To: Bill De Blasio, Mayor of New York City
Sexist Pacer Test
The fifth grade pacer test is astonishingly sexist towards girls, given that boys have to complete more than three times the number of laps that girls must perform.
Why is this important?
We are sixth graders writing from our personal experiences last year. We are aghast that an issue we thought was resolved in the nineteen hundreds is still a problem today, into the twenty first century. The pacer test is a standardized test to confirm the physical ability of children in terms of running endurance. It is not fair that boys should have to live up to the expectations of being vastly more physically fit than girls, and girls should not have to be put down by the idea that they are not able to be equal to boys.