High-Stakes Testing & Student Learning

By A. Amrein, David C. Berliner. 2002

226 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A brief history of high-stakes testing is followed by an analysis of eighteen states with severe consequences attached to their testing programs. These 18 states were examined to see if their high-stakes testing programs were affecting student learning, the intended outcome of high-stakes testing policies promoted throughout the nation. Scores on the individual tests that states use were not analyzed for evidence of learning. Such scores are easily manipulated through test-preparation programs, narrow curricula focus, exclusion of certain students, and so forth. Student learning was measured by means of additional tests covering some of the same domain as each state's own high-stakes test. The question asked was whether transfer to these domains occurs as a function of a state's high-stakes testing program.

Subfields: Education, Information Systems and Management, Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/494ad69d6cf15ac6806fdaf3e1b4543df0b80db2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. S. Nieto
2. Dylan Wiliam *
3. John W. Saye
4. J. La Guardia
5. A. Green
6. P. Sahlberg
7. Cherry Bertanees
8. H. Timperley

In Information Systems and Management

1. Dylan Wiliam *
2. S. Nieto
3. J. La Guardia
4. A. Green
5. John W. Saye
6. P. Sahlberg
7. H. Timperley
8. A. Amrein-Beardsley

In Political Science and International Relations

1. Dylan Wiliam *
2. S. Nieto
3. J. La Guardia
4. A. Green
5. John W. Saye
6. P. Sahlberg
7. David C. Berliner

Citations in the corpus

• Promoting professional inquiry for improved outcomes for students in New Zealand (2009, background): “We readily acknowledge the dangers of using test scores from narrow domains to assess wider educational goals (Amrein & Berliner, 2002) or of assuming that teachers can solve societal problems.”
• Authentic Pedagogy: Its Presence in Social Studies Classrooms and Relationship to Student Performance on State-Mandated Tests (2013, background): “Low-performing schools receive unwanted attention and sometimes sanctions from district and state administrators (Amrein & Berliner, 2002).”
• Washback to learning outcomes: a comparative study of IELTS preparation and university pre‐sessional language courses (2007, background): “…standardized testing on educational outcomes and the interpretability of test scores have been central questions in the general education literature (see, for example, Amrein & Berliner, 2002; Rosenshine, 2003), products have attracted relatively little attention from language testing researchers.”
• Standardized Testing and School Accountability (2010, background): “In a widely reported analysis, Amrein and Berliner (2002a) examined the impact of the introduction of highstakes testing programs in 18 states.”
• An Analysis of Some Unintended and Negative Consequences of High-Stakes Testing (2002, background): “…worse than states with no- or low- stakes testing programs on independent measures of academic achievement and will continue to do so.11 Page 9 of 138 Amrein and Berliner (2002), for example, examined multiple indicators of academic achievement to determine whether states with high-stakes tests…”
• Education policies for raising student learning: the Finnish approach (2007, background): “Furthermore, Amrein and Berliner (2002) concluded, on the basis of their analysis across 18 states in the USA, that since clear evidence was not found for the positive impact of high-stakes testing policies upon increased student learning and because there are numerous reports of unintended…”
• Solidarity, courage and heart: what teacher educators can learn from a new generation of teachers (2006, background): “…that high-stakes testing, rather than increasing student learning, is actually raising dropout rates and leading to less engagement with schooling: Amrein and Berliner (2002) reported findings from research in 18 states that student learning was unchanged or actually went down when high-stakes…”
• Developing Who I Am: A Self-Determination Theory Approach to the Establishment of Healthy Identities (2009, background): “This affects all students in the system (Kohn, 2004), but particularly, as failures on these high-stakes tests have actually been linked to increased drop-out rates (Amrein & Berliner, 2002), the impact on self-esteem for those that have dropped out is substantial.”