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High Stakes Testing We are committed to generating and synthesizing research on key civil rights and equal opportunity policies that have been neglected or overlooked. The Grade Retention FallacyChristopher Edley, Jr. and Johanna Wald. The Boston Globe. December 16, 2002 For those who have been following the path of standards-based school reform in this country, it is hard not to feel as if Massachusetts is blindly following the same deeply flawed script that was written over a decade ago and continues to this day in Texas and Chicago. The storyline goes something like this: As soon as high stakes testing is introduced in 10th grade, the number of students retained in ninth grade surges. Minority and low-income students are overrepresented among those students who are held back.
Educations's 'Perfect Storm?' Racial Resegregation, 'High Stakes Testing, & School Inequities: The Case of North Carolina John Charles Boger. August 30, 2002 Research commissioned for the conference The Resegregation of Southern Schools. Among its lessons, The Perfect Storm illustrates that converging forces can sometimes overwhelm even seasoned professionals who focus on discrete threats rather than their combined power. This paper will examine three educational developments-(1) student resegregation by race and socioeconomic class; (2) "high-stakes" accountability measures aimed at affecting educators' decisions on student promotion and graduation; (3)...
Raising Standards or Raising Barriers? Edited by Gary Orfield and Mindy L. Kornhaber. The Century Foundation Press. May 1, 2001 The book makes clear the importance of high standards and accountability systems. But support for standards and accountability systems should not be equated with support for high-stakes tests. Most of the contributors to the volume have found evidence that policies that focus on high-stakes testing corrupt educational reform and undermine achievement, especially for at-risk students.
Testing, Testing Gary Orfield and Johanna Wald. The Nation. June 5, 2000 ...Despite the political popularity of the testing "solution," many educators and civil rights advocates are suggesting that it has actually exacerbated the problems it sought to alleviate. They claim that these policies discriminate against minority students, undermine teachers, reduce opportunities for students to engage in creative and complex learning assignments, and deny high school diplomas because of students' failure to pass subjects they were never taught.
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