Chicago Teachers’ Union Claim That Black Kids Cannot Pass Standardized Tests Doesn’t Go Over Well With Mom

The president of an American Federations of Teachers‘ affiliate in Chicago was berated by a Black mom for claiming on a radio station that standardized tests are “junk science rooted in White supremacy” as well as “eugenics.”

Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and executive vice president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, was asked by a Black radio station last week about public school students’ declining reading and math scores. Specifically, criticism that Gates was advocating to boost teachers’ contracts with money that would be better served addressing student achievement.

She responded that gauging student achievement through testing was the problem.

“The way in which, you know, we think about learning and think about achievement is really and truly based on testing, which at best is junk science rooted in White supremacy,” she said. “Now, if you have another hour, I can get into why standardized tests are born out of the eugenics movement. And the eugenics movement is always thought to see Black people as inferior to those that are non-Black.”

“You can’t test black children with an instrument that was born to prove their inferiority,” she said. “Some of this is about, releasing our people from a standard that is created for the failure.”

{snip}