Standardized Testing and School Segregation: Like Tinder for Fire?

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: The Complexity and Multiple Spaces of Social Justice in Action

Abstract

In this study we review research on the positive and negative aspects of how desegregation plans were carried out following the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, and the de facto re-segregation that followed the dismantling of many desegregation plans, along with the increase of school choice plans. We analyze these effects in light of the ways that high-stakes standardized testing has grown in importance and intensity in U.S. education policy and practice, especially during the recent period of school re-segregation. Based on the evidence we argue that the intrinsic features of high-stakes testing, combined with current systems of school choice, function as mechanisms used for racial coding that facilitate segregation and compound inequalities found in schools.

Authors

• Matthew Knoester, University of Evansville

• Wayne Au, University of Washington - Bothell