High Stakes: Poverty, Testing, and Failure in American Schools

Increasingly since the early 1980's, standardized testing has been appropriated not as a general measure of institutional comparision, but punnitative measures towards students who can't quite measure up. Using a case study in Lousianna, Johnson and Johnson demonstrate standardized testing sounds great in political propaganda (what individual wants to be against academic excellence?) but implementation is sharply at odds with the complex reality of learning styles and economic limitations. Because standardized tests rely on rote memorization and repition of facts in a multiple choice format, they are not the best format for people who have other learning styles. Additionally, different groups of students are educationally tracked (advanced placement, special education) but this system and it's real effects on the individual student are too convienently downplayed during test administration time. The tests real function is to ultimately provide quickie reassurance to elected officials and parents alike that their communities are 'smart' while continuing to avoid and/or underaddress the curricular and economic issues which would actually enable these students to succed on the same programs.