Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

This morning’s New York Times has an article by Alexandra Reeve Givens, chief executive of the Center for Democracy & Technology, Hilke Schellman and Julia Stoyanovich, professors at New York University focusing on artificial intelligence, on the mis-use of testing for job applicants. The article describes how variousonline and pencil and paper tests screen applicants in a fashion that could well exclude minorities, females, and “non-traditional” applicants who are highly qualified for the jobs. In the article, the authors suggest:

“The bill should also require validity testing, to ensure that the tools actually measure what they claim to, and it must make certain that they measure characteristics that are relevant for the job.”

When I read this sentence the first thought that fame to mind was that MAYBE the bill could be expanded to look into the validity of the standardized tests used to “measure” gifted pre-schoolers, applicants to competitive high schools, and colleges. There is no evidence that SAT tests have any predictive validity and the use of any single test to determine “giftedness” is ipso facto wrongheaded. The writers of the Times article make a compelling case that the various screening devices used in the private sector are discriminatory in an unfair and invalid. The discrimination done before entry into the workforce has a far more devastating impact than job screening tests. A child who is identified as “ungifted and untalented” before entering school is unlikely to see that label change in the next 13 years. When a door is closed before Kindergarten classes begin it is hard to reopen.