Prairie State Wire

Republican Congressional candidate James Marter thinks opposition to the so-called Higher Education Fair Admissions Act should be a no-brainer.

“The decision to require standardized test scores on admissions applications should be made by universities and not the government,” Marter told Prairie State Wire. “We have to remember the original intention of government was limited government and everything else belongs to the people.”

Even with the law going into effect on Jan. 1, Marter argues he doesn’t put much stock in arguments being made about the tests being too racist to have any positive value.

“I don’t think it is, but I believe it’s something that should be up to the private sector to figure out in terms of who uses the tests and what it means,” he said. “At the end of the day, math is math, and science is science. I don’t know how those things can be racist.”

The organization Fair Test has created a list of more than 1,000 colleges and universities that have eliminated ACT or SAT score requirements as part of the application process, with the primary reason offered for change being the tests “favor students from privileged backgrounds.”

In addition, The National Association for College Admission Counseling recently conducted a study where researchers uncovered that schools that don’t require standardized test scores have a more diverse student body.

A University of Illinois math professor recently wrote an anthology for teachers in which she argued that math is racist, and that “mathematics itself operates as whiteness.”

“Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White,” Rochelle Gutierrez wrote, according to an article in Campus Reform.

Marter fails to see the logic.

“I think HB 0226 is not a good thing,” he said. “I don’t know how any of this will improve education for kids in any way. We need to get the government out of our colleges.”

Marter argues the latest Illinois State Board of Education data showing that the number of Illinois students in 3rd-11th grade who meet grade-level standards decreased by 18% in the last two years in math and by 17% in English says more about the system. Among Chicago Public School 11th graders, only 23% met grade-level standards for reading and only 21% met grade-level standards for math.

“They’re always trying to cover for things,” he said. “They just don’t want to do anything to help solve the problem. We need new leadership and new voices.”

This year, CPS launched Skyline, a culturally-responsive curriculum that offers regular assessments, many of which are designed to improve instruction and learning. The district has also talked about goals of hiring as many as 650 tutors this year through a program known as TutorCorps.

Illinois State Superintendent of Education Carmen Ayala is also on record in asserting she wants to ease up on high-stakes testing across the state.

 “It’s too long, it’s too stressful for our students and it does not give the data that we need until months later,” she said, adding that more affluent school districts are already spending their own funds to administer more frequent testing with quicker results.