This annotated bibliography is reformatted and customized by the Center for Positive Practices. Some of the authors featured on this page include Kyong Mi Choi, Vance Vaughn, Genie Bingham Linn, Jason Mixon, Gayle A. Buck, Peggy Gill, Peter Youngs, Laura-Lee Kearns, Kay Fukuda, and Kate T. Anderson.
(2015). The Discursive Construction of Lower-Tracked Students: Ideologies of Meritocracy and the Politics of Education, Education Policy Analysis Archives. This study considers the discursive construction of a particular type of student in Singapore–the lowest-tracked, Normal Technical (NT), secondary school student. Shaped by meritocratic policies, educational practices, and ideologies common to many late-modern societies, students in the NT track are institutionally and individually constructed through the results of high-stakes testing regimes and essentialist views of ability. This article extends an understanding of the NT student as a widely held, deficit construction in Singapore by considering its use as an ideological label in interpersonal and institutional discourse. I consider how school leaders' and government commentaries about NT students' abilities, opportunities, and supposed characteristics provide insights about the processes through which students are recruited into institutional categories of deficit and risk–i.e. differentiated instruction, ascribed ability, and these processes' translation into educational structures and practice in the name of meritocracy. While the illustration of this phenomenon is uniquely Singaporean, implications include concerns about equity, constructions of ability, and ideologies of merit common to late modern society. [More] Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Secondary School Students, Track System (Education), Low Achievement
(2007). Test Development, Test Taking, and the Right to Learn, Language Arts. This article documents the experiences of a single working mother as she advocates for her daughter and attempts to negotiate a shifting educational landscape that she knows has dire consequences for her child. It also documents institutional responses to this mother's attempts at advocacy while they also adapt to the shifting landscape that imposes a central position for high-stakes testing. [More] Descriptors: Mothers, Accountability, High Stakes Tests, Advocacy
(2015). Motivational Teacher Strategies: The Role of Beliefs and Contextual Factors, Learning Environments Research. Teachers are key actors who shape the learning environment and whose main tasks include motivating students to learn. Teachers can differ in the way in which they try to motivate students to learn and their motivational strategies can vary from autonomy-supportive to controlling. The present study explored how teachers' personal beliefs and contextual factors relate to their self-reported autonomy-supportive or controlling motivational strategies. Nine grade six teachers at schools with varying student populations were interviewed. Based on their self-reported motivational strategies, two clusters of teachers were distinguished: teachers who mainly reported autonomy-supportive strategies and teachers who mainly reported controlling motivational strategies. The strategies of autonomy-supportive teachers aligned well with their personal beliefs and preferences, whereas some teachers in the controlling cluster would prefer more autonomy-supportive strategies. Underlying reasons for more controlling teaching strategies were mainly contextual, including "factors from above" such as national standards or high-stakes testing, but mainly "factors from below" referring to negative perceptions of students' abilities, behaviour, background characteristics or motivation. Implications are drawn and suggestions for further research are provided. [More] Descriptors: Teacher Attitudes, Teaching Methods, Educational Strategies, Elementary School Teachers
(2008). Through the Nominations of Principals: Effective Teachers of African American Students Share Limitations of High-Stakes Testing, Teaching and Teacher Education: An International Journal of Research and Studies. This study examines how elementary school teachers, nominated by their principals as effective teachers of African American students, perceive their effectiveness in an era of high-stakes testing that is influenced and constrained by policy dominance. The implications in this study might be useful in preparing prospective and practicing teachers to examine their instructional practices as they pursue successful outcomes with culturally diverse students. [More] Descriptors: African American Students, Teacher Effectiveness, High Stakes Tests, Elementary School Teachers
(2015). There Is Another Choice: An Exploration of Integrating Formative Assessment in a Chinese High School Chemistry Classroom through Collaborative Action Research, Cultural Studies of Science Education. This study explored integrating formative assessment to a Chinese high school chemistry classroom, where the extremely high-stakes testing and Confucian-heritage culture constituted a particular context, through a collaborative action research. One researcher worked with a high school chemistry teacher in China to integrate formative assessment into his teaching with 54 students in one of his classes. Data resources included transcripts from planning sessions, lesson plans, teacher interviews, classroom observations, student work, student interviews and surveys. The findings of this study revealed that as the teacher allowed his original views about students' learning and assessment tasks to be challenged by the students' learning, his teaching practice and understandings of formative assessment were transformed. Students' learning experience was also examined in the formative assessment process. The potentials and challenges of integrating formative assessment in the Chinese high school science classroom are discussed. This study indicated that formative assessment is promising to implement in Chinese high school science classrooms to enhance students' learning and meet the imperative needs for high-stakes exam preparation as well; and writing formative assessment tasks are favorable in this particular socio-cultural context. Further, this study suggested that facilitating in-service science teachers to integrate formative assessment through collaborative action research is a powerful professional development on improving teaching and learning under the highly constraint context. [More] Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Chemistry, Formative Evaluation, High School Students
(2011). Korean College Entrance Exams: An Inside Look, Mathematics Teacher. Mathematics educators are intensely interested in how mathematics is taught and learned in other countries. In Korea, for instance, the college entrance examination has played a major role in shaping Korean mathematics education (Kwon 2006). All high school students who want to pursue a college degree are required to take a college entrance examination in which the mathematics portion makes up one-fourth of the total 400 points. As a result of this emphasis, the Korean college entrance system continues to be a major topic of debate. Understanding how Korean students are assessed in high-stakes testing would be valuable to policymakers and mathematics educators in other countries; thus, this article will describe the objectives and characteristics of the mathematics portion of the Korean college entrance examination and also analyze in detail some items from the exam. These examples will illustrate what mathematical concepts, skills, and problem-solving methods Korean students need to know to prepare for high-stakes testing. [More] Descriptors: Mathematics Education, Testing, High Stakes Tests, College Entrance Examinations
(2008). Does High-Stakes Testing Increase Cultural Capital among Low-Income and Racial Minority Students?, Education Policy Analysis Archives. This article draws on research from Texas and Chicago to examine whether highstakes testing enables low-income and racial minority students to acquire cultural capital. While students' performance on state or district tests rose after the implementation of high-stakes testing and accountability policies in Texas and Chicago in the 1990s, several studies indicate that these policies seemed to have had deleterious effects on curriculum, instruction, the percentage of students excluded from the tests, and student dropout rates. As a result, the policies seemed to have had mixed effects on students' opportunities to acquire embodied and institutionalized cultural capital. These findings are consistent with the work of Shepard (2000), Darling-Hammond (2004a), and others who have written of the likely negative repercussions of high-stakes testing and accountability policies. [More] Descriptors: Income, Dropout Rate, Testing, High Stakes Tests
(2016). The Construction of "Illiterate" and "Literate" Youth: The Effects of High-Stakes Standardized Literacy Testing, Race, Ethnicity and Education. High-stakes standardized literacy testing is not neutral and continues to build upon the legacy of dominant power relations in the state in its ability to sort, select and rank students and ultimately produce and name some youth as illiterate in contrast to an ideal white, male, literate citizen. I trace the effects of high-stakes standardized testing by using the voices of 16 youth who failed the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) to illustrate how the "illiterate youth" revealed to students, schools, and communities by this test is culturally and socially constructed. In an age where multiple literacies are more and more valued, standardized literacy testing acts as a form of social control projected upon the "adolescent" body that has historically been deemed "other" or "deficient." Just as colonized subjects needed to be "civilized," so youth now need to acquire a state defined literacy in a competitive and fast paced learning environment. This article helps to demonstrate how power operates on marginalized youth through standardized literacy testing that is being used transnationally. [More] Descriptors: Illiteracy, Disadvantaged Youth, Literacy, Standardized Tests
(2010). The Machine Scoring of Writing, English in Australia. This article provides an introduction to the kind of computer software that is used to score student writing in some high stakes testing programs, and that is being promoted as a teaching and learning tool to schools. It sketches the state of play with machines for the scoring of writing, and describes how these machines work and what they do. Some of the strengths of the machine scoring of writing and the opportunities it offers are presented. Limitations and potential implications for assessing and teaching writing are also discussed. [More] Descriptors: Testing Programs, High Stakes Tests, Computer Software, Scoring
(2010). Creating Powerful High Schools for Immigrant and English Language Learning Populations: Using Past and Present Ideas in Today's Schooling Paradigm, Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. The high-stakes testing climate and the growing immigrant and English language-learning population have changed the face of teaching and learning in today's high schools. In this chapter, the authors emphasize the impact of a new paradigm of schooling based on high-stakes testing on Asian and Latin American students, as they represent the largest combined immigrant and ELL student populations. They discuss the research on high schools that have worked with significant numbers of immigrant and ELL students, and what can be learned from the ideas and programs that such schools have implemented. The authors argue that high schools in today's schooling paradigm can learn a great deal from past and present research on the actions of effective high schools for immigrant and ELL students. They believe it is a matter of applying the principles and desire to create success in a high school with a significant immigrant and ELL student population, despite the limitations on pedagogy imposed by the high-stakes testing culture. The authors begin with a discussion of how the current schooling paradigm–an intricate web of high-stakes tests, sanctions, and curricular mandates–constrains educators and impacts the educational lives of ELL and immigrant students. They continue with a look at what high schools have done in the past and present in terms of programs, curricula, and pedagogy to meet the needs of ELLs and immigrants in the realms of teaching English and content, engaging students, and caring. They conclude with recommendations on how to create effective and powerful high schools for immigrant and ELL students in today's schooling paradigm. [More] Descriptors: High Schools, Sanctions, Models, Testing
(2010). Evaluating the Long-Term Impact of Professional Development, Professional Development in Education. The requirement in the USA of the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) that every classroom has a highly qualified teacher, coupled with the current high-stakes testing environment, creates the need for all principals to be knowledgeable about quality staff development systems. One aspect of effective staff development is whether teachers adopt the principles, ideas and approaches presented. The purpose of this research was to examine the impact in terms of teacher use of professional development provided over a five-year period at four individual campuses in a large urban school district. [More] Descriptors: Urban Schools, Staff Development, Professional Development, Use Studies
(2015). Walk a Mile in My Shoes: Stakeholder Accounts of Testing Experience with a Computer-Administered Test, TESL Canada Journal. In keeping with the trend to elicit multiple stakeholder responses to operational tests as part of test validation, this exploratory mixed methods study examines test-taker accounts of an Internet-based (i.e., computer-administered) test in the high-stakes context of proficiency testing for university admission. In 2013, as language testing researchers (expert informants), we reported on our own experience taking the Test of English as a Foreign Language Internet-Based Test (TOEFL iBT) (DeLuca, Cheng, Fox, Doe, & Li, 2013). The present study extends these findings. Specifically, 375 current iBT test-takers, who had failed to achieve scores required for admission to university, completed a questionnaire on their test-taking experience. At the same time, two former test-takers who had passed the iBT volunteered for semi-structured interviews. Questionnaire and interview responses were coded (Charmaz, 2007) for recurring and differentiating response patterns across these stakeholder groups. Concerns were shared regarding speededness, test anxiety, and test preparation, but these test-takers differed from the language-testing researchers in their responses to the computer-administered reading and writing tasks. Implications are discussed in relation to construct representation, the interpretive argument of the test (Kane, 2012), and test-takers' journeys through high-stakes testing to university study in Canada. [More] Descriptors: Computer Assisted Testing, Language Tests, English (Second Language), Second Language Learning
(2010). Integrating Technology for Academic Achievement in Phonics and Fluency, Online Submission. With the push for teacher accountability and the controversy concerning high-stakes testing, more teachers are looking for systematic ways to increase academic achievement. If the U.S. is to regain its global position as number 1 in the education arena, education policy must dictate that teachers integrate technology as a regular part of core instruction to improve academic achievement. This action research seeks to investigate methods to close the achievement gap and prove that gains are made by high risk students in reading using various technological tools in the classrooms. A bibliography is included. [More] Descriptors: Accountability, Academic Achievement, Educational Policy, Technology Integration
(2010). Fostering Creativity or Teaching to the Test? Implications of State Testing on the Delivery of Science Instruction, Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas. High-stakes testing has driven the way that educators deliver instruction. Historically, standardized testing has been in existence since the 1800s, but the impact of accountability was not recognized until the late 1970s. Science educators are trying to balance the requirements of state assessments with creative and meaningful curricula. Inquiry-based science instruction has led the way in assisting students in the process of discovering knowledge for themselves instead of simply being asked to recall information. Inquiry learning promotes creativity by increasing motivation, wonderment, and curiosity. The author proposes that inquiry is the key to enhancing creativity, while still meeting the demands of standardized testing. [More] Descriptors: Creativity, Testing, Standardized Tests, High Stakes Tests
(2015). Sensitivity of School-Performance Ratings to Scaling Decisions, Applied Measurement in Education. Policymakers usually leave decisions about scaling the scores used for accountability to their appointed technical advisory committees and the testing contractors. However, scaling decisions can have an appreciable impact on school ratings. Using middle-school data from New York State, we examined the consistency of school ratings based on two scaling approaches that differed in scaling decisions that are important in high-stakes testing contexts. We found that, depending on subject, grade, and year, a switch in scaling approach led to (1) average absolute shifts in ranks of between 50 and 132 positions (median¬ =¬ 69), which are appreciable shifts for a listing of 1,243 schools; and (2) between 7% and 45% (average¬ =¬ 20%) of schools experiencing shifts in assigned performance bands, depending on the classification scheme. Further, the effect of scaling approach was larger when the raw-score distribution has more severe ceiling effect, and in these cases, it was driven primarily by the difference in the location of the highest obtainable scale score from the two scaling approaches. [More] Descriptors: School Effectiveness, Scaling, Middle Schools, Accountability