Using Standards and High-Stakes Testing for Students: Exploiting Power with Critical Pedagogy (Counterpoints)

This book has received the AESA (American Educational Studies Association) Critics Choice Award 2012.
This book overturns the typical conception of standards, empowering educators by providing concrete examples of how top-down models of assessment can be embraced and used in ways that are consistent with critical pedagogies. Although standards, as broad frameworks for setting learning targets, are not necessarily problematic, when they are operationalized as high-stakes assessments, test-based pedagogies emerge and frequently dominate the curriculum, leaving little room for critical pedagogies. In addition, critics maintain that high-stakes assessments perpetuate current class structures by maintaining skill gaps and controlling ideology, particularly beliefs in individualism, meritocracy, and what counts as knowledge. This book offers readers a deepened awareness of how educators can alleviate the effects of standardization, especially for students in poor and working-class communities. As teachers negotiate their roles in this time of increasing regulation and standardization, it is essential to maintain and model a critical stance toward curriculum and instruction. Educators know why this approach is vital: This book illustrates how to make it happen.

Julie A. Gorlewski is Assistant Professor of Secondary Education at the State University of New York at New Paltz. She earned a PhD in social foundations of education from the University of New York at Buffalo. She edits the column «Research for the Classroom» in English Journal, has published numerous articles and chapters, and recently authored Power, Resistance, and Literacy: Writing for Social Justice, the recipient of the American Educational Studies Association’s Critics’ Choice Award in 2011.
Brad J. Porfilio is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Lewis University. He earned a PhD in social foundations of education from the University of New York at Buffalo. He has published numerous articles, chapters, and edited volumes. His co-edited book The Destructive Path of Neoliberalism was the recipient of the American Educational Studies Association’s Critics’ Choice Award in 2010.
David A. Gorlewski is Assistant Professor in the School of Education at D’Youville College in Buffalo, New York, where he teaches a course in curriculum issues and curriculum planning. He earned an Ed.D. in educational policy and leadership from the University of New York at Buffalo. His work has appeared in English Journal and in Excelsior, a publication of the New York Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.