"With all of the emphasis on accountability and testing in our schools, too many of us have forgotten to ask what the real effects of such movements actually are. Leaving Children Behind is a powerful analysis of why such questions must be asked by anyone who cares about the relationship between current school reforms and the production of inequalities." - Michael W. Apple "U.S. schools have been engaged in a gigantic effort to impose Texas-style test-driven reform on all U.S. schools. This book reports things are very different than they seem in Texas and helps explain the major problems in implementing President Bush's No Child Left Behind law. The richness of the contributions by major Latino scholars to this analysis should help us understand the tremendous need to diversify our faculties if we are to understand our changing society and its schools." - Gary Orfield"

Argues for a more valid and democratic approach to assessment and accountability.

The federal government has based much of its education policies on those adopted in Texas. This book examines how "Texas-style" accountability-the notion that decisions governing retention, promotion, and graduation should be based on a single test score-fails Latina/o youth and their communities. The contributors, many of them from Texas, scrutinize state policies concerning high-stakes testing and provide new data that demonstrate how Texas' current system of testing results in a plethora of new inequalities. They argue that Texas policies exacerbate historic inequities, fail to accommodate the needs and abilities of English language learners, and that the dramatic educational improvement attributed to Texas' system of accountability is itself questionable. The book proposes a more valid and democratic approach to assessment and accountability that would combine standardized examinations with multiple sources of information about a student's academic performance.

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1. Introduction: The Accountability Debate in Texas: Continuing the Conversation
Angela Valenzuela


2. Performance-Based School Reforms and the Federal Role in Helping Schools That Serve Language-Minority Students
Jorge Ruiz de Velasco


3. Faking Equity: High-Stakes Testing and the Education of Latino Youth
Linda McSpadden McNeil


4. Texas' Second Wave of High-Stakes Testing: Anti-Social Promotion Legislation, Grade Retention, and Adverse Impact on Minorities
Richard R. Valencia and Bruno J. Villarreal


5. Playing to the Logic of the Texas Accountability System: How Focusing on "Ratings"—Not Children—Undermines Quality and Equity
Kris Sloan


6. Standardized or Sterilized? Differing Perspectives on the Effects of High-Stakes Testing in West Texas
Elaine Hampton


7. California's English-Only Policies: An Analysis of Initial Effects
Laura Alamillo, Deborah Palmer, Celia Viramontes, and Eugene E. García


8. The Centurion: Standards and High-Stakes Testing as Gatekeepers for Bilingual Teacher Candidates in the New Century
Belinda Bustos Flores and Ellen Riojas Clark


9. High-Stakes Testing and Educational Accountability as Social Constructions Across Cultures
Raymond V. Padilla


10. Accountability and the Privatization Agenda
Angela Valenzuela


About the Contributors


Index

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Argues for a more valid and democratic approach to assessment and accountability.

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780791462409
Publisert
2004-11-18
Utgiver
State University of New York Press; State University of New York Press
Vekt
454 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
UU, UP, P, 05, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
322

Redaktør

Om bidragsyterne

Angela Valenzuela is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.