High-stakes testing is believed to have improved the quality of American education through its systems of rewards and sanctions that are triggered by a student’s standardized test score (Nichols, Glass, & Berliner, 2006).The theory behind this new outlook is that educators and their students will work harder and more effectively to enhance student learning when faced with large incentives and threatening punishments. Many critics fear that the effects of high stakes testing not only will threaten the validity of test scores, but it may also lead to perverse and corrupt educational practices. Others worry that the pressure of doing well on a test will negotiate how instructional practices are implemented in the classroom as well as permit teachers from caring for their students’ needs that are separate from how they will score on these standardized tests. Therefore, it is hypothesized that the pressure of high-stakes testing has a negative impact on student test scores.
History of High Stakes Testing
Since the signing of No Child Left Behind student test scores have become a vital sign of how well a school is achieving. Test scores today are used to evaluate programs and allocate educational resources accordingly depending upon the performance of the students. …show more content…
In many articles, researchers have found that the study, design, and administration of the tests have rejected the value of the tests when they become a policy. For example one researcher believed that educational tests are less accurate than most parents believe and that assessment systems are only useful to monitor the performance of student when the name “high-stakes” isn’t attached to the test, otherwise the test itself loses it dependability and credibility (Mitchell,