The battle to get rid of the SAT and ACT begins
SAT and ACT tests must go, a lawsuit filed against the University of California system demands. Criminalizing homeless people does nothing to get them off the streets, a new study says. And just-released research on orcas confirms what many of us are lucky enough to understand: Grandmas know stuff.
It's news for Tuesday.
And later, I'll introduce you to the founder of Imbellus, a Los Angeles company reimagining how we measure human potential, and it isn't via standardized tests.
I'm Arlene Martínez and I write In California, a daily roundup of stories from newsrooms across the Paste BN Network and beyond. Sign up here and tell a friend!
SAT, ACT must go, group tells UC system
The University of California system's use of the SAT or ACT as part of its admission process discriminates based on race and wealth, making it unconstitutional under state law, a lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges. The tests also fail to provide meaningful information about whether a student will succeed, the suit contends.
“It is illegal wealth and race discrimination that damages the futures of tens of thousands of deserving students each year, who could excel at UC campuses of their choice,” Mark Rosenbaum, directing attorney at the nonprofit Public Counsel, which is representing some of the plaintiffs, told the New York Times.
The standardized tests are used widely by colleges and universities across the country. The idea of adding an "adversity score" to take into account economic hardship was briefly considered, then dropped following considerable backlash. Those involved with the suit have said if the large and prestigious UC system gets rid of the SAT and ACT, other schools will follow.
The red balloon, lettuce woes and a well fall
A red balloon from Central California made its way to Kentucky, and experts say it likely didn't do it on its own. But have the experts seen "The Red Balloon"? 🎈
Salinas' lettuce woes continue: People in three states have been sickened by salad kits contaminated by E. coli. Look for "Salinas" printed on the bag and a partial UPC of "0 71279 30906 4" and lot code of "Z."
An 87-year-old man is recovering Tuesday after falling 25 feet into an abandoned well. Authorities said he'd been mowing his lawn when he fell down the hole, which had been covered for 35 years.
The way of the Orca grandma
Orcas babies with grandmothers have a better chance of survival, thanks to having someone show them where the best food is, how to hunt more effectively and other life-saving skills, new research suggests. That may help explain why female orcas can live to be 90, instead of 50, the average lifespan of males. Also called killer whales, the animals can occasionally be seen off the California coast.
When being homeless is a crime
More cities are punishing homeless people for sleeping in public and all that means is it will be harder for them to ever get into housing, a report released Tuesday says. Its release comes as the Supreme Court considers reviewing a case on the legality of arresting unsheltered people when no shelter beds are available.
Across the country, homeless people are 11 times more likely to be arrested than a housed person, the National Law Center for Homelessness and Poverty's report says. In Los Angeles, the problem is more acute: one in six arrest bookings are of homeless people. And of the $100 million the city spends on homelessness, $87 million is for law enforcement, it notes, while just $13 million goes toward housing and services.
The report also calls out what it refers to as the "privatization of public space" through California's business-improvement districts. The Golden State's 200 districts use some of their significant revenue to push for anti-homeless activities, it notes, a finding similar to one made last year by the Policy Advocacy Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law.
Redding got a special shoutout in the report, courtesy of elected official Julie Winter, who recently opined that homeless people should be locked up until they're ready to live independently.
Read the report here.
What else we're talking about
In exchange for not being sentenced to death, Charles Holifield, 58, waived his right to a trial and appeal for killing a 13-year-old girl, who had been out walking her dog, in 1998.
Attorney General Xavier Becerra subpoenaed six dioceses to ensure church officials followed state law and reported sexual misconduct allegations to law enforcement.
CVS could be fined up to $3.6 million for refusing to redeem recyclable consumer cans and bottles at 81 of its California pharmacy locations.
California records its first death of the year from hantavirus, an infectious disease typically caused when a person inhales air poisoned with infected rodents' droppings.
OPINION: California cannot fix PG&E by retreating on renewable energy goals.
Her goal: Upend the K-12 system
Rebecca Kantar is the founder and CEO of Imbellus, a company developing a different way of assessing not just how students will do in college, but in life. To her, revamping the college admission test is only the first step in re-imagining the entire education system to better align with the jobs of the future.
Today, Imbellus has employees in 15 states and four countries, and its partners are using the company's assessments in 30 countries worldwide. We talked via email recently. I asked her to weigh in on today's lawsuit, but she wasn't available to immediately respond.
How do you test for how people think, instead of what they know?
Unlike multiple-choice tests, Imbellus assessments present complex scenarios that require deep thinking skills—like problem-solving, decision-making, and systems thinking—delivered in a “simulation-based” environment, similar to a video game.
Not only can we see test-takers’ final choices, we have a front-row seat to their real-time processing. As test-takers navigate, mouse over, and click, our system collects clickstream data and reports on the cognitive skills employed.
This is my favorite part of your LinkedIn profile, from your time at Harvard: “Proposed a Special Concentration in Leadership and Organizations, which was never approved. Dropped out in 2012.” What would that concentration have looked like?
I tried to structure a program of study that combined courses across computer science, sociology, economics disciplines with courses at the Harvard Kennedy School, Law School, and Business School. I was interested in the micro (within organization dynamics) and macro (across organizations and systems) angles of understanding how people lead, how organizations emerge and evolve, and how complex, large-scale systems (like governments, economies, etc.) work.
How does our current school system prepare students for the jobs of the 1950s?
Standardized tests have served as gatekeepers to educational advancement for well over 100 years, but they have evolved very little despite the shifting needs of students and employers.
Today’s education system tries to teach mastery of what machines already rule—mastery of content and processing speed—when we need to focus on the more complex dimensions of skills that will remain distinctly human.
For that, we need a new era of assessments capable of evaluating deep thinking skills.
What needs to change to prepare kids for the jobs of today and tomorrow?
We should reorient K-12 schooling around adulthood readiness—rather than just “college readiness” in the traditional sense.
The nature of work is changing across industries and careers, so we are working with major employers navigating the front lines of changing work to define and measure the skills students will need for success.
We’re building our assessments to evaluate those skills—like using data to make decisions, adapting and learning with feedback, etc.
What difference could your test make in the outcomes of poor and minority students?
Assessments are a mirror reflecting our education system’s inequities. We owe it to students to make sure assessments never exacerbate those inequities, or compound their devastating effects, but we also owe it to the public to ensure assessments never sweep those inequities under the rug. Students develop valuable deep thinking skills in many ways—whether by interning at a parent’s hedge fund or working on the family farm.
Our assessments provide all the information a test-taker needs, leveling the playing field for prerequisite knowledge so students can demonstrate their cognitive skills, no matter how they developed them.
How does the test make a difference if the basic structure of schools—curriculum, how teachers are evaluated, etc.—stays the same?
The reality is: What we test determines what we teach. Imbellus is holding the testing industry accountable for offering K-12 a better force to shape instruction.
Schools should be able to teach deep thinking skills in ways that are relevant, appropriate, and interesting for their students.
Assessments should detect the 21st-century skills that college, work, and life require. Over time, tests that evaluate those skills will incentivize schools to double down on improving teaching for those skills.
How do you get people who “win” so much from the current system, including the people who prepare the test, teachers' unions, elite families, to buy into a concept of reimagining education?
You offer them an even better deal and make clear the shortcomings, long-term, of the existing assessment industry.
There is severe misalignment between the knowledge and skills that today’s standardized assessments measure, and the capabilities that institutions of higher education and employers define as important. I think families, educators, and employers will increasingly feel the pain of a broken education-to-employment pipeline.
Imbellus is raising the bar for the assessment industry on the whole, showing students, parents, educators, administrators, and the public at large what better assessment can be like.
In California is a roundup of news compiled from across Paste BN Network newsrooms. Also contributing: LA Times, NPR, CalMatters, New York Times, Sacramento Bee and the National Geographic.