"It costs $1.50 each way to ride the bus between home and work. A weekly pass is $16.00. Which is the better deal, paying the daily fare or buying the weekly pass?"

Where is the bias in this question?

A large percentage of the African Amercian students taking the test responded that it was a better deal to buy a weekly pass. This perplexed the district team who designed the assessment, since they assumed students would answer that it was better to pay the daily fare (going to and from work each day equals $3.00 per day, multiplied by working five days a week, for a total of $15.00 per week for a daily fare compared to $16.00 for the weekly pass). Implicit in the design of the assessment are notions of an "idealized White middle class" in which people work only five days a week and have only one place of employment.

Yet the African American students in this district brought in the realities from their own lives when answering the question. Some reasons they offered for why it was better to buy the weekly pass included: allowing more than one family member to use the pass; using the pass on the weekend as well as during the week; and the economic providers in their families holding down more than one job with multiple employers. In other words, the needs of their families did not match the "idealized White middle class" standard implicit in the question. That is not to say that these realities applied to all students of color in the district; rather it indicates the ways in which assessment questions that are viewed as "neutral" in fact are often laden with cultural values and assumptions. It also highlights the importance of asking students to explain their mathematical thinking. Based on their reasons why it is better to buy a weekly pass, the students in this scenario did answer the question correctly and should be given credit.

Adapted from: Tate, William. (1995). "School Mathematics and African American Students: Thinking Seriously About Opportunity-to-Learn Standards." in Educational Administration Quarterly,Vol. 31 (3), 440.




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