Background/Context: In the spring of 2015, about 135,000 New Jersey students--almost 20% of the test-eligible children--did not take the state's test. Opposition of this magnitude directly contradicted a central stipulation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), which required states to test 95% of their eligible students to…

College and university admission testing requirements often serve as a barrier to many students seeking advanced degrees. Many graduate school admission boards/committees use the minimum testing requirement as a predictor variable to explain a student's chance for success in a program. Before the 2020 Fall semester, many graduate schools required…

The voices of teachers experiencing and reacting to highly-publicized testing scandals are rarely heard, despite high-levels of criticism and blame from many stakeholders. Drawing on Foucault's conception of "disciplinary power" ("hierarchical observation," "normalizing judgment," and "examination")…

Elevate [Math] is a 19-day (76-hour) in-person summer math program created by the Silicon Valley Education Foundation to help middle school students who are struggling in math to achieve math proficiency, increase their interest in math, and develop a growth mindset. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the in-person summer program was adapted to a…

Federally mandated standardized testing (i.e., in core subject areas and certain grade levels), as an element of educational accountability, began in 2002 with the No Child Left Behind Act. With that step, large-scale assessments came to serve as one of the foundations of accountability-based systems and policies not only for districts, schools…

Opting out of state standardized tests has recently become a movement--a series of grassroots, organized efforts to refuse to take high-stakes state standardized tests. In particular, the opt-out rates in the state of New York reached 20% in 2015 and 21% in 2016. This study aims to illustrate the social networks and examine the paradoxes that have…

This study examined the facilitators and barriers to the implementation of an innovative, whole-school reform model, Expeditionary Learning, within the context of the high-stakes accountability policy environment. Twenty-four teachers and four principals were interviewed across four schools, two of which were high poverty and two of which were low…

Studies have shown that principals are essential in successfully implementing large-scale policy reforms in schools. However, the issue of how school leaders interpret and transform reforms is understudied. This article explores how twelve Norwegian school leaders respond to external demands in a new policy context emphasizing national test…

In the 127th Maine State Legislative Session, "An Act to Implement Certain Recommendations of the Maine Proficiency Education Council" (S.P. 660 -- L.D. 1627) was passed into law as Chapter 489. This amended the chaptered law passed in 2012, "An Act to Prepare Maine People for the Future Economy" (S.P.439 -- L.D.1422),…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act required states to adopt accountability systems measuring student proficiency on state-administered exams. The federal legislation contained several strict requirements for NCLB implementation, such as escalating student proficiency targets that reach 100% proficiency by 2014. But it also gave states…

States that received federal waivers to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act were required to implement reforms in designated "Focus Schools" that contribute to achievement gaps. In this study, we examine the performance effects of such "differentiated accountability" reforms in the state of Louisiana. The Focus School reforms…

This article reports on the perceptions and experiences of general elementary educators as they engage in a school reform process that requires them to learn and implement an arts infused curriculum intended to raise student achievement on standardized tests in non-arts subjects. This qualitative study reveals not only how one arts-based school…

"Understanding Entry-Level Courses in American Institutions of Higher Education" outlines a study conducted by EPIC that empirically identifies the characteristics of work at the college- and career-readiness level in English/language arts, science, and social sciences courses. Using a previously collected national sample of over two…

We examine edTPA (a teacher performance assessment) implementation at one private university during the first year that our state required this exam for initial teaching certification. Using data from semi-structured interviews with 19 teacher educators from 12 programs as well as public information on edTPA pass rates, we explore whether the…

If there is one thing that describes the trajectory of American education, it is this: more high-stakes testing. In the United States, the debates surrounding this trajectory can be so fierce that it feels like we are in uncharted waters. As Christopher Bjork reminds us in this study, however, we are not the first to make testing so central to…