Beyond High-Stakes Assessment

High-stakes assessments in higher education serve a gate-keeping function for institutional and programmatic accreditation and determine outcomes for students on state boards and professional licensing and certification examinations. The assessments are defined by specific characteristics such as: a single, summative examination, a clear measure of success and failure, and significant consequences for candidates. Controversial aspects are related to whether they actually measure individual achievement or meaningful skills, the current mismatch between education and workplace needs, and the increased use of technology in instruction. Can high-stakes testing evolve and move with the times?

Multimodal and Community-Based Literacies

In recent decades, high-stakes school reforms and draconian budget cuts have constrained the autonomy of public school teachers in developing multi literacy approaches with emergent bilingual learners (e.g., English-only laws, high stakes testing). This chapter describes the community and multimodal instructional practices of two urban elementary school teachers/ researchers, developed in the context of a professional development initiative. Using critical, sociocultural conceptions of literacy and qualitative methods of investigation, the paper investigates different aspects of the teachers' writing instruction (i.e., community involvement; genre-based instruction; digital literacy; and multimodality); it also explores how the writing processes of focal bilingual students incorporated these practices. Findings show that this approach positioned bilingual learners as agentive text makers. In addition, the second-grade students developed a heightened awareness of audience and context. Implications are discussed, including the pressing need for teacher collaboration, robust school-university partnerships, and innovative multimodal approaches to literacy.

Parents’ Involvement in High-Stakes Language Assessment A Review of Test Impact on Parent Behavior

This paper reviews a total of 20 empirical research studies concerning parents’ behavior under the context of high-stakes language assessment, aiming to reveal the impact of the assessment on parents’ behavior. The results show that (1) parents are typically involved in high-stakes language assessment process; (2) their involvement practice includes general (such as hiring tutors for children) and extreme involvement behavior (such as participating in movement against high-stakes testing); (3) no unanimous conclusion is reached concerning the effectiveness of parents’ involvement in high-stakes language assessment; (4) multiple factors that affect parents’ involvement in high-stakes language assessment are identified, including parents’ perceptions of tests, their educational background, and the time they spend with their children. This study concludes that tests might influence the ways parents are involved in children’s education. However, not all parents might be influenced by testing, and testing might have a positive impact on some parents but a negative impact on others. This synthesis has several practical implications. Firstly, it indicates that parents’ involvement behavior in the context of high-stakes language assessment deserves to be further investigated. Secondly, it points that various intervention programs should be provided for parents to help them better support their children’s learning and test preparation. The paper also offers several suggestions for future research.  

Tensions with international mindedness: teaching in the international baccalaureate program

PurposeInternational mindedness (IM) is a core element of International Baccalaureate (IB) programs. Implementation of IM varies with the type of international school and where the IB school is situated. This article seeks to understand the tensions that three teachers experienced while teaching the IB Diploma Program history curriculum.Design/methodology/approachFor this study, three IB teachers examined their experiences teaching the history curriculum. This article offers relevant research on the difficulties in implementing IM and the following tensions: (1) situating the IB curriculum; (2) with hegemonic privilege and (3) in high-stakes testing.FindingsIM can be integrated into the history curriculum to make the history curriculum relevant for the global community. While each interviewee enjoys teaching in the IB program and believes the IB history curriculum offers opportunity for IM, they also feel the history curriculum would benefit from modification. Each interviewee's points of view bring a relevancy and an authenticity for why tensions exist when teaching IB diploma history.Originality/valueThere is a gap of research in how and to what extent teachers implement IM into the IB high school history curriculum. Further, teachers' views regarding the IB history curriculum and whether the history curriculum facilitates one's teaching IM is largely anecdotal. Thus, this study is unique in its offering three interviews by IB high school history teachers on IM and the tensions they feel when teaching about and attempting to implement IM.

Why state reading tests are poor benchmarks of student success

At the end of each school year, starting in third grade, students are administered standardized assessments of reading achievement. In most contexts, these assessments have become benchmarks for student success. In this article, I argue that while these tests are commonplace, they are unfair assessments for students, teachers, and schools. An alternative approach involving curriculum-based assessment has been introduced to address the inadequacies of current high-stakes testing of reading. I highlight this approach to reading assessment and conclude that it is more appropriate and equitable for students, teachers, and schools.