All of them

At a recent lecture, Janet Helms a “professor of counseling, developmental and educational psychology at Boston College”¹ surprised her audience by stating some well established (but rarely acknowledged) facts about racial differences on standardized tests:

On average, she said, 20 percent of a person's test score is explained by race. On the old, two-part SAT, that could translate to more than 200 points.

While some researchers say poverty explains this difference, Helms said the black-white gap remains even when socioeconomic status is considered.

The achievement gap is so pervasive, Helms said, she's been unable to locate any study in which blacks and whites were tested in the same setting and blacks outscored whites.

After admitting these truths², what does Helms conclude?

That's led her to conclude tests somehow measure race in addition to achievement. If scores correlate with racial identity, Helms said, "that ought to mean the test is not valid."

"Now if you know any white people, you know there must be something wrong with the testing situation," she said. "There is no way white people could always be smarter than black people."

So there you have it, tests are invalid - all of them.

¹Helms is author of the ‘classic’ book on ‘diversity’ A Race Is a Nice Thing to Have: A Guide to Being a White Person. The title is misleading, giving this book as a gift to minority friends and co-workers is not recommended.

²See Arthur Hu: ”there are NO cities or schools where Hispanics or Blacks are equal or better in performance compared to whites, regardless of quality of the school district or school”.

See Griffe du Lion: “Black children from the wealthiest families have mean SAT scores lower than white children from families below the poverty line.”