High-Stakes Testing and Discursive Control: The Triple Bind for Non-Standard Student Identities

Abstract

The effects of high-stakes, standardized testing on the curriculum are discouraging the teaching of multicultural, anti-racist content. Test-influenced educational environments contribute to the reproduction of racial and cultural inequality in education. Using the lens of sociolinguistics, the author asserts that high-stakes, standardized tests ultimately exert a level of control over identities considered legitimate or illegitimate in classroom discourse.

Notes

¹While I am opposed to using the term “minority” to refer to non-white people or people of color, I use it here, in quotes, because that is the term that the researchers use in the two reports referred to in the text.