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.”
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“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.”
However, a Black mom in Chicago called the radio station to firmly disagree with Gates that Black children can’t pass the tests.
“We have a literacy gap and that no one is addressing. And I know that the [Chicago Teachers’ Union] really they are not curriculum experts,” she said. “And I really think these questions to be asked of [Chicago Public Schools], because they are the ones who should be providing the proper curriculum for our students.”
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“I want to say – as a parent – [regarding] standardized testing, we’re not ready to move beyond that right now,” the mother added.
“Let me say this to you,” she continued. “I passed every standardized test, and I want my children to be able to do it even though I’m Black. That does not mean I cannot achieve on standardized tests. And our children need to be able to do so that they can be competitive. Our focus needs to be on the literacy gap that Black children have, this not being addressed.”
Fox News Digital contacted the Chicago Teachers’ Union for comment and did not immediately receive a response.
During the interview, Gates also stressed the importance of teaching critical race theory (CRT).
“This is why being able to teach CRT is important, because it helps us to examine how we come to our conclusions,” she said. “CRT is an important function and should be in our education system, which is why the Republicans… are aiming directly for those types of things.”
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The head of the AFT, Randi Weingarten, has previously claimed CRT was not in K-12 education, blaming the “culture warriors.”
“Let’s be clear: critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools or high schools,” she said in a July 2021 conference. “It’s a method of examination taught in law school and college.”
Other teacher union leaders have made similar claims.
The National Education Association union’s president, Becky Pringle, sent a letter to social media companies, urging them to take action against “the alarming growth of a small but violent group of radicalized adults who falsely believe that graduate level courses about racism are being taught in K-12 public schools because of misinformation spread on social media.”
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