Student Assessment as a Political Construction—: The Case of Uruguay

Abstract

This article reveals the interplay between assessment policies in Uruguay and the nature of State-societal relations. The central State has been historically a staunch defender of public education and has championed the cause of equalizing opportunities for the most disadvantaged sectors of society. The national evaluation system of student performance has been constructed as an expression of this tradition. The Uruguayan government sought to build a wide level of consensus with respect to the assessment instruments by encouraging educators to participate and buy into the assessment initiative. Moreover, the national government shifted the focus of the national evaluation from measuring schooling outcomes to addressing the social wants that condition student learning. Hence, the national evaluation has come to symbolize an agreed-upon mechanism of social accountability by which the central government upholds its responsibility for educational provision as it intervenes on behalf of impoverished communities. (Note 1)

Cuatro Hipótesis sobre la Institucionalización de la Evaluación Educativa en América Latina: El Uruguay en Mirada Comparada

“…Inició en 1996 las evaluaciones de aprendizaje periódicas, estableciendo un programa de evaluación en 6tos. Primaria con amplia difusión, contextualización y análisis de los resultados al punto que fue citado como un modelo en la región (Benveniste, 2000(Benveniste, y 2002Ravela et al, 2000). En el año 2000, se estimaba que el 44.8% de los maestros de Primaria habían leído al menos uno de los informes de evaluación (Fernández et.…”

Teacher-based reactivity to provincial large-scale assessment in Canada

“…The list of purposes to which LSAs are intended to be put is also quite lengthy (Benveniste, 2000;Mehrens, 1998;Travis, 1996;Popham, 1999). As noted in the introductory chapter, ministry documents from across Canada reveal at least nine purposes for which tests data can be employed and most provinces tend toward most of these (the province with the lowest number of LSA expectations wants a single instrument to serve five policy functions).…”