I respectfully **strongly** disagree. To many of us “Learning disabled” kids w/ lousy grades & crappy teacher recommendations they are our only lifeline. True, we may struggle with them as well. But sometimes one can show a C-average student in the >95% percentile on such a test. https://twitter.com/andrewyang/status/1108479430958215173

This allows a truly marginalized community (those of us w/ significant learning differences) with *no political presence* at all and which is shat upon w/ impunity by almost all educators that the problem is actually “Teaching Disabilities” which show up as terrible evaluations.

How do you explain a student getting C’s w 1400 on an SAT? Those tests w/ all their flaws have been the lifeline of people like me. Without them we have no way of pointing to the problem as being our teachers.

If those tests didn’t exist, you would not be following this account.

By all means let’s make our tests better, but give us the means to throw off our damned educators who attempt to destroy my community of learners. So why do they do it? Because we are the one community that consistently reveals the inadequacy of our schools, material & educators.

So I’m sorry to Black and Latino advocates that may argue that the tests are unfair to those marginalized communities. But there are MILLIONS of voiceless Americans who are **openly** discriminated against and destroyed by our schools.

It’s totally invisible with *zero* empathy.

Short of asking blind musicians to read music, it‘s actually the clearest demonstration of “Structural bias” we have. Every second of every day of school is based around neurotypical expectations. K-12 is 13yrs of everyday being a humiliation communicating that you are an idiot.

So here‘s my claim: those tests are all some of us have. The next time someone says “Tests only measure an ability to take tests.” show them this thread and tell them to look at the contributions of dyslexics & others non-neurotypicals.

Fix the educators. Or hands off the tests.

And lest you think this isn’t empathic towards racial minorities, the joke‘s on you. Those tests save Black dyslexics. They save Latinos w “attention deficit”. The multiple choice questions rescue Trans kids w disgraphia.

Yet we aren’t even recognized by “Diversity & Inclusion.”

Perhaps my identification before even Male, Jewish or American is non-neurotypical. Precisely because the issue is invisible. My community of neurodivergents isn’t a white or privileged issue. We‘re a totally inclusive ,only we’re somehow in the ultraviolet you don’t see yet.