Black Listed

Sorry for the delay in posting- for the last several days I was working for the government on a test that they are producing, reviewing test items for content. I'm being vague on purpose- first, I don't want to violate any confidentiality about test items, and second, I don't want to get black-listed by the government and not get invited back.

The test is a state required one, and the state pays to have people write items for it, and then has a bias committee review the items for racial or sexist bias, and then another committee for content. The bias committee only looks at racial or sexist bias- not ideological or religious bias. But, there is plenty of bias of this sort on these tests.

I've worked on several tests for the state so far, and they are all pretty much the same- liberal. This is a Social Studies one. The test questions are on the following topics- labor unions, feminism, hippies, arguments against Vietnam War, Japanese internment in WWII, New Deal, Great Society programs, and the civil rights era. That's it. A teacher teaching social studies in this state only needs to have their students learn that information to do well on the test. Oh, and all with a heavy liberal slant to- there is no attempt made at balance. There are a lot of questions about the good things Democratic Presidents did, and a handful on the bad things Republican Presidents did. That's it.

Well, I'm not going to get into it further- I already am getting a lot of dirty looks for my comments on these committees, and have barely avoided getting purged several times. Just wanted to explain my delay in posting for the last couple days and give you a hint of the darker side of state created education tests.