ERIC Number: EJ1039770
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014-Jul
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1746-1979
EISSN: N/A
High-Stakes Educational Testing and Democracy--Antagonistic or Symbiotic Relationship?
Ydesen, Christian
Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, v9 n2 p97-113 Jul 2014
This article argues that high-stakes educational testing, along with the attendant questions of power, education access, education management and social selection, cannot be considered in isolation from society at large. Thus, high-stakes testing practices bear numerous implications for democratic conditions in society. For decades, advocates of high-stakes educational testing have argued that testing would result in meritocracy, ensuring that everyone would be afforded the same opportunities to find success in adulthood. Examined from a critical perspective, however, we learn that testing is also extremely well designed as a bulwark against opposing or alternative outlooks and opinions, because testing is a complex tool requiring highly specialised knowledge to administer effectively. This article sets out to investigate the relation between high-stakes educational testing and democracy drawn from the experiences of 20th-century high-stakes educational testing practices in the Danish history of education. Among other things, the article concludes that a combination of different evaluation technologies--some formative and some summative--might be the safest way to go from a democratic perspective.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, High Stakes Tests, Democracy, Correlation, Educational History, Educational Assessment, Case Studies, Intelligence Quotient, Intelligence Tests, School Readiness, Accountability, Disclosure, Educational Administration, Governance, Parents, Schools, Teachers, Educational Attitudes
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Denmark; Greenland
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A