Examining the myth of accountability, high-stakes testing and the achievement gap | Cloaking Inequity
EXAMINING THE MYTH OF ACCOUNTABILITY, HIGH-STAKES TESTING AND THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP
We are proud to announce a new peer-reviewed paper entitled
Examining the myth of accountability, high-stakes testing and the achievement gap In this article, we outline how notions of accountability and the achievement gap have relied upon the massive expansion of high-stakes exams in our nation’s schools. Texas-style test and punish accountability manifested in various ways within schools and school culture across the nation via NCLB, which undermined notions of trust within the teaching profession. More than decade of national education policy focused on high-stakes testing and accountability—despite that the fact that the rise of high-stakes testing also involved considerable legal, ethical, and social considerations. We argue the practice of spending large amounts of time on test preparation and test taking must be reversed lest we continue on the path of maintaining schools solely as machinery for stratification. We conclude that market- and business-oriented ideology, has reinforced the racist under- and overtones of testocracy in the United States and has neither closed the achievement gap nor fomented meaningful accountability or success.
Examining the Myth of Accountability, High-Stakes Testing, and the Achievement Gap
Julian Vasquez Heilig, California State University Sacramento
Jameson Brewer, University of North Georgia
Jimmy Ojeda Pedraza, California State University Sacramento
Popularity and Common Belief: Birth of Texas-Style Accountability
In the late 1990s, students of color in the large, urban high schools in Houston were reporting that they had 0% dropouts, and it was claimed that the achievement gap on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) was closing rapidly. Education reformers attributed all of this purported success directly to Texas’s implementation of high-stakes testing and accountability (Vasquez Heilig & Darling-Hammond, 2008). The Houston Independent School District and many other traditionally underperforming districts across the state were suddenly a success—it was a Texas miracle (Haney, 2000). But had Houston, and Texas, really experienced a miracle that would justify codifying high-stakes testing and accountability for every student in the entire nation?
Although the standards, testing, and accountability education reform movement is firmly situated as an offspring of the 1983 release of A Nation at Risk (ANAR), surely the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 was rooted in policy making in Texas (Vasquez Heilig, Brewer, & White, 2018). In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a concerted push by Texas policymakers and business leaders to reform the state’s schools (Vasquez Heilig & Darling-Hammond 2008). Texas was one of the earlier states to develop statewide testing systems during the 1980s, adopting minimum competency tests for school graduation in 1987 (Carnoy, Loeb, & Smith, 2003). In the early 1990s, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 7 (1993), which mandated the creation of Texas-style public school accountability to rate school districts and evaluate campuses. Signed into law by Democratic Governor Ann Richards in 1993, S.B. 7 represented a bipartisan attempt to remedy the state’s educational woes as it was passed by a wide margin in both the Texas House and Senate.
