NY Dept. of Education to ban Dinosaurs, Poverty, Sex from standardized tests

[Razgovory]

I'm looking at the reasons they give, if that article is accurate. Not a logical or testing rationale is what they give, mostly what they talk about is emotional, making sure that students won't be offended or harmed by words and topics that really are normal items. Really? We need to be so sensitive?

Why not be sensitive?  It costs nothing, and may make a difference to some students taking the test. 

That is a good question.  Why aren't you sensitive to posters here?

[grumbler]

Is making the test easier and the testing environment more sterile a good or a bad thing?

It isn't making testing any easier, nor the testing environment any more sterile, so it is a moot point whether such things are good or bad.

The real world these students are supposedly being prepared for respects no such sensibilities.

The tests are not measuring ability to live in the real world, so the observation is moot.

But please keep up the strawman arguments.  They are amusing, if absurd.

[grumbler]

I like the idea of evoking emotional responses.

Have them take a bubble test while crawling through the mud under the barbed wire with live rounds fired overhead, for instance.  That way we know they won't crack when in the hand to hand combat that is university life.

Certainly the universities can install this kind of test (you are thinking here of things like SAT or ACT).  These are tests like the Regents' Exams and have nothing to do with college admission.