Working on the Standards

Although this probably violates a confidentiality agreement I signed, I thought I'd write today about my recent work on the Michigan Merit Exam, or MME. The MME is the standardized test they use in Michigan, and is given to 11th grade students. It is basically the ACT supplemented by additional science and social studies portions.

The science and social studies portions are put together using teachers, who write the questions and approve the questions. There are several committees of teachers who look over these questions- a Bias Review Committee (which only looks at gender and race bias), a Content Review Committee (decides if the questions are too hard), etc.

What sorts of questions are on the social studies test? Here is a summary of all of the major topics tested in US history on the MME: Vietnam war was bad, Rosa Parks, South Africa sanctions, the Equal Rights Amendment, living constitution, Japanese internment in WWII, and Title IX funding. That's it- no questions about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Roaring Twenties, etc. There were a couple New Deal questions... and a couple questions on the Civil Rights era and on the Great Society... a question on JFK, FDR, LBJ, and Truman. No questions on Teddy, Taft, Coolidge, Eisenhower, or Nixon.

What do you notice about these questions? They are all legitimate US history questions, yes, but there is no political balance in them. It is all the things that liberals like to talk about, and none of the things conservatives like to talk about. If you were to teach WWII, you do not have to teach the folly of appeasement, the sacrifice of our troops, the bravery of our soldiers, or any of the famous battles. You would need to teach Japanese internment. If you were to teach Civil Rights, you would not teach that the Republicans passed the major pieces of legislation- you would teach that JFK and LBJ signed them into law. If you taught Vietnam, you would focus on public opinion and opposition to it, and teach nothing else about it.

Based on the questions on the MME test, that every student in Michigan is tested on and that every teacher in Michigan uses to design their curriculum, the only version of social studies is a thoroughly liberal one. Liberal to its very core, with every single facet of the education business seeped in the liberal narrative of the world.

Ironically enough, the average score (before the phony math took over in the Cut Score Setting Committee) was a 28%- the students do so poorly because their minds, even after years and years of indoctrination, reject the liberal narrative as untrue, causing them to get many many answers wrong.