Joseph (Hispanic U4): "/I was/ worried cause if I don't, if I fail again cause I did third grade, cause in 3rd grade... my teacher said 'some of you aren't going to pass into 4th grade,' and I didn't... cause if I fail then I have to go to summer school. And I don't want to go to summer school again."

Sandra Mathison

The High Stakes Testing Threat to Fair, Democratic Evaluation in Education

“Recent years have seen an increased reliance on high stakes testing (the use of tests to make critical decisions about students, teachers, and schools). Often, the rationale for increased testing is to help policy makers shape policies and educators to create practices to insure the academic success of all students. However, HSTing often leads to educationally unjust consequences and unsound practices, even though it occasionally upgrades teaching and learning conditions in some classrooms and schools. The most worrisome consequences are increased drop out rates, educator deprofessionalization, loss of curricular integrity, cultural insensitivity, and allocation of scarce resources to testing rather than other educational initiatives.”

Mathison’s research focuses broadly on fair and democratic evaluation of educational programs, evaluations that consider local context and values, the use of multiple indicators of quality, and that involve diverse and often disenfranchised stakeholders. Her current work focuses specifically on the impact of high stakes testing in schools because this is a practice that directly challenges the conduct of fair, democratic evaluation.

Several case studies and publications illustrating the impact of HSTing completed by Mathison and her research team can be found at http://www.crsep.org/HighStakesTesting.htm,
and the American Evaluation Association Statement on HSTing can be found at
http://www.eval.org/hst3.htm.