Bibliography: High Stakes Testing (page 78 of 95)

This annotated bibliography is reformatted and customized by the Center for Positive Practices.  Some of the authors featured on this page include Ken Jones, P. L. Thomas, David Herrington, Grant W. Shoffstall, Kathleen Donalson, Michele Acker-Hocevar, Dayton Education Law Association, Zeynep F. Beykont, Arthur L. Petterway, and William Allan Kritsonis.

Petterway, Arthur L.; Kritsonis, William Allan; Herrington, David (2006). The Impact of High Stakes Testing on the Academic Achievement of English Language Learners in Texas Public Education: National Implications, Online Submission. The purpose of this article is to analyze the issues and challenges faced by English Language Learners (ELLs) and the public schools that absorb them. Ample research has been conducted on the intrinsic validity of standardized assessments, and separately, on the factors affecting the assimilation and integration of ELLs. However, the reliability of these assessments as a universally applied tool to measure student learning, and as a basis for determining school performance needs to be more closely examined. Quantitative data for this research will be gathered from ten (10) high schools in the major urban independent school districts located in Texas. Qualitative data will be derived from an on-line questionnaire focusing on respondents' views and opinions about the varied ways in which standardized assessments impact English Language Learners.   [More]  Descriptors: Second Language Learning, Public Schools, Private Schools, Academic Achievement

Acker-Hocevar, Michele; Touchton, Debra (2001). Principals' Struggle To Level the Accountability Playing Field of Florida Graded "D" and"F" Schools in High Poverty and Minority Communities. This study examined the perceptions of Florida principals from failing high poverty/minority schools regarding accountability measures placed upon their schools by state legislation. Data collection included field notes, observations, and interviews regarding principals' impressions of the state's accountability system, how their role was influenced by the system, and how they negotiated internal and external accountability. Four themes emerged: effects of poverty on teaching and learning, building organizational capacity, high stakes testing, and recruitment and retention of teachers. Principals felt they faced continual pressure to improve student performance and meet state and district mandates while supporting teachers and students. They believed their everyday problems were very different from those of peers in less diverse schools. Principals were not against Florida's standards or accountability but rather the inequity of using high stakes testing to compare students with different needs when grading schools. They believed they needed more time to raise student achievement levels. They recognized that their schools concentrated on short-term change due to the urgency of improving their failing grades. Principals felt threatened by mandates from the top. They reported losing teachers to other professions and schools because of poor teaching conditions. They fought districts for more teachers to reduce class size. (Contains 26 references.)   [More]  Descriptors: Academic Achievement, Accountability, Administrator Attitudes, Administrator Role

Hayes, William (2006). The Progressive Education Movement: Is it Still a Factor in Today's Schools?, Rowman & Littlefield Education. For more than one hundred years, the United States has been the scene of academic warfare between traditional and progressive educators. During most of the nation's history, many Americans have assumed that the primary purpose of school is to pass on to children the information and skills necessary to survive in society. This traditional view accepts the fact that a teacher's task is to inform children as to what they should know. Officials at the state and local level determine the content of students' education, and it is the teacher's job to ensure that the content is taught. Even before the beginning of the 20th century, John Dewey and others introduced a different model. They believed that students learn best "by doing" not by being passive listeners. For progressive educators, the teacher's role was to be a facilitator of learning in classrooms where students' interest helped to provide appropriate developmental learning experience. This new approach to education has greatly affected our schools during the past century. More recently, the emergence in American education of four initiatives that have threatened the continued influence of progressive education have been seen. They include the "back to basics movement", mandated state curriculum standards, high stakes testing, and school accountability. Despite these trends, there appears to be several factors that might lead one to conclude that progressive education is remaining a viable approach in the United States. This book considers these factors as well as past, present, and possible future of the progressive education movement. Following the introduction, the book presents sixteen chapters for review: (1) The Rise of Progressive Education; (2) John Dewey; (3) Other Pioneers in the Progressive Education Movement; (4) The Progressive Education Movement During the First Half of the Twentieth Century; (5) The Fifties; (6) The Sixties and Seventies; (7) A Nation at Risk (1983); (8) The Eighties and Nineties; (9) No Child Left Behind; (10) Maria Montessori; (11) Teacher Education Programs; (12) Middle Schools; (13) Choice; (14) Education of the Gifted and Talented; (15) Progressive Education Today; and (16) The Future of Progressive Education.   [More]  Descriptors: Progressive Education, Educational History, Federal Legislation, Middle Schools

Donalson, Kathleen (2008). Opportunities Gained and Lost: Perceptions and Experiences of Sixth Grade Students Enrolled in a Title I Reading Class, Online Submission. The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the perceptions and experiences of one class of sixth grade students enrolled in a Title I supplemental reading class. Qualitative research methods included observations, interviews, archived data, and Miscue Analysis. I examined the data through a Vygotsky constructivist perspective to provide insight to the manner in which readers could be supported in their literacy development. Based on the analysis of individual data collected, the curriculum was dissected to determine whether the students' unique strengths and needs were addressed within the Title I reading class. I explored the emotional and educational consequences of students enrolled in a supplemental reading program implemented for readers identified as below proficiency by the state's standardized reading assessment. I examined the contrast between the Title I instructional curriculum provided first semester and the beginning of second semester during a school year. The findings of the study revealed the negative consequences of high stakes standardized testing, educational decisions based on a single measure, a mandated scripted commercial reading program, and loss of certain educational classes. The findings disclosed the positive outcomes of a supportive curriculum through an engaging reading curriculum and the opportunity to keep certain educational classes. The implications of the study provided educators constructs for supporting readers through appropriate developmental text and supportive social contexts to help these students succeed. The following are appended: (1) IRB permission; (2) Parent permission; (3) Student Assent form; (4) Interview questions; (5) Survey item analysis; (6) Anecdotal record sample; (7) Observation checklist; (8) Miscue Analysis; (9) Miscue Analysis coding sheet; (10) NVivo coding sample; (11) Single category flow chart; (12) Running record; and (13) Text feature. (Contains 22 figures.) [Ph.D., Texas Tech University.]   [More]  Descriptors: Grade 6, Middle School Students, Student Attitudes, Educational Experience

Touchton, Debra; Acker-Hocevar, Michele (2001). Using a Lens of Social Justice To Reframe Principals' Interviews from High Poverty, Low Performing Schools. Students, teachers, principals, and communities in areas of high poverty and high proportion of minorities are struggling to improve their test scores in this time of high-stakes testing and accountability. Discrimination, inequities, and injustices prevalent in these schools and communities are also issues that must be addressed. Ten principals from 10 schools labeled as failing were interviewed in a previous study. Their responses were reanalyzed using the concept of social justice as a lens to frame this new study's investigation. Four major themes emerged from the interviews: (1) effects of poverty; (2) building organizational capacity; (3) high-stakes testing and grading of schools; and (4) recruitment and retention of quality teachers. Results suggest that it is the lack of understanding of the effects of poverty that limits children's success in high-poverty schools. School leaders today need to be aware of the effects of poverty on teaching and learning, to know what effective practices are and how to support them in their schools, to know how context influences their roles and relationships in schools and within their communities, and to embrace the role of the educator in schools of poverty to transform the opportunities for children of poverty, not to maintain the status quo. (Contains 18 references.)   [More]  Descriptors: Disadvantaged Schools, Elementary Secondary Education, Equal Education, Poverty

Education Law Association, Dayton, OH. (2002). Balancing Rights: Education Law in a Brave New World. Papers [of the] Education Law Association (ELA) Annual Conference (48th, New Orleans, LA, November 14-16, 2002). This collection contains 54 papers from the 48th annual conference of the Education Law Association held in November 2002. It has as its focus education law, yet it covers a wide variety of topics and issues affecting the entire range of education from preschool to college. Among the topics are the following: school vouchers; school safety and security; educational financing; accountability and educational malpractice; assessments and high-stakes testing; teachers rights and responsibilities; school desegregation; special education; equal protection under the Constitution; employee rights; school dress codes and uniform policies; performance pay for superintendents; charter schools; academic freedom; technology in education; students rights; freedom of speech; the teaching of law; and sexual misconduct. (Contains an author index.) Descriptors: Accountability, Civil Rights, Due Process, Educational Legislation

Sarason, Seymour B. (2002). Educational Reform: A Self-Scrutinizing Memoir. In this book, the author candidly confronts errors he made of omission, commission, misplaced emphases, and watering down the depth and scope of his criticisms of the reform arena in his half-century involvement in educational reform. No other major figure in this arena has made public such a searching self-critique. Sharing his thoughts about the future of education, the author discusses his thinking on charter schools, productive learning, motivation, high-stakes testing, the need for teachers to relate differently to each other and to parents, the importance of working through change, and the mistaken idea that reforms can be cloned. Although written before the September 11th World Trade Center tragedy, the last chapter of this book is extraordinarily relevant to the subsequent national importance of societal values and responsible citizenship. It is hoped that this self-scrutiny will be stimulating and invaluable to anyone interested in reform as concept, action, and values. (Contains 61 references.) Descriptors: Educational Change, Elementary Secondary Education, Reminiscence, Self Concept

Wakefield, Dara (2003). Screening Teacher Candidates: Problems with High-Stakes Testing, Educational Forum. Reviews problems with Praxis teacher tests in Georgia and the effects of cut-scores on minority and low-income candidates. Examines issues of test bias and makes recommendations for establishing an unbiased screening system for potential teachers. (Contains 35 references.) Descriptors: High Stakes Tests, Low Income Groups, Minority Groups, Preservice Teacher Education

Hass, Bob, Ed. (2006). Crucial Issues in California Education 2006: Rekindling Reform, Policy Analysis for California Education, PACE (NJ1). Educators and policymakers have accomplished much over the past decade, aided by parents and taxpayers. California has set a high bar for what all children are expected to learn, from kindergarten forward. Instructional materials and tests are now closely aligned, so that teachers know how to gauge their students' progress. And achievement growth within thousands of elementary schools has been strong since these accountability tools were forged in 1999. Yet this is no time to be complacent. Earlier gains in test scores are leveling off in some grades. Achievement gaps between children from poor and middle-class families have failed to narrow. California students continue to learn at slower rates than students in other states, like New York or Texas, where family demographics are similar. California has constructed a high-standards education system, with high-stakes testing for students, but with a finance system that fails to match standards and accountability demands. California can rekindle school reform by building from recent success and squarely facing new challenges. This volume concludes by suggesting four policy shifts: (1) Reorient school accountability and finance to raise the achievement of low-performing students; (2) Pursue a coherent strategy for boosting the performance of English learners; (3) Make school finance simple, transparent, and adequate for a high-standards public school system; and (4) Focus the state's role on tracking district and school performance, then deregulate authority over resources down to the school level. The analyses contained in this volume support two key messages. First, a school reform agenda that fails to close achievement gaps is simply not working. Second, the current policy approach is long on rules and short on resources, an order that's unlikely to motivate long-term gains inside schools. This volume contains ten chapters: (1) Rules and Resources: The Evolving Context for School Reform (Haleh Hatami); (2) Funding California's Schools, Part I: Past, Present, and Future? (Lawrence O. Picus); (3) Funding California's Schools, Part II: Resource Adequacy and Efficiency (Jay G. Chambers and Jesse D. Levin); (4) California's Accountability System (Catherine Bitter and Jennifer O'Day); (5) Evaluating State Intervention: The High Priority Schools Grant Program (Thomas Timar); (6) Achievement and Attainment: The Comprehensive High School and the Problem of Reform (Leslie Santee Siskin); (7) Crucial Issues in Preparing Teachers of English Learners (Julie Maxwell-Jolly and Patricia Gandara); (8) Addressing the Needs of Low-Income Students (Elisabeth Woody and Melissa Henne); (9) Expanding and Improving Preschool (Margaret Bridges); and (10) Rekindling Reform (Bruce Fuller). Individual chapters contain tables, figures, endnotes and references.   [More]  Descriptors: School Restructuring, Educational Finance, Educational Change, Accountability

Thomas, P. L. (2005). Grading Student Writing: High-Stakes Testing, Computers, and the Human Touch, English Journal. The advantages and limitations of using computers in writing assessment and instruction are discussed. The English teachers feel that even though computers and computer programs offer huge benefits for the teaching of writing to students, they cannot be used as a substitute for humans in the ultimate evaluation of a composition written by them.   [More]  Descriptors: Writing Evaluation, Writing Tests, High Stakes Tests, English Teachers

Beykont, Zeynep F., Ed. (2002). The Power of Culture: Teaching across Language Difference. These papers address three issues of concern to educators of language minority students: preparation of quality teachers, the effects of standardized and high-stakes testing on language learners, and specific teaching strategies that view language minority students as capable and deserving of first-class educational opportunities. After an "Introduction" (Zeynep F. Beykont), there are 3 parts with 10 papers. Part 1, "Educational Reforms and Language Minority Students," includes "The High Stakes of High-Stakes Testing" (Miren Uriate); "Revealing Illusions of Educational Progress: Texas High-Stakes Tests and Minority Student Performance" (Walt Haney); and "A Quest for Quality: Providing Qualified Teachers for California's English Learners" (Julie Maxwell-Jolly and Patricia Gandara). Part 2, "Successful Teaching across Language Difference," includes "'Remember I Said': Cambodian Students' Second Language Literacy Development in a Mainstream Classroom" (Nancy H. Hornberger); "Teaching Bilingual Students in Mainstream Classrooms" (Maria Estela Brisk, Mary Dawson, Millicent Hartgering, Elizabeth MacDonald, and Lucinda Zehr); "Agents of Literacy Change: Working with Somali Students in an Urban Middle School" (Audrey A. Friedman); and "Connecting Classroom and Community through the Arts and Oral Narrative" (Berta Rosa Berriz). Part 3, "Preparing Teachers To Teach across Language Difference," includes "Creating an Equal Playing Field: Teachers as Advocates, Border Crossers, and Cultural Brokers" (Lilia I. Bartolome); "What We Would Have Liked To Know: Preservice Teachers' Perspectives on Effective Teacher Preparation" (Audrey A. Friedman); and "'You Can't Step on Someone Else's Words': Preparing All Teachers To Teach Language Minority Students" (Meg Gebhard, Theresa Austin, Sonia Nieto, and Jerri Willett). (Papers contain references.) Descriptors: Academic Achievement, Bilingual Students, Cambodians, Diversity (Student)

Beck, Frank D.; Shoffstall, Grant W. (2005). How do Rural Schools Fare under a High Stakes Testing Regime?, Journal of Research in Rural Education. Analyses of data from the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) show how strongly associated the socioeconomic characteristics of schools are with school outcomes. Factors such as the percentage of students who are poor, percentage black, and the property values within a district explain over 70% of the variance in school outcomes. However, the state has created a high-stakes designation system, using yearly test scores as a snapshot of school performance. Schools would be sanctioned or rewarded more on levels of poverty and racial characteristics than on gain scores. We extend this research by linking county level data to the 2000 ISAT data for Illinois' public schools. We examine the extent to which rurality matters for school outcomes and the extent to which the Illinois' school designation system unfairly targets poor rural schools. We find that rural schools in Illinois perform better than their suburban or urban counterparts on the state's standardized test. Despite this, the high stakes test and designation system being considered by the state will unfairly benefit suburban schools.   [More]  Descriptors: Economically Disadvantaged, Suburban Schools, Standardized Tests, Rural Schools

Dworkin, A. Gary (2005). The No Child Left Behind Act: Accountability, High-Stakes Testing, and Roles for Sociologists, Sociology of Education. Central to sociology is the assumption that virtually all forms of social action and public policies have unanticipated consequences for their actors and social systems. Sociologists seek to explore these unanticipated consequences and delineate how they will affect people, policies, and practices. This essay focuses on the unanticipated consequences of the assessment and accountability mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. Here, the author suggests ways for sociologists to play significant roles in the states' implementation of their assessment and accountability systems.   [More]  Descriptors: Social Systems, Student Evaluation, Federal Legislation, Social Action

Hoffman, Lynn M. (2005). Beyond High Stakes Testing: Rural High School Students and Their Yearbooks, Qualitative Report. I conducted surveys, focus group interviews, and analyzed the yearbooks of fifty four yearbook students from five rural high schools to investigate students' process of yearbook construction and to determine what was meaningful and memorable to them throughout their high school experience. Chang's (1992) construct of an adolescent ethos, including the elements of getting along with everyone, being involved, and being independent, provided a conceptual framework, and was affirmed by students' responses. References to rites of passage and intensification embedded in the high school program as described by Burnett (1969) confirmed these students' perceptions of high school as a four year passage experience.   [More]  Descriptors: High Schools, School Activities, Yearbooks, Focus Groups

Jones, Ken (2004). A Balanced School Accountability Model: An Alternative to High-Stakes Testing, Phi Delta Kappan. This article asserts that the health of public schools depends on defining a new model of accountability–one that is balanced and comprehensive. This new model needs be one that involves much more than test scores. This article outlines the premises behind this argument asking for what, to whom, and by what means schools should be held accountable. It is argued that a balanced model, or "balanced scorecard" applied to education is the solution. Applying this four-part approach to education, the article asserts, the following aspects of school performance as the components of a balanced school accountability model can be used: (1) student learning; (2) opportunity to learn; (3) responsiveness to students, parents, and community; and (4) organizational capacity for improvement. Each of these aspects must be attended to and fostered by an evaluation system that has a sufficiently high resolution to take into account the full complexity and scope of modern-day schools. The article provides and in-depth analysis of each of these components and concludes it is of great importance to the health of public schools that this transformation is implemented as soon as possible to define a new model for school accountability, one that is balanced and comprehensive. Schools can and should be held accountable to their primary clients for much more than test scores, in a way that supports improvement rather than punishes deficiencies. The current model of using high-stakes testing is a recipe for public school failure, putting the nation at risk. Descriptors: Educational Improvement, Educational Change, Public Schools, High Stakes Tests

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