Running Head: CRITICAL LOOK AT HIGH-STAKES TESTING 1

A Critical Look at High-Stakes Testing and Its Effect on Students

Melanie Remp

University of Kansas
CRITICAL LOOK AT HIGH-STAKES TESTING 2

Abstract

This paper explores the nature of high-stakes testing and the effect it has on students, using a

Critical Race Theory (CRT) perspective. CRT looks at race through a historic lens and studies

the lasting side effects of racism. While looking at high-stakes testing, special attention is given

to a branch of CRT known as DisCrit. DisCrit pays special attention to the effect of labels

students are given. Scholars of DisCrit call people to look at the connection between race and

ability. There is also an emphasis on the social construction of race and ability. In this paper I

identify the negative side effects of high-stakes testing and how students are affected. Schools

today make many instructional and financial decisions based on scores of these assessments,

including placing students into special education (SPED). With DisCrit I look at the negative

stigma students experience once they are labeled as SPED. After looking at high-stakes testing, I

emphasize the importance of professional development to help educators understand what to do

to include students of all cultural backgrounds and abilities. There is also a call for CRT to

further study the design and implementation of high-stakes testing. Through the lens of CRT and

DisCrit researchers are able to study how to make education more equitable.
CRITICAL LOOK AT HIGH-STAKES TESTING 3

A Critical Look at High-Stakes Testing and Its Effect on Students

If you walk into a secondary public school in March or April there is a strong chance that

at least one classroom will be full of students taking a standardized test. Throughout these two

months, all students are taking a minimum of two tests (not including the multiple sections of

each test). If you take into consideration the entirety of the school year, many students will take

close to ten standardized tests. These tests are often referred to as high-stakes tests.

For the purpose of the review I define a high-stakes test as a standardized assessment

over a core subject, given in a quiet and safe environment, that has implications on school

finances and/or students instructional placement in school. This year the eighth graders have

taken several of these high-stakes tests. Tests include the Measures Academic Progress (MAP)

test that identifies student growth in Math and Reading, the Kansas English Language

Proficiency Assessment (KELPA) to assess English Language Learners (ELLs) ability with the

English language, and the KITE (Kansas State Assessment) to check if students are meeting

standardized goals.

Background Information on High-Stakes Testing

According to the National Education Association (NEA), assessments to measure student

ability and understanding in the United States started appearing around the middle of the

nineteenth century. Throughout the twentieth century numerous intelligence tests began to

appear and the popularity of testing students grew. As the United States progresses through the

twenty-first century the amount of tests students take has grown immensely, along with the

growing desire to judge the success of schools with testing data.

No Child Left Behind, known as NCLB, was passed in 2002 under goals set forth by

President George W. Bush. The primary goals of NCLB were to ensure students have the ability

to attend a successful school, while also putting more of an emphasis on reading and

mathematics (Harrison-Jones, 2007, p. 346). While the goals of NLCB seem to be

overwhelmingly positive, the actuality of the law was arguably the opposite. In the years after

NCLB was passed many educators started to wonder if NCLB was doing more harm than good

for students.

Criticisms of NCLB

As a social studies teacher one of my criticisms of NCLB was the emphasis on reading

and mathematics was taking time and resources away from social studies classes. Harrison-Jones

(2007) summarized the concern about the narrowing of curriculum in schools by saying NCLB

's narrow focusmathematics and reading scores is more likely to be counterproductive than

helpful to a generation of students in poorly performing schools with such schools eliminating

much of the broad education in order to elevate scores on just two indicators (pgs. 350-351).

The argument is students are missing out on chances to expand their knowledge in subjects that

could be beneficial to their health or future interests.

One aspect of NCLB that caused immense pressure on teachers and schools was the

requirement to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). AYP uses assessment scores, as well as

graduation rates, to determine if the level of proficiency amongst student subgroups is growing

(Harrison-Jones, 2007, pgs. 346-347). Not meeting AYP came with strong consequences for

Title I schools (schools where a majority of students live in poverty).

The pressure of meeting AYP led some schools around the United States to engage in

tactics that are ethically questionable, in order to make AYP. In an urban school district in Texas,
CRITICAL LOOK AT HIGH-STAKES TESTING 5

Julian Vasquez Heilig and Linda Darling-Hammond (2008, pgs. 97-99) uncovered questionable

actions taken to boost the scores of high schools in the district. It was discovered that

administrators at the high school would hold back struggling students as freshmen in high

school, so they wouldnt take a state assessment as a junior, then magically promote students to

junior status the next year. The adoption of zero-tolerance behavior policies and strict dress

codes were enforced to push students out of school after October, when funding decisions were

made, and before the state assessments in April.

This one school district in Texas is not the only example of poor ethics from educators

when it comes to assessments. In 2009, a widespread cheating scheme was uncovered in Atlanta,

Georgia. Involvement in the scandal included district officials for Atlanta Public Schools,

building administration, as well as teachers. According to a 2011 report to the Governors office,

those accused were said to have pressured teachers to do anything necessary to improve scores

and physically change answers on students score sheets. Those involved explained how the

pressure associated with meeting AYP led them to comply with cheating on the assessments in

order to not be identified as a failing school.

With the large number of high-stakes tests being taken by students, the pressure of

wanting high test scores, and the amount of hours being devoted to test-taking and test-prep, it is

easy to imagine that testing can take a toll on students. One particular population that testing can

be detrimental towards is Special Education (SPED) students. When states use such combined

student- and school-accountability systems, ultimately requiring every student to achieve the

same high standard, one likely result is disproportionately high dropout rates among at-risk

students, particularly those with disabilities (Allbritten, Mainzer and Ziegler 2004). Having all

students work towards a common goal does not take into consideration the needs of SPED
CRITICAL LOOK AT HIGH-STAKES TESTING 6

students or any other student struggling with completing the assessment.

Purpose

The purpose for this article is to examine high-stakes testing and its effect on students

that have been labeled with a disability, and consequently, students of color. As educators and

researchers it is important to identify areas in which students are not being accepted for their

unique abilities and experiences. Instead, students are being put in situations where a test can be

make or break for their educational future.

Decisions based on High-Stakes Tests

As previously mentioned, high-stakes testing can impact the levels of student success in

negative ways. The emphasis placed on test scores and the push for all students to be proficient

leads to students having knowledge in simplified curriculum, while also being pushed into grades

and programs that are not necessary for them to be successful.

Just like there are a variety of high-stakes tests, there are a variety of decisions made

based on the results of the tests. These decisions include funding for the school and staffing,

SPED placement, classes enrolled in, requirement for ESL services, and college acceptance. This

is not a complete list of every decision based off of a result from a high-stakes test, but the idea

is there.

Basing so many decisions off of the results from one or two high-stakes tests does not

take into account student abilities or outside knowledge. If you walk into any school during

testing season you will see large amounts of absences, sleepy students, and students that have

been labeled with a disability taking a high-stakes test. This does not include students that might

be going through a family crisis outside of school. All of the above student groups can negatively

impact test score for individuals and the whole school.

For the sake of this article, I will focus on the negative impacts of a bad test score for the

individual using the Critical Race Theory (CRT) Framework. Specifically how a bad test score

can lead to the over identification of students of color in SPED, and how the tests themselves are

not setting up these students for success. Although news of increasing ethnic, racial, and

cultural diversity is not a novelty to many large urban cities and districts, it does warrant that

educational practitioners and scholars to think innovatively about how educators meet the

academic, cultural, and social needs of a diverse student body (Howard & Navarro, 2016, p.

254).

What is CRT?

CRT seeks to look at race and racism at its core. Critical Race Theorists examine the

history or race and racism in the United States with the understanding that there is a need to look

at systems in place that have encouraged and allowed racism to grow. The need for CRT was

understood by scholars when they realized, more or less simultaneously, that the heady

advances of the civil rights era of the 1960s had stalled and, in many respects, were being rolled

back (CRT BOOK p. 25). CRT scholars used this realization to develop the base framework of

CRT that is still being used today.

While CRT can be used to look at a variety of situations, there are five core tenets of

CRT that can be used to analyze race and racism. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (2012) list

these five tenets in Critical Race Theory, an Introduction: (1) it is impossible to pretend that

society is color-blind, (2) efforts to end racism from the dominant group are self-serving, (3) race

is not a biological categorization and is instead socially constructed, (4) there are real benefits to

being a certain race (white) or acting white, and (5) hearing the counterstories of people of color

is essential to truly understanding race in the United States.

CRT is not a systematic train of thought where there are right and wrong answers, but

instead a set of ideas and lenses through with scholars can analyze race and racism in the United

States. In order to use CRT in research, it is important to keep in mind the central tenets, but also

be open to expanding and looking into one of the spinoffs of CRT.

One common critique of CRT and its scholars is there is no action to CRT, and there

needs to be steps taken to actively fight against injustices that have been identified in the United

States. Parker and Lynn (2002) suggest that CRT can be used in educational research to tell the

counter narratives of the historically voiceless. The authors state We contend that linking CRT

to education can indeed foster the connections of theory to practice and activism on issues

related to race (p.18). If CRT is used as a research framework, there are ways to connect it back

to the real world where activists and community leaders in their fight can use the ideas for

justice.

What is DisCrit?

Literature Review

Purpose of DisCrit. Annamma, Connor, and Feiri (2013) take the ideas of CRT and

apply them to looking at the relationship between race and ability. The authors look at the history

of connecting race to a perceived level of smartness, and the ramifications of such thought. This

work is done through a spin-off of CRT known as DisCrit. Using DisCrit, we seek to address

the structural power of ableism and racism by recognizing the historical, social, political and

economic interests of limiting access to educational equity to students of color with dis/abilities

on both macro and microlevels (Annamma et al, 2013, p. 7).

The authors argue the treatment of students of color represent long held beliefs about

particular minority groups. One example being the overrepresentation of Spanish speaking
CRITICAL LOOK AT HIGH-STAKES TESTING 9

students in SPED in schools with a large Hispanic population represents negative thoughts on the

ability of speakers of another language (Annamma et al, 2013, pgs. 8-9). DisCrit allows you to

look at the negative side effects of high-stakes testing and how it affects the marginalized groups

based on race and ability.

Color Blindness and Color Evasiveness. Annamma, Jackson, and Morrison (2017) use

the idea of DisCrit to challenge the idea of colorblindness. The authors use the term

colorblindness as the idea to ignore race and act like it is nonexistent (Annamma et al, 2017, p.

147). In this article the authors problematize both the idea and name of colorblindness. When it

comes to colorblindness the authors main concerns were that the practice ignores the history of

race and racism (Annamma et al, 2017, p. 152) and uses a disability as a weakness (Annamma et

al (2), 2017, p. 153). With DisCrit it is important to not look down on race or ability, and to

instead look at the social constructions that made it so an individual that is not white or has a

disability is seen as having a weakness.

Instead of colorblindness the authors suggest using the phrase and practice of color-

evasiveness. Expanding the racial ideology of color-blindness to color-evasiveness then is not

simply a commitment to updating our language, but an opportunity to expose the (un)spoken

norms thriving in the racial ideology of color-blindness (Annamma et al, 2017, p. 156).

Transitioning to the mindset of color-evasiveness will allow us as educators and researches to

think critically about how high-stakes tests and decisions made off of them have a negative

impact on students of color and those with a disability, and especially those who possess both of

those identifications.

Smartness. Smartness, as in the perceived ability of an individual, is critiqued in

Leonardo and Broderick (2011). The authors compare the benefits to looking and acting white to
CRITICAL LOOK AT HIGH-STAKES TESTING 10

the benefits of being labeled as smart, as well as what happens when you do not identify with the

group that has the power. Following the lead of DisCrit, the authors argue the perception of

having a disability is socially constructed and must be dismantled. They point out smartness

may be socially constructed, but this fact alone does not explain how the relation exists in real

and institutional forms (Leonardo and Broderick, 2011, p. 2219).

Leonardo and Broderick (2011) are sure to point out that smartness, and whiteness, are

given power because they have a power over a weaker group (p. 2216). In order for the label of

being smart to have power, there has to be the group that is not smart. Consequently, when

students are put in the category of having a disability (physical or mental) they are automatically

viewed as less of a student. Students that are labeled as disabled are being pushed into different

settings that do not take into account their skills and abilities. As students are pushed into these

settings they are being given the message that they are not good enough to be in class with all of

their peers.

Tenets of DisCrit

Like CRT, DisCrit has core tenets that lead the research of DisCrit scholars. There are a

total of seven DisCrit tenets; however, for the sake of this article I will be discussing three of

them.

Intersectionality. The first of these tenets is DisCrit values multidimensional identities

and troubles singular notions of identity such as race or dis/ability or class or gender or sexuality,

and so on (Annamma et al, 2016, p. 11). This tenet centers on the idea of intersectionality.

Intersectionality is the study of how different identities people possess play into their

experiences, and how each of the identities can each have disadvantages (Delgado & Stefanic,

2012, 79-80). In order for DisCrit scholars to study the challenges faced by students as a result
CRITICAL LOOK AT HIGH-STAKES TESTING 11

of high-stakes testing, it is important to look at the multiple identities that play a role in their

lives.

This tenet also looks at how students and their identities have been treated for an identity.

In my school, teachers will often make comments about how frustrating it can be when working

with students that have been labeled with a disability. When teachers get a class roster and access

to student test scores it is not uncommon for teachers to assume what that student will need.

These assumptions about student needs, with no student and teacher interactions, do not take into

account what a student is actually capable of. This practice results in students being analyzed

based on a societal label they have been given.

Impact of labels. Another tenet of DisCrit is that DisCrit emphasizes the social

constructions of race and ability and yet recognizes the material and psychological impacts of

being labeled as raced or dis/abled, which sets one outside of the western cultural norms

(Annamma et al, 2016, p. 11). One common concern amongst teachers, especially SPED

teachers, is that students with a disability will feel the effects of a stigma towards their

identification.

While the stigma may not affect every one, there are many SPED students that do feel the

stigma and the negative way their peers might treat them. Many students feel like they are smart

and do not struggle; therefore, they are not in need of a segregated classroom. Students are aware

that their peers might talk about them unfavorably, and treat them like lesser of a person (Fellner,

2014, pgs. 1091-1092).

If students have a negative perception of the label they have been given, then the very

supports that are designed to help them succeed might be having the opposite effect. Separating
CRITICAL LOOK AT HIGH-STAKES TESTING 12

students from their peers into segregated general education (GenEd) and SPED classrooms only

deepens the stigma felt by those that have been labeled (Fellner, 2014, p. 1099).

Activism. The third tenet of DisCrit I will discuss is DisCrit requires activism and

supports all forms of resistance (Annamma et al, 2016, p. 11). This tenet is working to fight the

criticism the CRT is theory without action. Those that are critical of CRT are quick to point out

that the problems discussed by CRT may pose intriguing intellectual puzzles, but they lie far

from the central issues of our age (Delgado & Stefanic, 2012, p. 130).

When it comes to activism with DisCrit it is important to realize that this tenet

encourages all forms of activism. DisCrit as a movement concerns itself with not treating others

differently based on a socially constructed label theyve been given. Due to this concern, when

thinking about activism DisCrit recognizes that some of the activities traditionally thought of as

activism (e.g. marches, sit-ins, and some forms of civil disobedience) may be based on ableist

norms, which may not be accessible for those with corporeal differences (Annamma et al, 2016,

p. 18). It is important that everyone is able to participate in fighting against and that people with

a physical disability can be just as active as an able-bodied person.

Implications of the Research

To Education

The side effects of high-stakes testing have done more harm than good in the twenty-first

century, especially what tests do to students of color and students with a disability. Students in

urban schools, with low test scores, are being forced into special education placements without

consideration of why they got a low score. There is no consideration of the diverse backgrounds

students come from with the standardized tests. It is time for educators to think critically and act

on creating an environment of success for all students.

When it comes to analyzing test data there needs to be a push for educators to not take the

scores at a surface level. Just because a student scores low on a reading or math test does not

mean they should be labeled with a disability or segregated into other classrooms. Students could

simply be tired, hungry, or have test anxiety. The content on high-stakes tests is standardized

material that does not take into consideration the different cultural backgrounds of a diverse

student body. Instead, educators could focus on changes that could be made in their classroom to

help all students learn better.

If all students are going to show growth on high-stakes tests, educators need to work on

making all students comfortable in their educational setting. Students that do not identify as

white, or students that have different abilities need to feel welcome in their school in order to

learn and reach their best potential. The narrowed curriculum of high-stakes tests, and the fact

that skills beyond math and reading are not tested, needs to be changed if all students w are

going to have an equal chance at success (Harrison-Jones, 2007, p. 350).

Educators (at the administration level and teachers) need training on what to do with the

test results of students. If students get a bad score, why is that? What can be done in the

classroom to help the student be more successful? Research makes it clear that teachers and

school administrators need sustainable professional development to assist them in creating

culturally relevant learning environments that are attentive to students needs (Cherubini, 2010,

p. 80).

With enough training, teachers and educators can learn about how to make their

curriculum more culturally relevant, but also how to create a safe learning space for all students.

Students from culturally diverse backgrounds, and those that have been labeled with a disability

can benefit from intentional instructional shifts taken by teachers.

To CRT

There is a need for more research to be done on high-stakes assessment as it relates to

students of color and those with a disability. This work is looking at a small aspect of high-stakes

assessment. Specifically more research is needed to look at the creation of standardized tests, in

terms of the content of the tests and who is creating the tests. There is also room for more

research to be done on how education can move away from standardized testing and develop

new ways to measure students growth. CRT scholars could also look into how parents and the

community can be involved counteracting the negative side effects of high-stakes testing.

Conclusion

While NCLB had a good goal at the start of closing the achievement gap between diverse

student populations, the reality of the law is far from that. The large volume of high-stakes tests

that students take in twenty-first century America has a detrimental effect on students. There are

instructional decisions made off these tests that are not created equally. If students of color are

not able to grow or be proficient on a test, there are immediate consequences for their

educational setting. Students of color are disproportionately labeled with a learning disability.

Using the ideas of DisCrit, I looked at the dangers of labeling students as smart and not

smart (disabled). With the disability diagnosis there is little to no concern for how the students

will handle to stigma of their SPED placement. With the SPED placement comes

hypersensitivity to the words of peers and a denial of the resources that are intended to help

them.

The tenets of DisCrit discussed in this article center on the themes of intersectionality, the

impacts of being labeled with a disability, and the call to action to fight against the social
CRITICAL LOOK AT HIGH-STAKES TESTING 15

constructs of race and its relationship with disability. However, when it comes to fighting back it

is important to be accepting of all forms of activism.

Going forward it is imperative that educators are conscious of the power of high-stakes

tests. The tests have been a major part of twenty-first century education in the United States and

will be hard to step away from. That being said, in order to ensure all students are successful

there needs to be dedication towards professional development to create a culturally diverse

curriculum and learning environment. Schools should be considerate of their diverse student

body to ensure that all students life experiences and abilities are welcomed in a manner that

encourages all students to be successful.

I call on CRT scholars in the future to conduct more research on the stressful

environment of high-stakes testing and its effect on students of color, the creation of the tests,

and the decisions made as a result of the test. There is also room to look at alternative ways to

measure student success.

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