In an interview with a Chicago radio station, Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates claimed that her students’ awful reading and math scores should be ignored because testing is “junk science” rooted in “white supremacy.”
“The way in which 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,” Gates said in the interview, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“If you have another hour, I can get into why standardized tests are born out of the eugenics movement,” she added. “And the eugenics movement has always sought 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.”
“When people talk to me about testing alone, I have to trouble the waters and challenge that,” she said.
🚨LISTEN to Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates absurdly claim black students can’t succeed on tests because they’re “junk science” rooted in “white supremacy”:
— Nicki Neily (@nickineily) August 19, 2024
“The way in which we think about learning and think about achievement is really and truly based on… pic.twitter.com/8VdEvVCoRR
According to the WSJ, listeners “weren’t buying it.” One person who called in stated that “racist” tests are no excuse for allowing black children to fail their classes.
“I want to say as a parent, standardized testing, we’re not ready to move beyond that right now…How can we say that it’s a racist tool? It might be but let me say this to you, I’ve passed every standardized test and I want my children to be able to do it.”
Reportedly, in 2022, The data shows that, in 2022, a mere 9 percent of Chicago’s black eighth graders were proficient in reading and only 4 percent were proficient in math, according to Wirepoints and the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Gates sent her son to private school, WSJ noted.