Skip to main content

What is a good introductory thesis for a paper on racial and socio-economic bias in standardized testing?

Your introductory thesis statement depends on what the main point of your paper is and the audience to whom you are writing. A paper for a first-year composition course should aim to have a clear general argument for a lay audience, while a paper for an education course should show your knowledge of some recent research in the field. A post-graduate paper needs to focus on some very narrow issue and be supported by original research and detailed knowledge of the field.


If you are writing a paper for a general writing course as opposed to a course within the education curriculum, you should probably take a stance that evidence of racial and socio-economic bias in standardized tests should make us reduce our reliance on this sort of testing.


If you are completing an assignment in an education course, you should narrow your thesis to make an argument about the effect of this sort of bias on some specific population, such as students of a specific background applying to universities in a specific state. 


For a post-graduate course, you would need to make a claim on a narrower, more sophisticated topic, such as how "differential item functioning" on the SAT proves evidence of racial bias independent of students' general academic proficiency.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more