A Test That Determines Someone’s Destiny
Standardized test can determine where someone goes to college, what job they will acquire, and much more about their future. Standardized test are extremely important, and they can put an enormous amounts of stress on the test taker. Some people believe that standardized test do a poor job of measuring student achievement because they fail to measure important attributes like creativity and critical thinking (Harris P, Harris J, & Smith, 2012, p. 33). Even though these tests aren’t great indicators of predicting a student’s success, they are still being used by colleges to accept students. Therefore since they are still being used to determine people’s future, they need to be unbiased. A test that is this crucial to someone’s future should be fair and give all the test takers equal opportunity to achieve an average score. Unfortunately, these tests are still biased today. The Intelligence quotient (IQ) test is another standardized test that can change your life forever. For example Julian Nava and his older brother Henry Nava grew up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. Their parents both immigrants from Mexico both strongly believed education was the key to success. Like many other Mexican Americans at the time, the Navas only spoke Spanish at home. When the Nava boys were in school, they were only allowed to speak English, and they were punished for speaking Spanish. Julian Nava was given an IQ test as a young boy, and like many of his Mexican peers, he scored low and was placed on the vocational track. Many of these kids hardly knew English and they were given a test that would decide their fate (Facing History & Ourselves, 2009). By the 1930s, two thirds of Mexican American students in Los Angeles were classified as slow learners and even mentally retarded on the basis of IQ tests given as early as kindergarten (Sashidharam, 2012). Henry Nava who was by now a solider in WWII saw a trend that the “less intelligent” soldiers, based on the IQ test, were put in the front lines to die first. Determined to not let this happen to his younger brother, Henry demanded that his brother Julian be put on the college bound track. Julian Nava graduated high school in 1945, and went on to earn a doctorate in history from Harvard. He was later elected to the Los Angeles board of education, where in the 1960s and 70s he led a successful battle to ban IQ testing in the Los Angeles schools. In 1979, he was named U.S. ambassador to Mexico by President Jimmy Carter. Julian was lucky to have his older brother fight for his education. Unfortunately, many of Julian's peers were not as lucky; many of them were denied educational opportunities. (Facing History & Ourselves, 2009) People would think that after almost hundred years that standardized test would change to where they give everyone equal opportunity, but they haven’t and who knows if they even can. |