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In high-stakes accountability at the elementary and middle school level, schools are the principal objects of sanctions. But in high school, high stakes are also aimed at students. State accountability policies are moving to make diplomas contingent on externally set exams, or on demonstrated competencies in externally set performance reviews (Goertz and Duffy 2001). As an English teacher in New York reminded us, when scoring a high stakes test, “You're looking at a paper; that's a human being. That's a kid reading or trying his best to get through state requirements.” Ironically, in a system theoretically designed to benefit students, high school students may be the only people held directly accountable as individuals for achievement scores.
That also makes the stakes higher for accountability systems. Whereas states and districts may be willing to embrace the idea of ending social promotion, or of remanding students to summer schools, the actual denial of a diploma is a consequence of a different kind, with political and legal implications, as well as financial and logistical ones (see Heubert 2003; Fuhrman, Goertz, and Duffy 2003). Teachers we interviewed in our study made a sharp distinction between standards, which they applaud, and the standardized high-stakes tests they deplore. Positive statements about raising standards were often followed with a pause, or a “but”-and a prediction of negative consequences, of rising failure rates, and increasing numbers of dropouts. Here practitioners depart from the sentiments and expectations of the policymakers, for they are much more worried that there will be what one calls “a lost generation”-students who have not been prepared to meet the standards but will not be able to graduate without passing the tests. That pessimism, reported one New York teacher in the first year of the test, was widespread: “The general feeling among teachers is, this is going to be our last graduating class of any sizeable proportion, that next year it's going to be really bad.” State policymakers are caught in a dilemma around how high to set the bar for high school standards: if too many students fail, they risk a “lost generation” and a loss of public support; if too many pass, they risk not being taken seriously. The risk of high stakes and bars set too high seems more likely as many states introduced their new tests to low passing rates. In state after state, despite variation in policy particulars and in particular tests, results consistently pointed to high schools, especially urban high schools, as an ongoing site of crisis-the weakest link. More than half of California's high school students failed in their first round of testing; in Arizona, only twelve percent passed the 1999 math test. When Massachusetts first administered its new MCAS exams, only twenty-seven percent of Boston's tenth graders passed the English section, and sixteen percent the math. Such numbers are numbing for any level of schooling, but when nearly insurmountable bars are set at the endpoint of the high school, violence enters the vocabulary of policy. New York's Commissioner for Education, for example, acknowledged that under the newly reformed Regents policy, which he proudly proclaimed one of the hardest tests of any state, there would be “casualties.” Lorrie Shepard, an authority on assessment, compared high-stakes testing to “Darth Vader and the Death Star” (Jehlen 2001). Across these state policies, where graduation becomes dependent on meeting the standard, and meeting the standard becomes equated with passing a particular test, high casualty counts indeed seemed likely. Faced with low scores, and with stakes so high for students and for the system, high school exit testing seems to have retreated somewhat in the past two years. Federal legislation continued to press for increasing accountability and more tests-but in 2001 specified annual testing only from third to eighth grade. Several states, while not quite silenced on high school accountability, moved to soften the pressure, to delay deadlines, or to narrow the scope of their testing systems. While twenty-four states had made passing a test a graduation requirement, many had created what were, in effect, time-release systems-where students would take the tests now, but not feel the full effects till later. (see Fuhrman, Goertz, and Duffy 2003, for more on states' responses). A likely scenario for high school exit exams may be what we observe in Texas. As Carnoy, Loeb, and Smith report in their essay in this volume, the TAAS tenth grade high school exit exam has not had a significant negative effect on graduation rates since its introduction in the early 1990s. The state seems to have set the difficulty of the test or, alternatively, graded the test, in a way that satisfies the demands of those who want greater accountability, but that does not create political problems by pushing even more low-income whites, blacks, and Latinos out of high school. Indeed, more recently, graduation rates have been rising, especially for black students, but also more gradually for whites and Latinos. Although the exit test may not have been the cause of this increase, Texas officials could claim that, contrary what critics claimed and what teachers and the public feared, a “moderate-level” test eventually contributed positively to high school survival and graduation rates. If the Texas model prevails, it is likely that “standards, ” at least as reflected in that high-stakes high school test, will not compromise the expectations of parents that almost all students who do their work regularly should pass their courses and graduate with their class.
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