creators already do everything they can to scrub bias from their tests.

So unless inner-city culture has discovered that 2+2 doesn’t really equal 4, “cultural bias” is just another excuse that helps perpetuate an inner-city culture of isolation and failure.

Bottom line?

Inner-city kids aren’t failing because of their culture, it’s their culture that’s failing them.

4 comments October 2nd, 2007