This annotated bibliography is reformatted and customized by the Center for Positive Practices. Some of the authors featured on this page include Perry A. Zirkel, Donaldo Macedo, Andrea M. Hyde, Lauren B. Lunsford, Stephen M. Johnson, Jennifer A. DiBara, James Kelleher, Robert J. Egley, Jennifer A. Tupper, and Filip Lievens.
(2003). Literacy Matters, Language Arts. Suggests that in an era of excessive high-stakes testing and a blind embrace of "technicism," literacy not only matters, but may represent one of the last hopes to "salvage our already feeble democracy." Concludes that literacy matters if, and only if, it is viewed as a democratic right and as a human right. Descriptors: Civil Liberties, Democracy, Elementary Secondary Education, High Stakes Tests
(2007). National Recommendations: Strategies for Implementing the "Ways of Knowing Through the Realms of Meaning" for the Development of Professional Personnel, Online Submission. School leaders have the all important task of being the gatekeepers of the educational process: harnessing the development of its most important resource–the people working in schools. Training professional personnel in education is a vital function of the human resource function. It is the task of the school leader to cultivate staff that is well-trained and ready to work within an era of high-stakes testing. As a result, ten recommendations on developing professional personnel are made based on the text "Ways of Knowing Through the Realms of Meaning" (2007) by Dr. William Kritsonis to improve the quality of the training that school leaders provide to staff across America. [More] Descriptors: Human Resources, Professional Personnel, High Stakes Tests, Professional Development
(2007). What Is the Value of Public School Accountability?, Educational Theory. In this review essay, Michael Gunzenhauser and Andrea Hyde consider three recent edited collections that address the potential value of public school accountability policy: Kenneth Sirotnik's Holding Accountability Accountable: What Ought to Matter in Public Education; Martin Carnoy, Richard Elmore, and Leslie Santee Siskin's The New Accountability: High Schools and High-Stakes Testing; and Linda Skrla and James Scheurich's Educational Equity and Accountability: Paradigms, Policies, and Politics. Taken together, the texts provide a snapshot of current scholarly discourse about the phenomenon of accountability policy and provide educators with conceptual tools for analyzing and responding to accountability pressures. While these conceptual distinctions help advance scholarly discourse on accountability, ultimately the texts demonstrate the conceptual poverty of accountability policy for guiding educational improvement. Gunzenhauser and Hyde argue that current state accountability systems are not likely to encourage the broad, systemic capacity building that these three volumes describe as fundamental to achieving the requirements of federal policies. [More] Descriptors: Public Schools, Equal Education, Educational Improvement, High Stakes Tests
(2011). High-Stakes Tests: Comparative Study Examining the Impact on the Achievement Gap that Causes Minority Students Continued Failure, ProQuest LLC. The purpose of this comparative qualitative study examined the impact of the achievement gap on the lack of highly qualified teachers instructing African American students consistently from K-12th grades and its effects on high-stakes testing. In addition, the study examined teacher perceptions that could also be contributing factors of the achievement gap that exists between African American and Caucasian students. The study included two suburban charter high schools in metropolitan New Orleans, LA. School A had a predominantly African American faculty and student population, while School B had a diverse faculty and student population, but the majority of the faculty and student population was Caucasian. The educators from both schools participated on a voluntarily basis. The majority of each faculty participated in the study. The participants were educators, including teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, social workers and school administrators. The instrument that was administered is the Achievement Gap Survey (2007), designed by the School Improvement Network. The instrument consisted of questions that were rated on a Likert-scale, with a few open-ended questions. The data indicated that when African American students are given "highly qualified teachers" to catch up with their Caucasian peers their high-stakes test scores improved, as evidenced on the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program high-stakes test given in Louisiana yearly. Between 2007 and 2009, more students moved from the "unsatisfactory" and "approaching basic" categories to "basic," "mastery," and "advanced" categories in mathematics and English Language Arts. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: www.proquest.com/en-US/products/disserta… [More] Descriptors: Achievement Gap, African American Students, Educational Assessment, High Stakes Tests
(2007). From Care-Less to Care-Full: Education for Citizenship in Schools and beyond, Alberta Journal of Educational Research. This article attempts to disrupt liberal democratic understandings of citizenship as they inform social studies curricula in schools. Care-less citizenship is used throughout the article to describe the denial or propensity to ignore the deep inequities that exist in the world. The article also implicates schooling, and in particular social studies education, in the maintenance of citizenship as a falsely universalized construct through such practices as standardization and high-stakes testing. Conceptions and experiences of citizenship articulated by five secondary social studies teachers and 10 preservice teachers provide a means through which to improve understanding of how students are constructed as citizens in relation to the prescribed and negotiated curriculum encountered in classrooms. Finally, the article advances an understanding of citizenship as care-full–that is, attentive, relational, and caring–in which conditions of oppression operating to limit the realization of equity are continual subjects of interrogation. [More] Descriptors: Preservice Teachers, Citizenship Education, Democracy, High Stakes Tests
(2003). Teacher Leadership and High Standards in a Summer Middle School, Middle School Journal. Notes that summer school has been affected by current curricular reform and high stakes testing. Describes an innovative summer school program, created through transformational teacher leadership, that developed a new vision for integrated curriculum–one that revolved around rebuilding a boat. Presents implications for both an integrated academic year curriculum as well as future summer programs. Descriptors: Academic Standards, Community Programs, Educational Improvement, High Stakes Tests
(2003). Testing Behavior, Phi Delta Kappan. Analyzes Georgia high-stakes testing case involving administrative law judge's recommendation (subsequently approved) that fifth-grade science teacher's teaching certificate be suspended for giving his students pretest copies of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. Suggests No Child Left Behind Act will spawn similar litigation in the future. Descriptors: Court Litigation, Elementary Education, High Stakes Tests, Teacher Discipline
(2011). The Effect of No Child Left Behind on Elementary School Principals as Instructional Leaders, ProQuest LLC. This quantitative survey-design research study examined elementary school principals' perceptions regarding the effect of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). A primary focus of the study was to determine how elementary school principals feel about the influence of NCLB on their role as instructional leader. A sample of 133 elementary school principals provided data for the study, where seventy-four (74) were in schools that met adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals and fifty-nine (59) in schools that did not meet AYP goals. Pearson correlations and multivariate analysis of variance procedures were used to determine the strength and direction of relationships among the variables and differences in subscales assessing perceptions of NCLB effects on instructional leadership, leadership strategies, school morale and vision, and administrative tasks. MANOVA results revealed no significant multivariate differences on the 4 subscales of perceived NCLB effects across AYP performance. However, segmented correlation analyses within AYP groups revealed that perceptions of NCLB effects on administrative tasks was positively related to perceptions that NCLB affects instruction leadership role and strategies of effective leadership regardless of AYP status. The emphasis on high stakes testing requirements implemented by NCLB has affected all students regardless of socioeconomic status along with its affect on the leadership practice of elementary school principals. This research will add to positive social change by informing training and professional development programs which can help new elementary school principals become effective instructional leaders while also furthering NCLB accountability efforts to increase student achievement. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: www.proquest.com/en-US/products/disserta… [More] Descriptors: Educational Indicators, Federal Programs, Leadership Effectiveness, Educational Improvement
(2007). Displaced Teacher and State Priorities in a High-Stakes Accountability Context, Educational Policy. Although previous research suggests that teachers align their instruction to testing demands in the context of high-stakes accountability programs, few studies examine how the policy plays out in the classroom using sustained observations. This research, based on ethnographic case studies of two teachers' classrooms and interviews with 13 teachers at five middle schools, illuminates how high-stakes testing narrows the curricula and displaces teachers' priorities for their students, priorities such as developing personal appreciation for literature and communication and collaboration skills, as well as "writing like a real writer writes." These findings are noteworthy given that many of the teachers' priorities intersect with state standards. [More] Descriptors: Middle Schools, State Standards, Testing, High Stakes Tests
(2011). Bilingual Education Policy as Political Spectacle: Educating Latino Immigrant Youth in New York City, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. To examine the ways in which high schools in New York City attend to second language acquisition is to consider everyday actions in schools, government dealings, localized policy responses, and disparate discourses on bilingualism. It is to position the circumstances of learning and teaching English in an American high school within the problems encountered and produced when multiple educational policies collide in local settings, such as individual schools. It is also to consider, and then interrogate, the "political spectacle" in which educational actors associated with schools–teachers, counselors, parents, students, community members, activists, and administrators–become dramaturgically cast into political-policy roles as they enact federal, state, and district policies with regard not only to issues of language acquisition and bilingualism but also to increased accountability, mandated high-stakes testing, and other sanctions-driven approaches. Drawing on qualitative research conducted between September 2003 and May 2008, this article situates Gregorio Luperon High School, a successful bilingual school for Latino newcomers, within a web of politics and policies, grounded in the history of bilingual education in New York City. It reveals how this school, caught within a political-policy matrix of centralized federal authority under No Child Left Behind and decentralized accountability under the City's Children First reforms, continues to emphasize second language acquisition as the ongoing work of building a bilingual speech community, even in the face of educational policies that increasingly narrow assessment of language acquisition and intensify the overall evaluation of academic achievement. [More] Descriptors: Qualitative Research, Sanctions, Federal Legislation, Bilingual Schools
(2007). Responsible to the Kids: The Goals and Struggles of Urban High School Teachers, New Educator. For this study, 40 teachers at four admired public urban high schools participated in interviews about the responsibilities, goals, and challenges they face as they try to attend to students' needs in the midst of pressures from high stakes testing and high academic standards. Common themes from their responses included a deep and profound responsibility to the "kids" who enter their classrooms; ongoing efforts to negotiate the academic and personal goals they have for each student; frustration and dismay that their "juggling act" is not recognized in the wider society; and feelings of burnout when they become overwhelmed by their efforts to balance competing demands. How teachers negotiate these tensions is explored. Suggestions are made for how to enhance the sustainability of good teaching in public education, especially in areas of high student need, such as high-poverty urban districts. [More] Descriptors: Student Needs, Secondary School Teachers, Educational Change, High School Students
(2005). Preparing Adolescents with High-Incidence Disabilities for High-Stakes Testing with Strategy Instruction, Preventing School Failure. Recent policy initiatives promoting high-stakes testing for graduation present a significant challenge to practitioners charged with educating students with high-incidence disabilities. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of test-taking strategy instruction on the test performance of secondary students with high-incidence disabilities. Students demonstrated small but significant increases in test performance and decreases in ratings of test anxiety following intervention. Recommended strategies are presented to practitioners for preparing high school students with disabilities for high-stakes assessment tests. [More] Descriptors: Adolescents, High Stakes Tests, Learning Disabilities, Educational Strategies
(2007). Situational Judgment Tests in High-Stakes Settings: Issues and Strategies with Generating Alternate Forms, Journal of Applied Psychology. This study used principles underlying item generation theory to posit competing perspectives about which features of situational judgment tests might enhance or impede consistent measurement across repeat test administrations. This led to 3 alternate-form development approaches (random assignment, incident isomorphism, and item isomorphism). The effects of these approaches on alternate-form consistency, mean score changes, and criterion-related validity were examined in a high-stakes context (N = 3,361). Generally, results revealed that even small changes in the context of the situations presented resulted in significantly lower alternate-form consistency. Conversely, placing more constraints on the alternate-form development process proved beneficial. The contributions, implications, and limitations of these results for the development of situational judgment tests and high-stakes testing are discussed. [More] Descriptors: Validity, High Stakes Tests, Test Construction, Testing
(2007). Helping Students Prepare for College Mathematics Placement Tests: A Guide for Teachers and Parents, Rowman & Littlefield Education. Placement tests are rapidly joining the ranks of high-stakes testing and college freshmen are required to take mathematics placement exams to determine their first mathematics course upon entering college. Unfortunately, these exams tend to place students in a lower-level or remedial course. As a result, additional expenses are incurred, degree programs are extended, and scholarships, awards, and external funding, are less likely. This book includes two sample placement tests, a guide that shows what entry course a student will be assigned with a given score, and explanations on material that students might have forgotten or never quite understood. Contents include: (1) Introduction; (2) Basic Skills without a Calculator; (3) Graphing without a Graphing Calculator; (4) A College Mathematics Placement Test; (5) Elaborate Solutions to the Test; (6) A Second College Placement Test with Solutions; and (7) Final Advice. The following are appended: (1) Study Skills for College Mathematics; and (2) A Note to Teachers about State Standards. [More] Descriptors: State Standards, College Freshmen, Study Skills, Graphing Calculators
(2004). Improving Florida's Test-Based Accountability System: Suggestions from Elementary School Administrators, Planning and Changing. Testing and accountability programs can lead to some positive changes towards student performance. Here, Jones and Egley explore on whether Florida administrators thought that there was anything that could be done to improve the country's testing program in order to reduce or eliminate the types of concerns raised in George's study by conducting a survey among school administrators. They also discuss the administrators' suggestions and provide some implications for improving high-stakes testing program. [More] Descriptors: Testing Programs, Testing, High Stakes Tests, Accountability