Research & Articles
from the
National Council
of
Teachers of English
Classroom-Based Assessments - A great resource from the NCTE, this source offers alternatives to high stakes tests.
"Mission Impossible" by Robert Scholes, Professor of Humanities at Brown University. This is a great article about the negative impact standardized test have on curriculum. Scholes states:" Standardized tests are always constructed for the convenience of the tester."
Research in the Teaching of English: Are Advanced Placement English and First-Year College Composition Equivalent?
The above article offers an interesting bit of research from the NCTE that reveals "the College Board’s support for writing, demonstrated by its including writing on the SAT and founding the National Commission on Writing, appears inconsistent with the aims of its Advanced Placement English program, which may encourage students to take less writing in college by exempting them from FYC altogether" (RTE, Volume 40, Number 4, May 2006).
What's so wrong with standardized tests like the AP, SAT and NECAP? Here's what the NCTE has to say about standardized testing:
"Standardized tests tend to narrow the curriculum to what will be tested; … (teachers) often spend a lot of time having students practice items like those that will be on the tests. Indeed, the tests not only determine all too much of the curriculum but may virtually become the curriculum. Such heavy emphasis on testing crowds other, more important leaning activities out of the curriculum. Thus, standardized tests tend to discourage effective teaching and engaged, meaningful learning.
Source: NCTE, SLATE Starter Sheet- Fact Sheet #2 On Standardized Tests and Assessment Alternatives
“Research-Based Policy Statements on Assessment”. National Council of Teachers of English.
"Testing the mean proficiency levels of students’ reading ability to determine Annual Yearly Progress of schools (as NCLB does) is not statistically defensible because it uses descriptive statistics to make causal inferences" (Raudenbush, 2004).
Source: Raudenbush, S.W. (2004). Schooling, statistics, and poverty: Can we measure school improvement? New Jersey: Educational Testing Service William H. Angoff Memorial Lecture Series. http://www.ets.org/research/researcher/PIC-ANG9.html
"The majority of existing tests have a harmful effect on the way students are taught to write" (Hillocks, 2002).
Source: Hillocks, G. (2002). The testing trap: How state writing assessments control learning. New York: Teachers College Press.
"High-stakes testing can marginalize and contain students’ engagement with literature" (Anagnostopoulos, 2003).
Source: Anagnostopoulos, D. (2003). Testing and student engagement with literature in urban classrooms: A multi-layered perspective. Research in the Teaching of English 38 (2), 177-212.
