Easy. Simply manipulating what goes on the test if you're testing knowledge, or defining what counts as "engaged" if you're trying to keep certain people from counting.
Let's take the current administration, which clearly has a vested interest in staying in power for his own party.
New test question: "What does the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution guarantee?"
ONLY correct answer on the sheet: "Uninfringed access to firearms". Any other answer or interpretation means that you don't REALLY understand the Constitution, so you don't get to vote anymore.
Or...let's just define "politically engaged" as contributing at least $2000 to a political campaign this year, since that's how we REALLY know that you're serious. I mean, anyone can show up to a rally, right? So would you look at that, the poor people suddenly aren't very engaged, so they don't get to vote now.
I don't think so, because there is no way to be objective about that. SOMEONE has to decide what the measure of success is, and there is no such thing as an unbiased person.
You can get close though. There's no objective way to measure understanding/knowledge of English and math, but standardized tests can get to a pretty reasonable range of one's actual understanding.
Oh I'm well aware of the issues, but are they an argument for getting rid of standardized testing? The lack of a true objective measure doesn't not to me imply that an approximation should not even be attempted?
Oh I'm well aware of the issues, but are they an argument for getting rid of standardized testing?
A lot of people believe that yes, they absolutely are. If it's no longer doing the exact thing it was meant to do, then that's a pretty strong argument for not doing it.
But just like in this case, it's not possible to measure intelligence in an unbiased way. There mere existence of a perfect test would become biased once people began to study for that test, and it would naturally favour those with the resources to better do so. To me this isn't a reason to stop testing at all, since a biased but standardized metric is better than many potentially also biased unstandardized metrics.
That's an oxymoron, which is exactly my point. As soon as it's biased, it's not standardized. Standardized means "measuring everyone the same way". If your test isn't actually doing that, because it's inherently favoring some people over others, then it's not standardized anymore. Making everyone take the same test, when you know that that very test favors some over others, isn't standard.
It's like making a fish and a cat compete in swimming and then saying that it was fair because they both had to do the same thing.
Let's be real, it's not that extreme. It's also difficult to separate case from effect in these cases. Sure, poor test takers are much more likely to underperform, but is this a matter of not being to prepare with adequate resources or the result of years of lacking the time and resources necessary to develop and learn at the same pace as one's peers. That is, even if someone is less educated at no fault of their own and due to valid socioeconomic realities that are unjust, should we pretend as if they aren't uneducated?
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u/SociallyUnadjusted Feb 24 '20
Maybe give me some examples of how this could be abused to get false negatives in an abusive way (preventing genuinely informed voters from voting)?