Test-based accountability, standardized testing and minority/racialized students’ perspectives in urban schools in Canada and Australia

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the perspectives of minority/racialized students in urban high schools. It is based on findings of interviews with 85 students in six secondary schools in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada, and in Melbourne, Australia, during 2016–2019. While there has been increasing attention to closing the racial achievement gap and some minority students’ underachievement in education, there are limited studies that centre the voices of students and their experiences with provincial and nationally mandated testing. This paper is not an investigation into minority students’ achievement; rather it seeks to understand how minority students perceive and experience this new form of test-based accountability. Grounding the analysis within theories of policy sociology and neoliberal accountability, this paper concludes that current policies of standardized testing have catalysed further inequities and segregation of students based on their ‘race’ and social class.

KEYWORDS:

• Standardized testing
• test-based accountability
• education policy
• minority/racialized students
• school choice

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Accountability and the impact of standardized testing on equity education and the achievement of minority students in Canadian and Australian schools, award no. 435-2014-1014]. We are also grateful to Wayne Martino and Fazal Rizvi, our co-investigators for interviewing students in Toronto and Melbourne. Thanks to research assistants who supported us in the data analysis process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) are prestigious programmes which are designed for students aspiring to go to high ranking universities. These programmes are sometimes intended to provide incentives for increasing enrolment in poor performing schools, particularly those at risk of closure.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Accountability and the impact of standardized testing on equity education and the achievement of minority students in Canadian and Australian schools, award no. 435-2014-1014].