The Education Revolution Will Not Be Standardized: The "Moral Imperative" of Testing Refusal

• In Event: Inside Educational Activism and Organizing: Insurgent Insights on the Advancing Endgame Revolt in U.S. Education

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the recent history of the testing refusal movement, which has been growing in recent years (McDermott, et al, 2015) and suggests that academia and activism both embody broader spaces beyond the hegemonic paradigm, which embeds existing systems of power within education policy. We make an argument that policy and practice will not be transformed within the existing socio-political structures and that a large part of the work will rely on dismantling deeply embedded invisible ideologies which have shaped cultural assumption through the mainstream media and formal higher education. The authors of this paper suggest that we must relinquish a reliance on a paradigm that was constructed by racists, positivists, elitists, and social engineers. It requires, “abandoning the vocabulary of the ‘rational’ technocrats who rule” (Hedges, 2015, p. 70). In other words, standardized testing “presents itself as the solution to the problem it perpetuates” (Hedges, 2015, p. 68). As such we pose questions to our audience that engage in questions around power, legitimacy, authority, and democracy. What are the roles of test-related state and federal policies? How does a test-focused education system disrupt or perpetuate systemic oppression in the United States? And finally we will connect the issues around education policy within the United States with global neoliberal political and economic interests of which education plays a significant role.

Author

• Morna M. Mcdermott, Towson University