155 pages

English

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

A Measure of Failure , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - Mark J. Garrison

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

155 pages

English

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Winner of the 2011 Critics Choice Award presented by the American Educational Studies Association

How did standardized tests become the measure of performance in our public schools? In this compelling work, Mark J. Garrison attempts to answer this question by analyzing the development of standardized testing, from the days of Horace Mann and Alfred Binet to the current scene. Approaching the issue from a sociohistorical perspective, the author demonstrates the ways standardized testing has been used to serve the interests of the governing class by attaching a performance-based value to people and upholding inequality in American society. The book also discusses the implications that a restructuring of standardized testing would have on the future of education, specifically what it could do to eliminate the measure of individual worth based on performance.
Preface
Acknowledgments

1. A Measure of Failure

2. The Nature and Function of Standards

3. Academic Achievement and Ability as Forms of Vertical Classification

4. Standardized Tests as Markers of Social Value

5. The Rise of Public Education: The Impulse to Mark Achievement and Ability

6. Achievement Testing: The Case of Horace Mann

7. Intelligence Testing: The Case of Alfred Binet

8. Political Origins of Testing

9. The Failure of Testing

Notes
References
Index

Sujets

Sociology

Education

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	10 septembre 2009
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438427850
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1598€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

" .FBTVSF PG 5'IF 1BPMJUJDBM0VSJHJSOT PFG 4UBOEBSEJ[FE 5FTUJOH

.BSL + (BSSJTPO

This page intentionally left blank.

A Measure of Failure

This page intentionally left blank.

A Measure of Failure The Political Origins of Standardized Testing

Mark J. Garrison

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu

Production by Ryan Morris Marketing by Fran Keneston

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Garrison, Mark J., 1968– A measure of failure : the political origins of standardized testing / Mark J. Garrison. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-2777-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4384-2778-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Achievement tests—United States—History. 2. Education—Standards— United States—History. I. Title. LB3060.3.G37 2009 371.26'20973—dc22 2008051366

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

115

103

133

123

6. Achievement Testing: The Case of Horace Mann

3. Academic Achievement and Ability as Forms of Vertical Classification

7. Intelligence Testing: The Case of Alfred Binet

2. The Nature and Function of Standards

4. Standardized Tests as Markers of Social Value

9. The Failure of Testing

References

5. The Rise of Public Education: The Impulse to Mark Achievement and Ability

Acknowledgments

Preface

8. Political Origins of Testing

vii

1. A Measure of Failure

Notes

Index

This page intentionally left blank.

Preface

For years I have been fascinated with our society’s growing reliance on the “social technology” of standardized testing (Madaus 1990) and the so-called standards movement in which it plays a key role. This technology seems to inspire such discontent and controversy, yet it, like prison construction, is one of the country’s most consistent growth industries (Haney, Madaus, and Lyons 1993; Pile 2005). The emphasis on such tests seems to grow despite intense and periodic opposition, a cacophony of resistance that now seems to have reached a historic crescendo with the unprecedented testing man-1 dates of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). This interest did not convert easily into a research program, however. For years I struggled simply with how to conceptualize the question, and how to shed new light on what is admittedly a well-worn topic. The scope and sheer volume of this literature is awe-inspiring—and suspect given what I take to be limited advances in the theory, practice, and critical analysis of educational assessment. The block, I finally came to understand, is the preoccupation with whether standardized tests are “bad” or “good,” “fair” or “biased,” or measurements of “nature or nurture.” After years of engaging in such de-bates, taking classes on test construction, and reading what both proponents and critics have to say about standardized tests, I realized that we needed to ask different questions, and throw away what amounts to a broken record. How is it that admittedly intelligent people have such divergent and opposing views of standardized tests, one group claiming for them the mantel of objectivity and fairness, the other disparaging them as crooked yardsticks whose only consistent hallmark is bias (e.g., Sacks 2000)? If standardized tests are so controversial and the objects of both litigation and ridicule, and if they are so suspect in their claims to accuracy and ob-jectivity, why do we increasingly rely on them (McDonnell 2004, 9)? Thus my research began more with a focus on why a society adopts a particu-lar standard during a particular period in time: how and why did stan-dardized tests become the ubiquitous standard by which achievement and 2 intelligence are measured? Why, for example, are standardized tests given as the standard for what it means to be fair, or nonbiased? Without a clear

vii

viii

Preface

understanding of the origins of this ubiquitous standard, alternatives to it will remain out of reach. I began to ask this question when I realized that standardized tests have been used to meet seemingly opposing agendas, whether by courts, legisla-tures, or policy makers (McDonnell 2004; Resnick 1981). The same tools that are used to show schools are “failing” are also said to improve them, though the documentation of failure seems to grossly outpace actual improvement. Sometimes obtaining a low score on a standardized test is required for increased funding, while other times only high scores on these tests result in support or opportunity. Proponents have correctly argued, I think, that tests can function to open up “gates” as much as they can close these “gates” (National Commission on Testing and Public Policy 1990). But different interpretations of standardized test scores nonetheless assume a reliance on standardized tests of achievement and intelligence. This commonality is significant. It functions to quietly set boundaries on public and policy discourse just as legal statutes set boundaries on court rulings (Dorn 1998). This book is premised in part on the assumption that we need to remove the existing boundaries to discussions about ed-ucational standards. So, for example, why do we have “gates” and why do we watch over them with “mental tests”? How and why did mental tests and academic standards come to be considered central to the project of organizing a democratic society? What is the significance of the role of standardized tests in the theme that American schools are failing? What impact will the demise of public education have, given its historically central role in Amer-ican political thought (Welter 1962)? Answering these questions will assist in developing a better analysis of the so-called standards or accountability movement and also, hopefully, give rise to a broader consciousness of what is at stake in the present reform en-vironment and the extensive social transformation required to develop al-ternatives. Without a clear understanding of why the United States adopted standardized tests as the ubiquitous standard for education, efforts to im-prove education with alternative measures will meet with mixed results at best (McDonnell 2004; Smith 1996; Smith, Heinecke, and Noble 1999).

Why Another Book on Testing?

Despite more than a century of sometimes intense criticism, standardized tests are now being presented as a linchpin in the latest education reform agenda, the key mechanism to holding teachers, students, schools—even parents—accountable to new, ostensibly high academic goals (I cannot help but laugh at those who present the nineteenth-century standard of basic