Testing at the Tipping Point: HSST as a Governing Education Principle In and Out of the Classroom

Abstract

At a recent academic conference a senior Canadian scholar who has worked closely with Ontario’s standardized testing body (the Education Quality and Accountability Office, EQAO) argued there were no high-stakes tests in Canada. While he was wrong (there are a few such tests, including the pass/fail literacy test in Ontario, which is a graduation requirement) it is easy to see what he meant. As discussed in the previous chapters, Canadian and US schools rarely use tests to decide whether or not a student can graduate, and when they do, there is often a great deal of support to help students reach the finish line. Increasingly, US colleges and universities are looking beyond standardized tests such as the SATs to assess applicants more holistically. The SAT Optional Movement has emerged, in part, as a result of persistent critiques from scholars citing persistent socioeconomic gaps in SAT results, suggesting a bias in favor of middle- and upper-middle-class white test takers.1 In Canada, colleges and universities evaluate the grades and relevant experiences of applicants to many undergraduate programs, and pass/fail examinations at the end of high school are largely a thing of the past. While there is specialized testing for hopeful medical and law school students—the Medical College Application Test (MCAT) and Law School Admission Test (LSAT), respectively—these are required specifically for specialized professional degrees.