What's Really at Stake with High-Stakes Testing?

Abstract

High-stakes testing has the potential to make significant differences in the lives of children and adults across a variety of educational settings. Decisions related to high-stakes testing can affect individuals and systems at the local, regional, state, and national levels (Ysseldyke et al., 2004). Advocates of high-stakes testing hope test scores will prompt schools and organizations to reform policy, encourage teachers to adopt more effective practices, and motivate students to work harder based on the school's accountability report (Stecher, 2002). However, some studies indicate that high-stakes testing can have negative as well as positive consequences and that these consequences sometimes result in different experiences for females and minorities. In this article, we define high-stakes tests, describe both positive and negative consequences of these assessments as they relate to females and minorities, discuss reasons for performance differences among diverse groups, and share cautions regarding uses of high-stakes tests.