This annotated bibliography is reformatted and customized by the Center for Positive Practices. Some of the authors featured on this page include Amanda B. Ghibellini, Christine Daniel, Kate Menken, Peter Demerath, Stephanie van Hover, Melissa Lisanti, Ulrich C. Reitzug, Jeremy Stoddard, Lincoln A. Estes, and Denise Greathouse.
(2010). Reducing Test Anxiety among Third Grade Students through the Implementation of Relaxation Techniques, Journal of School Counseling. The purpose of this study was to reduce the negative effects that self-perceived levels of test anxiety have on third-grade students. The participants in this study consisted of 177 third-grade students at two Midwestern public elementary schools. Students at one school were taught relaxation techniques, while students at the second school served as the control group, receiving no training. The Westside test anxiety scale (Driscoll 2007), elevator breathing and guided relaxation were utilized to measure and manage levels of anxiety. The results indicated that the relaxation intervention had a significant effect in reducing test anxiety in the experimental group. In contrast, no significant decrease in test anxiety was found among the control group. This study highlights the implications for counselors, parents and teachers working with elementary students facing high-stakes testing. [More] Descriptors: Experimental Groups, Control Groups, High Stakes Tests, Grade 3
(2008). From "What Did I Write?" to "Is This Right?": Intention, Convention, and Accountability in Early Literacy, New Educator. When children enter public kindergartens in the current atmosphere of high-stakes testing, they often encounter an emphasis on correctness that casts doubt on the integrity of their personally invented messages, prompting them to ask not "What did I write?" but "Is this right?" This ethnographic case study examines early writing by 23 kindergarten children within the context of their free-writing time and their teacher's plan to restore intention to compensate for a mandated curriculum that overemphasized convention. Children's writing samples were analyzed before and after the teacher introduced peer sharing, a strategy aimed at reestablishing the children's communicative intent. [More] Descriptors: Childrens Writing, Student Evaluation, High Stakes Tests, Intention
(2010). From Dewey to No Child Left Behind: The Evolution and Devolution of Public Arts Education, Arts Education Policy Review. This historical narrative tracks the evolution and devolution of visual arts education from Dewey's progressive era pedagogy and the theory of the arts as experience through the modern accountability movement. Archival material, state curricular documents, and conversations with policymakers show an increasing focus on core subject areas of reading, writing, and mathematics at the expense of arts education. Texas House Bill 3, the third generation of accountability legislation in the Lone Star State, provides a case study of the status of arts education after more than fifteen years of high-stakes testing and accountability. Policy considerations are offered for arts education and its future standing within the public educational curriculum. [More] Descriptors: Visual Arts, Art Education, High Stakes Tests, Accountability
(2008). Pitfalls of School-University Partnerships, Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas. Teacher candidates and teacher-preparation faculties have long valued authentic experiences serving students in elementary, middle, and secondary schools. In the last two decades, the popularity of school-community partnerships, service learning, and other forms of civic engagement by universities has increased. At the same time, limitations on local school resources, the shortage of qualified teachers in distressed areas, and the stress to perform on high stakes testing has led to abuses of the partnerships from both sides. In this article, the authors elucidate some of the pitfalls experienced in a partnership with a distressed school district and suggest means to avoid these problems. [More] Descriptors: School Community Relationship, Service Learning, College School Cooperation, Preservice Teacher Education
(2010). Reading Grade Levels and Mathematics Assessment: An Analysis of Texas Mathematics Assessment Items and Their Reading Difficulty, Mathematics Educator. Increased reading difficulty of mathematics assessment items has been shown to negatively affect student performance. The advent of high-stakes testing, which has serious ramifications for students' futures and teachers' careers, necessitates analysis of reading difficulty on state assessment items and student performance on those items. Using analysis of covariance, this study analyzed the effects of reading grade level of mathematics assessment items on student performance on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. Results indicated that elementary and middle school students performed significantly worse on mathematics assessment items having a reading level above the student grade level. The implications of these results are discussed. [More] Descriptors: Student Evaluation, Reading, High Stakes Tests, Statistical Analysis
(2008). Energizing Students, Science Teacher. The implementation of standards and high-stakes testing has increased the pressure on classroom teachers to cover content in what seems like an ever-shrinking period of time. What if there was a way to help students pay better attention and remember more of their learning that could also reduce teacher stress? This article describes one way to accomplish just that–with energizers in the classroom. Using neuroscience research on how the brain focuses, teachers can apply specific strategies to maximize student engagement and attention. [More] Descriptors: Classroom Techniques, Student Participation, Student Motivation, Science Instruction
(2010). NCLB and English Language Learners: Challenges and Consequences, Theory Into Practice. This article highlights key issues surrounding the assessment and accountability mandates of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) for English language learners (ELLs). The policy requires high-stakes testing of ELLs in English–a language that these students, by definition, have not yet mastered. After offering background on current federal education legislation, this article shares findings from a word frequency analysis of actual statewide exams. This analysis reveals that even academic content tests are linguistically complex, using words likely unknown by an ELL, which clarifies why testing poses unique challenges for this student population. Analyses of recent ELL performance data on high-stakes tests are also provided, which document why these students and the schools serving them are disproportionately likely to be penalized in accordance with the law's requirements. The article concludes by challenging two of the more problematic assumptions at the core of NCLB mandates for ELLs. [More] Descriptors: Federal Legislation, Academic Achievement, Accountability, English (Second Language)
(2008). Redefining Accessibility on High-Stakes Tests for Postsecondary College Students with Learning Disabilities in an Era of Technology, Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal. Unprecedented increases in the use of technologies throughout postsecondary education and the workplace are redefining traditional concepts of accessibility during testing for college students with learning disabilities. High stakes testing practices are under pressure to change. The challenge for professionals is to ensure that tests are designed and accommodations provided that are in keeping with current technological innovations in instruction, contemporary theories of learning, advances in psychometrics, and accessibility needs of college students with learning disabilities. The purpose of this article is to encourage professionals to reexamine the issues surrounding accessibility on high-stakes tests for postsecondary college students with learning disabilities in an era of technology. [More] Descriptors: High Stakes Tests, Testing Accommodations, College Students, Learning Disabilities
(2008). Conceptualizing Instructional Leadership: The Voices of Principals, Education and Urban Society. Instructional leadership has long been advocated as a primary responsibility of principals. What is unclear, however, is the role that instructional leadership plays in the current high-stakes testing era in the daily work lives of principals, how they practice as instructional leaders, and toward what instructional outcomes they strive. This study focused on how principals understand the relationship between their daily work and the improvement of instruction in their schools. The study incorporates the voices of 20 principals. Multiple conceptions of instructional leadership are identified and problematic aspects of these conceptions are discussed. [More] Descriptors: High Stakes Tests, Instructional Leadership, Principals, Leadership Responsibility
(2008). Personalised Corruption: Testing, Cheating and Teacher-Integrity, FORUM: for promoting 3-19 comprehensive education. The government's plans for students in KS2 and KS3 to be "tested when ready" mark an attempt further to embed instrumentalist views of education. "Testing-when-ready" is seen as an intensification of the harmful regime of testing, targets and League Tables which Mansell (2007) labels "hyper-accountability". Highlighting aspects of Mansell's book together with recent research into teacher-"cheating" and resistance to high stakes testing in the USA, this article concludes with a call for teachers here to safeguard their willingness to consider and understand the learning which tests don't see. [More] Descriptors: Secondary Education, Role of Education, Role, Cheating
(2008). Using All Available Tools, Science Teacher. Schools in the United States are faced with an increasingly diverse student population and a dramatic increase in the number of English language learners (ELLs) in all grades. As such diverse populations grow in this era of high-stakes testing and accountability, there is increased pressure to make science accessible to all. To help promote multicultural science education, in this article the authors present a survey of tools and methods to enhance science learning for culturally diverse students whose native language is not English. [More] Descriptors: Second Language Learning, High Stakes Tests, Science Education, Accountability
(2008). Building the Realism Bridge: Policy Making through Collective Research, Language Arts. Working from the assumption that policies are a form of social practice instead of simply a mandate that is uniformly delivered and passively received, the authors describe a theory and practice of policy research from a six-month collective qualitative study of curricular change and high-stakes testing that raise questions about the relationships between teachers' knowledge, policy enactment and policy development. Through this and related research, the authors have come to believe that teachers can and should take a stance and that they have a right to be fully engaged with policy-making across all levels–and places–of educational change. [More] Descriptors: High Stakes Tests, Educational Change, Educational Policy, Teacher Attitudes
(2010). Advocating for the Visual Arts in the Era of No Child Left Behind, Online Submission. Research has shown that a solid visual arts program provided to students throughout the K-12 years increases academic achievement, increases self-confidence and self-concept and provides opportunities for students to tap all their intelligences. However, recent budget cuts and the high stake testing on Mathematics and English Language arts at all grade levels demanded by the No Child left Behind Act has led to elimination of art programs across the country leading to less student involvement in the visual arts. It is clear that the public, administrators, parents, teachers and the larger community have little or no knowledge regarding the potential benefits of an art program to the student well rounded education. My research which relied on content analysis of archival data investigates strategies through which teachers and other stakeholders can advocate for the visual arts to ensure they are accorded the same respect other core subjects enjoy! [More] Descriptors: Elementary Secondary Education, Visual Arts, Curriculum, Access to Education
(2010). From a Roar to a Murmur: Virginia's History & Social Science Standards, 1995-2009, Theory and Research in Social Education. The authors trace the development and implementation of Virginia's History and Social Science standards-based accountability system from 1995 to 2009. They frame the study within an examination of the political ideologies that influence policy realization and unpack the relationship between ideological and epistemological beliefs about the nature of disciplinary knowledge and arguments regarding what knowledge is of most worth and whose voices should be included. While initial policy implementation created vociferous reactions, subsequent revisions have been met with silence. Such acquiescence, the authors suggest, reflects the ways in which high stakes testing as a vehicle for assessing learning has become normalized in Virginia. This shift in beliefs about education foreshadows the potential impact of the nationwide accountability movement and raises a concern that if Virginia ceased to test history and social science, its place within the school schedule would be lost to content areas that impact Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). [More] Descriptors: School Schedules, Educational Improvement, Federal Programs, Social Sciences
(2010). Value-Added Models of Assessment: Implications for Motivation and Accountability, Educational Psychologist. In this article, we examine the relations of value-added models of measuring academic achievement to student motivation. Using an achievement goal orientation theory perspective, we argue that value-added models, which focus on the progress of individual students over time, are more closely aligned with research on student motivation than are more traditional approaches to measuring achievement in a high-stakes testing environment. Although differing approaches to value-added assessment have been proposed, the core elements of the models are similar. We propose that the assessment data provided by value-added models has the potential to positively affect academic motivation, particularly when viewed through the lens of goal orientation theory. [More] Descriptors: High Stakes Tests, Goal Orientation, Student Motivation, Data Analysis