Output Education

High-Stakes Test is any test used to make vital decisions about students, educators, schools, or districts, most commonly for the purpose of accountability.

Results from High-Stakes Test are used to regulate punishments (such as sanctions, penalties, funding reductions, negative publicity), accolades (awards, public celebration, positive publicity), advancement (grade promotion or graduation for students), or compensation (salary increases or bonuses for administrators and teachers).

High Stakes vs. Low Stakes

A “low-stakes test” would be used to measure academic achievement, identify learning problems, or inform instructional adjustments, among other purposes. What distinguishes a high-stakes test from a low-stakes test is not its form (how the test is designed) but its function (how the results are used). For example, if test results are used to determine an important outcome, such as whether a student receives a high school diploma, the test would be considered a high-stakes test regardless of whether it’s a multiple-choice exam, an oral exam, or an essay exam. Low-stakes tests generally carry no significant or public consequences—the results typically matter far more to an individual teacher or student than to anyone else—and scores are not used to burnish or tarnish the reputation of teachers or schools.

Purposes:

1. To Students: Result may determine whether students proceed to the next grade level or whether they receive a diploma. For example, a growing number of states require students to pass a reading test to advance from third grade to fourth grade, while others require students to pass a test to graduate from high school.
2. To Educators:Test results may be utilized in the job-performance assessments of teachers or to determine professional payment. For example, in recent years more school reformers, elected officials, and policy makers have been calling for teacher pay (including bonuses), as well as hiring, firing, and tenure decisions, to be partly based on student test scores.
3. To Schools:Tests results may be used to prompt penalties for schools, including negative public ratings, the replacement of staff members, or even closure. For example, some federal and state policies require that test results be used to impose various consequences, such as firing or transferring some or all of a school’s administrators and faculty, or forcing a school to pay for additional services and transportation costs for students. In addition, standardized-test scores are also increasingly being used, along with other measures, in various state and independent efforts to assign A–F letter grades to schools.

Methods wherein high-stakes testing is used to influence the performance of students, educators, and schools:

1. School and school-system reform: Perhaps the most extensively discussed example of high-stakes testing is the 2001 federal law commonly known as the No Child Left Behind Act, which is considered one of the most far-reaching efforts to use high-stakes tests to drive the enhancement of schools, teaching quality, and student achievement. In brief, the law—as it was originally designed, at least—mandates that each state develop learning standardsand standardized tests to track school performance. For each year that a school is unable to meet a state’s benchmarks for improvement, the stakes are raised and sanctions may become more severe. Ultimately, a low-performing school might be closed, converted to a charter school, put under the management of a private company, or taken over by a state department of education, among other possible outcomes.
2. High school graduation: Generally speaking, widespread issues about whether high school graduates lack the education and skills necessary to succeed in college, modern workplaces, and adult life have motivated calls for high-stakes graduation tests. The basic rationale is that diplomas should signify readiness for postsecondary learning and careers, and that students should not be allowed to earn a diploma if they haven’t acquired sufficient skills and knowledge. Citing complaints and evidence (such as surveys of college instructors and employers) that many public-school graduates are not well prepared, some reformers, elected officials, and policy makers have sought to base the awarding of high school diplomas on test results, which are perceived—by advocates—to be sufficient proof that students are prepared to move on. Many states have passed policies related to graduation tests, and some states have tried different approaches to address concerns about the fairness of such exams. For example, some states allow students who fail to retake tests multiple times and students with disabilities to demonstrate proficiency in alternate ways.
3. Grade promotion: To help ensure that students are not simply moved on from one grade level to the next without acquiring the skills they will need to succeed academically, test results are sometimes used to decide whether students will be promoted in their education. Reading aptitude in the elementary grades, for example, is often the focus of these score-based promotion policies.
4. Teacher evaluation: Student test results are being factored in to teacher evaluations as part of a wide-ranging effort to reward “effective” teachers and to either support or penalize “ineffective” teachers. In recent years, many states have changed teacher-evaluation policies and systems to make student test scores a “significant” factor in the evaluation process. As result, student test results are being factored into teacher evaluations, potentially influencing decisions related to compensation, tenure, hiring, and firing.

Issues:

Arguments Supporting High-Stakes Testing:

1. Holds teachers accountable for ensuring that all students learn what they are expected to learn. While no single test can measure whether students have achieved all state learning standards(standardized tests can measure only a fraction of these standards), test scores are nevertheless one method used to determine whether students are learning at a high level.
2. Stimulates students to work harder, learn more, and take the tests more seriously, which can promote higher student attainment.
3. Establishes high expectationsfor both educators and students, which can help reverse the cycles of low educational expectations, achievement, and attainment that have historically disadvantaged some student groups, particularly students of color, and that have characterized some schools in poorer communities or more troubled urban areas.
4. Discloses areas of educational need that can be targeted for reform and improvement, such as programs for students who may be underperforming academically or being underserved by schools.
5. Offers easily understandable information about school and student performance—in the form of numerical test scores—that reformers, educational leaders, elected officials, and policy makers can use to develop new laws, regulations, and school-improvement strategies.
6. Gives parents, employers, colleges, and others more assurance that students are learning at a high level or that high school graduates have acquired the skills they will need to succeed in adulthood.

Arguments Against High-Stakes Testing:

1. Forces teachers to “teach to the test”—i.e., to focus instruction on the topics that are most likely to be tested, or to spend valuable instructional time prepping students for tests rather than teaching them knowledge and skills that may be more important.
2. Encourages a more “narrow” academic program in schools, since administrators and teachers may neglect or reduce instruction in untested—but still important—subject areas such as art, health, music, physical education, or social studies, for example.
3. May contribute to higher, or even much higher, rates of cheating among educators and students, including coordinated, large-scale cheating schemes perpetrated school administrators and teachers who are looking to avoid the sanctions and punishments that result from poor test performance. Thoroughly changing test answers, displaying correct answers for students while they are taking the test, and unreasonably targeting historically low-performing students for expulsion are just a few examples taken from recent scandals.
4. Has been correlated in some research studies to increased failure rates, lower graduation rates, and higher dropout rates, particularly for minority groups, students from low-income households, students with special needs, and students with limited proficiency in English.
5. May reduce the overall quality of teaching and learning for the same disadvantaged students who are the intended beneficiaries of high-stakes testing. Because of strong pressure on schools and teachers to improve test results and avoid score-based penalties, students of color and students from lower-income households and communities may be more likely to receive narrowly focused, test-preparation-heavy instruction instead of an engaging, challenging, well-rounded academic program.
6. Exacerbates negative stereotypes about the intelligence and academic ability of minority students, who may worry so much about confirming negative racial stereotypes that they underperform on important exams (a phenomenon generally known as “stereotype threat”). And if such students perform so poorly that they fail a high-stakes graduation test, the failure will only limit their chances in higher education or future employment, which only continues and reinforces the conditions that give rise to stereotypes.