From Leaving CertiFiCate to Leaving SChooL a Longitudinal Study ...

Introduction 5
1.2.1 High Stakes Testing
High stakes tests are standardised examinations, the results of which have
significant consequences for schools and/or students. The effect of high
stakes tests on teaching, learning and student outcomes has been the centre
of much recent debate in educational research. In ‘high stakes for school’
systems, how students within a school fare in national tests or other assessments
has consequences for school funding and even the prospect of
intervention in the running of the school (Ryan and Weinstein, 2009). In
England, the Education Reform Act of 1988 led to regular testing with
target levels of attainment set for the end of each key stage of the national
curriculum. Since 1992, national school league tables have been published,
ranking schools on the basis of student performance in tests taken at age
11 and public exams taken at 16 and 18 (West, 2010). With the advent of
formal accountability systems in the United States in the 1990s, policy
makers embraced a new, more potent vision for the role of assessment.
Test programmes began providing incentives and/or sanctions for individual
students (e.g. in terms of allowing graduation) and for schools (e.g.
cash rewards) on the basis of test scores (Stecher, 2002; Perna and Thomas,
2008). The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) put the use of accountability
systems based on student test performance into US federal
law. Originally NCLB mandated that all students be tested in grades 3 to 8
and once in high school in reading and maths, with future provisions that
students be tested at least once in elementary, middle, and high school levels
in science. If student test scores do not meet the ‘Adequate Yearly Progress’
(AYP) in subgroups related to race, economic class, special education,
and English language proficiency, among others, schools face sanctions
such as the loss of federal funding or the diversion of federal monies
to pay for private tutoring, transportation costs and other ‘supplementary
services’. Under NCLB, students in all subgroups are also expected to be
testing at 100 per cent proficiency by the year 2014 or face the above mentioned
sanctions (US Department of Education, 2002). Thus, high stakes
testing has become the policy tool for enforcing educational reform in the
United States (Au, 2010).
Exams may also have high stakes for students, even where they are
not linked to formal accountability for schools. The courses taken and
grades received in national tests can often have important consequences