I can just hear that list, the way you’ve laid it out, being read by William S. Burroughs in his “Junky” voice or by Allen Ginsberg in his “Howl” voice!

Scary!

A swimming pool conjures up a completely different image to a suburban kid from southern California than to a kid in Detroit.  Also, a completely different sense of where one fits in the social landscape.

There have been a lot of experiments showing that subtly reminding someone they are black or female or poor prior to taking a test will cause them to do worse on the test.

Swimming pools aren’t as neutral a subject as you think.

(Putting slavery into a math test, like the travesty in Georgia linked far above, constitutes a distraction. Putting slavery into a history test does not. It’s a pretty simple distinction to make.)

Check the Scope and Sequence documents on this page, and you’ll see “religion, war, slavery [and] nuclear weapons” are indeed taught.

As I note at great length elsewhere, an AP article says something different from the CNN article. It says the tests cover “math, science, literacy and social studies”.

As I also note at great length elsewhere, NYC schools put evolution in a central location for teaching life sciences. Fourth grade proficiency requires “Demonstrates understanding of change over time.” Eighth grade proficiency requires “Demonstrates understanding of evolution, diversity, and adaptation of organisms.” Tenth grade proficiency adds to that “Demonstrates an understanding of biological evolution.”

The English section of their website has a pretty good lesson plan for teaching “Inherit the Wind”, too.

I’m not too worried about the state of teaching evolution in New York City.

On the other hand, I’m not too worried about New York City’s emphasis on teaching evolution, given what their standards say about it:

Fourth grade:

Life Sciences Concepts
a Demonstrates understanding of characteristics of organisms.
b Demonstrates understanding of life cycles of organisms.
c Demonstrates understanding of organisms and environments.
d Demonstrates understanding of change over time.

Eighth grade:

Life Sciences Concepts
a Demonstrates understanding of structure and function in living systems.
b Demonstrates understanding of reproduction and heredity and the role of genes and environment on trait expression.
c Demonstrates understanding of regulation and behavior and response to environmental stimuli.
d Demonstrates understanding of populations and ecosystems and the effects of resources and energy transfer on populations.
e Demonstrates understanding of evolution, diversity, and adaptation of organisms.

Tenth grade:

Life Sciences Concepts
a Demonstrates an understanding of the cell.
b Demonstrates an understanding of biological evolution.
c Demonstrates an understanding of interdependence of organisms.
d Demonstrates an understanding of matter, energy, and organization in living systems.
e Demonstrates an understanding of evolution, diversity, and adaptation of organisms.
f Demonstrates an understanding of behavior of organisms

This certainly implies that the ban will apply to all standardized tests, but perhaps the policy is completely half-assed and will apply only to math and english tests. That would make the ban even stupider than it appears at first glance.

says that it is stupider not to ban the word evolution from a test about biology than it is to ban it. (Sentence edited because I got it exactly backward in the original.) I’m thinking Lou Reed applies in more than one direction here:

But you know people get all emotional
And sometimes, man, they just don’t act rational.
They think they’re just on TV

Now, on further research, I’ve found, via the New York Times, an AP story which says the request was for more than math and English tests:

The Department of Education included the list in a recently issued request for proposals to create the tests that would be used to measure student progress in math, science, literacy and social studies.

But it goes on to say this:

A spokeswoman for the department said the list is of topics that are suggested to be avoided, not outright banned, and it’s standard language that’s been included in proposal requests for some time.

“There is no ban on any topic in our tests or curriculum,” spokeswoman Deidrea Miller said in a statement. “This is standard language that has been used by test publishers for many years and is meant to ensure that tests contain no possible bias or distractions for students.

The thing which most concerns me about this supposed problem is whether this has a chilling effect on teaching evolution. This suggests that is not a problem.

I sure would like to read that RFP, though, and I’m having a hard time finding it.

These are a few of the 50-plus words and references the New York City Department of Education is hoping to ban from the city’s standardized tests.

then goes on to say that the list of words was made public

when the city’s education department recently released this year’s “request for proposal” The request for proposal is sent to test publishers around the country trying to get the job of revamping math and English tests for the City of New York.

This certainly implies that the ban will apply to all standardized tests, but perhaps the policy is completely half-assed and will apply only to math and english tests. That would make the ban even stupider than it appears at first glance.

There’s a big, big difference between what’s appropriate to teach in the biology classroom — evolution comes to mind as a perfect example–and what’s appropriate to put into a high-stakes test covering math and English.

If the goal is to test reading comprehension or math skills in an equitable* manner, which is the stated goal of these standardized tests, then you want relatively bland and unobjectionable material in them. The last thing a kid raised by evolution deniers (not quite child abuse but still an intellectual disadvantage), a kid trying to do well on an algebra exam and hoping to go to college, needs is to have the further disadvantage of having the ignorance imposed by his parents rubbed in his face while trying to concentrate.

*nothing about standardized testing As We Know It is equitable

The request for proposal is sent to test publishers around the country trying to get the job of revamping math and English tests for the City of New York.

So, sorry, but you won’t be able to put this question on a math test:

“If the first parent abuses three children five times a week, and the second parent abuses two children seven times a week, which parent commits more acts of abuse in a week?”

I realize there are those for whom that is a startling act of censorship. They are cordially invited to grow the fuck up.

The request for proposal is sent to test publishers around the country trying to get the job of revamping math and English tests for the City of New York.

Simple. You cannot.

The politicians who push for accountability in the form of standardized tests are on the take from the testing companies, and are in bed with the social conservatives who want religion, not science, to be a core component of the required curriculum.

All of the major educational publishers have a very conservative approach to material, and the justification is that kids have access to trade (bookstore) fiction, which is perverted and weird, so it’s okay that we give them the equivalent of literary hardtack.

These lists are often made in committee, so of course they’re very broad. However, educational publishers do not play to the Mississippi contingent, as Antinous would suggest. Being conservative does not equate to making possum gravy in the swimming pool, and I have rejected a lot of reading comprehension passages for being too rural as to be a foreign experience for the audience we were writing for. 

Basically you’re writing for a kid who doesn’t exist using guidelines created by committee and starting with an abstract learning concept. You’re guaranteed to fail. 

Mention of evolution is banned to sanitize the tests and make them acceptable to the corporate conservatives who mandated them in the first place.

ad nauseum