Thursday, December 14, 2017

Just A Reminder That The Test Is Flawed

If you're in education and you haven't encountered this yet, you soon will.  Arm yourself with knowledge:
The concept of “implicit bias,” where individuals experience and act upon unconscious feelings of prejudice, has become a ubiquitous part of popular culture. But the basis for the theory of “implicit bias”—a test that purported to prove to people that they were unknowingly prejudiced toward certain groups—has recently had its validity called into serious question.

At The New Yorker earlier this year, Jesse Singal exposed the serious shortcomings and flaws with the Implicit Association Test, a testing mechanism created from professors from Harvard and the University of Washington. And again at The New Yorker last week, Singal offered up more evidence that the test does not deliver on its promises, citing a report from Olivia Goldhill at Quartz.
Don't let them cow you by telling you the test "was created at Harvard". If it's flawed, it's flawed--no matter where it was made.

I wrote about this last April, too.

1 comment:

Ellen K said...

Any time you skew a test for cultural norms over pure information and performance, it's going to be "wrong" for one group or another. This is why SAT testing has become so convoluted in nature.