Mansplaining
Welcome to Mansplaining, a podcast about the interesting things you can discover if you just take the time to learn. Mansplaining is brought to you by Mark, Joe, and so far nobody else. Join us as we try to learn a thing or two about a thing or two.
Mansplaining
Episode 139: Standardized Testing and the Pretense of Meritocracy
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Mark and Joe
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Season 1
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Episode 139
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With only 24 of 777 incoming seats in New York’s City’s premier public high school being offered to Black and Hispanic students, even though they make up 62% of the population, standardized testing has once again come under scrutiny. There’s a reason why the “A” in SAT no longer stands for “aptitude”—the test is a closer proxy for socioeconomic status than intelligence. Mark and Joe trace the history of standardized tests that were originally developed to rid the educational system of inherited privilege but ended up creating perverse incentives like “teaching to the test” that make it harder for actual learning to take place.