The social implications of national assessment

Gipps, Caroline

doi:10.1007/bf01108249

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Valenancia and Pearson (1987) found that, in order to raise test scores, reading programmes had been adopted that were not appropriate to the students' social, educational, or developmental needs, whereas programmes developed through research were quickly abandoned if standardized reading test scores declined or failed to improve. Gipps (1990), a professor at the University of London's Institute of Education, concluded that "regardless of the teacher's personal and professional opinions about the test, the fact was that students had to pass and teachers felt responsible to ensure they did. It would take a very unprofessional teacher to ignore the demands of a life-controlling assessment for his or her students" (p. 156).…”

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confidence: 97%

On the testing of standards and standardized achievement testing: Panacea, placebo, or pandora's box?

Meaghan

Casas

1995

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Parents and educators concerned with the quality of education in Canadian schools have been subjected to a concerted campaign (through editorials, columns, and letters to the editor in major dailies and magazines, as well as a spate of books with alarmist titles) aimed at convincing them that the lack of adequate testing represents a major shortcoming and a stumbling block to educational reform. Provincewide and nationwide standardized achievement tests are offered as an indispensable tool to understand what works and what does not, to let parents know how schools are doing and how well their children are performing, and to make teachers and school boards accountable. Provincial education authorities are fmding it increasingly difficult to resist the pressure, with Ontario the latest to jump on the testing bandwagon. However, although concerns about school curricula and about the best methods for testing student learning and performance are legitimate, the belief that standardized achievement tests are part of the solution to many ills allegedly afflicting our educational system does not stand up to the increasingly clear evidence of the many problems associated with the construction and administration of these tests, as well as the misuse and abuse of test scores. Far from being a panacea, this approach has proved to be fraught with dangers and adverse effects, from a narrowing of the curriculum to overemphasis of routine processes at the expense of higher learning skills, with virtually no empirical support for the purported benefits. With Canadian students facing the risk of being subjected to the same abuses as their U.S. counterparts, this paper reviews recent contributions and attempts to alert educators and polieymakers to the serious deficiencies of this type of testing.

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confidence: 97%

On the testing of standards and standardized achievement testing: Panacea, placebo, or pandora's box?

Meaghan

Casas

1995

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“…As the Director of the National Children's Bureau put it, current policies "appeal to the constituency of achieving parents, essentially a group quite capable of looking after themselves" (Times Educational Supplement, 17 January 1992, 'Needy child must not be abandoned'). Those of us who warned about the social implications of the ERA (Gipps, 1990) with its combination of LMS, published national assessment results, and emphasis on competition (which would effectively overwhelm the advantages of a common entitlement curriculum) were castigated as overly negative and harbingers of doom. It gives little pleasure to see item by item that we are being proved right-from the rise in the number of exclusions to the increase in children going to separate special educational needs provision to the documenting of the empty rhetoric of parental choice for all.…”

Section: Examples Of the Crisis In Educational Research And Policy-mamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Profession of Educational Research

Gipps

1993

British Educational Res J

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This paper argues that educational research and policy‐making is in crisis: centrally funded research is subject to increasing intervention and restrictions on reporting; research findings are misreported in the press; and the policy‐making process has become truncated ignoring discussion, debate and research evidence. Furthermore the direction in which current reforms are taking education is contrary to the style of curriculum, learning and assessment that is needed to produce resourceful, active learners for the twenty‐first century. The author calls on researchers to continue to work with teachers in support of a worthwhile educational enterprise, urges researchers to continue to strive to publish their findings and to work together within BERA to move forward in the hostile climate.

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The social implications of national assessment

Cited by 2 publications

References 6 publications

On the testing of standards and standardized achievement testing: Panacea, placebo, or pandora's box?

On the testing of standards and standardized achievement testing: Panacea, placebo, or pandora's box?

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