When Tests Have Too Much Power: High-Stakes Testing

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When Tests Have Too Much Power: High-Stakes Testing

Educational Psychology · Chapter 8: Assessment, Testing, and Making Sense of ResultsSection 8.10 · lesson 79 of 1009 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

High-stakes testing, NCLB and ESSA, and what consequences do to behavior.

  • Define high-stakes testing by consequence magnitude
  • Describe NCLB, AYP and the ESSA reauthorization
  • Explain Campbell's Law and its application
  • Balance accountability against educational breadth

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,117 words). Read along, or search it.

Assessment, Testing, and Making Sense of Results

When Tests Have Too Much Power

A test does not become high-stakes because of how it is written. It becomes high-stakes because of what gets attached to the result. That distinction organizes this entire section. We start by defining high-stakes testing properly. Then Campbell's Law, which predicts what happens next. Then two pieces of federal legislation. NCLB, and then ESSA. Then the documented consequences for students and teachers. And finally what a balanced accountability system looks like. One warning as we go through this. Nothing here argues that accountability itself is wrong. The argument is about how much weight one number can carry.

Definition

Stakes Are About Consequences, Not Format

High-stakes testing means using results to make consequential decisions. Significant decisions about students, teachers, schools or districts. Decisions where the outcomes carry major rewards or sanctions. Consider what pushes a test into that category. A single score determining whether a student is promoted. Or whether a student graduates at all. Or whether a school is publicly labeled as failing. Or whether a teacher receives a merit bonus. In each case, the defining characteristic is consequence magnitude. Which means stakes are not a property of the instrument. The same test, with nothing attached, is not high-stakes at all.

The Pressure

What Stakes Do to Everyone Involved

High-stakes environments create intense pressure on everyone involved. Pressure to perform well, on all participants. And that pressure sometimes compromises education itself. Its integrity, and its purpose. There is a principle that predicts this, called Campbell's Law. The more any quantitative social indicator is used for decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures. And the more apt it will be to distort the social processes that it was originally intended to monitor. Now notice what that law does not claim. It does not say that the people involved are dishonest. It says measurement under pressure reshapes what is measured.

AERA

The Anti-Single-Test Standard

The American Educational Research Association has a position on this. Its statement on high-stakes testing carries one central caution. No single test score should be the sole determinant of a consequential decision. That is sometimes called the anti-single-test standard. Three measurement realities sit behind it. First, all assessments contain error. Error is a property of measurement, not a flaw in a particular test. Second, performance on a given day is influenced by many factors. Factors that have nothing to do with learning. Third, the validity of a test is established for specific purposes. Not for every consequential decision somebody might imagine. When tests are used beyond their validated purposes, decisions suffer.

NCLB 2001

The Law That Raised the Stakes

The No Child Left Behind Act arrived in two thousand one. It dramatically elevated the stakes of standardized testing. It required annual testing in grades three through eight. And once in high school. It required results to be disaggregated by subgroup. That requirement did genuine good, and it is worth acknowledging. And it imposed increasingly severe sanctions on some schools. Specifically, those failing to demonstrate Adequate Yearly Progress. Progress toward one hundred percent proficiency. That was the destination written into the law itself. Every student proficient, with a deadline attached.

The Sanctions

What Missing AYP Actually Meant

So what did missing those targets actually mean for a school? Schools that repeatedly missed AYP faced restructuring. Or conversion to charter schools. Or reconstitution, which replaces the staff. Those consequences placed immense pressure on educators and schools. Then comes the number that effectively ended the policy. By twenty fourteen, the share of schools labeled failing under AYP had grown to over forty percent. That prompted widespread calls for reform. It is worth sitting with what that figure means. When a system labels more than forty percent of schools as failing, the label has stopped carrying any information at all.

ESSA 2015

Authority Returns to the States

The Every Student Succeeds Act arrived in twenty fifteen. It reauthorized federal education law. And it shifted more authority to the states. States now design their own accountability systems. Some things stayed exactly the same under ESSA. States must still test students annually. And they must still report disaggregated results. But states gained real flexibility in how they weigh those scores. They can count other indicators alongside them. Graduation rates, chronic absenteeism, and school quality. ESSA also created space for performance assessment pilots. It reduced some of the most extreme pressures of NCLB. But high-stakes testing remains a prominent feature of American education.

Consequences

What Research Documents

Research documents several unintended consequences of all this. First, student anxiety increases significantly before high-stakes exams. And it increases particularly for some students. Those from minority and low-income backgrounds. They face additional stereotype threat on top of the ordinary pressure. Second, teachers in high-stakes contexts report narrowing their curricula. They focus on tested content, and something has to give. Less time for the arts, and for physical education. Less time for project-based learning and social-emotional development. Third, some studies document increased score manipulation. That is test preparation crossing into coaching on specific items. Which directly undermines the validity of the score interpretations.

Five Stakes

Consequence, Level, and Concern

Five kinds of consequence, each with its own concern. Grade retention, where a student fails a grade based on a test. High stakes, with stigma, and mixed research on any benefit. Graduation requirements, where a student cannot graduate without passing. Those are very high stakes, with increased dropout risk. School sanctions under AYP, where a school is labeled failing. The concerns there are staff morale, and neighborhood instability. Teacher evaluation, linking bonuses or termination to scores. That invites teaching to the test, and gaming the measure. And college admissions, with the SAT or ACT as gatekeeper. The concerns are access inequity, and the test-prep industry itself.

Classroom Example

Three Weeks That Cost a Year

Here is Campbell's Law playing out in one classroom. A state has a high-stakes graduation exam. Three weeks before the test, a principal makes a decision. All teachers must halt regular instruction. And conduct full-time test preparation instead. A tenth-grade English teacher finds herself teaching test-taking strategies. Rather than literature analysis, which is her actual subject. Her students' scores improve. That part is real. But she reflects afterward on what that year cost. Her students read fewer complete texts, and wrote fewer essays. And they had fewer genuine literary discussions than in any previous year. The indicator went up. The thing it was meant to represent went down.

Balance

Accountability Without the Perverse Incentive

So what is the alternative? Not abandoning accountability. Accountability data are necessary for identifying inequity. And for driving genuine improvement. The problem is systems placing all the weight on a single test. Those create perverse incentives that harm education quality. The alternative is accountability using multiple measures. Growth data, graduation rates, and chronic absenteeism. And school climate surveys, alongside test scores. Alongside them, rather than instead of them. For an individual teacher, there is one practical test. Is test preparation embedded in rich, meaningful instruction? Or is it replacing that instruction? The difference between embedded and replacing is the whole argument.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About When Tests Have Too Much Power: High-Stakes Testing

What makes a test high-stakes?
A test is high-stakes when its results are used to make consequential decisions about students, teachers, schools or districts, such as promotion, graduation, labeling a school as failing, or awarding a teacher a merit bonus. The defining feature is the size of the consequence, not the test's format. The same test with nothing attached to the result is not high-stakes.
What is Campbell's Law?
Campbell's Law states that the more a quantitative social indicator is used for decision-making, the more it is subject to corruption pressures and the more it distorts the processes it was meant to monitor. In schools, heavy weight on test scores can lead to weeks of test prep replacing real instruction, so scores rise while the learning they represent shrinks. It describes pressure, not dishonest people.
How did ESSA change No Child Left Behind?
The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 reauthorized federal education law and shifted accountability authority to the states. Under NCLB (2001), schools faced escalating sanctions for missing Adequate Yearly Progress toward 100 percent proficiency, and by 2014 over 40 percent of schools were labeled failing. ESSA kept annual testing and disaggregated reporting but let states weigh other indicators such as graduation rates and chronic absenteeism.
What are the negative effects of high-stakes testing?
Research links high-stakes testing to higher student anxiety, narrower curricula and some score manipulation. Anxiety rises especially for students from minority and low-income backgrounds, who may also face stereotype threat. Teachers report cutting time for the arts, physical education and project-based learning, and test preparation can cross into coaching on specific items, which undermines the validity of the scores.

About the Educational Psychology course

How many college credits is Educational Psychology?
Educational Psychology (Psychology 120) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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