Public schools in the U.S. today are educating more students from language and racial/ethnic minority backgrounds and from lower socioeconomic groups. Schools, however, have a long history of providing inequitable educational opportunities that disadvantage low income students and students of color who are increasingly segregated in under-funded schools. Highstakes, standardized tests have long been a part of Texas education policy even though decades of research show this testing to be a deeply flawed policy that further exacerbates already existing educational inequalities and disadvantages minoritized students. This article contributes to this body of scholarship by offering an overview of findings from an ethnographic study examining how emergent bilingual students experience high-stakes accountability in a public high school in El Paso, Texas. The article concludes by looking to the role that teacher educators and educator preparation programs can play developing agency among in- and preservice teachers to reduce the dominance of the testing system and test-centric instruction in Texas public schools.