The Assessment Industrial Complex: Reframing What It Means to Say a School Is Doing Well

• In Event: Assessment, Perception, and Education: An Eisnerian Lens

Abstract

In this paper we present a critical analysis of the Assessment Industrial Complex (AIC) utilizing Eisner’s (1988) framework of an “ecology of school improvement.” Conversely, we demonstrate that assessments in general, and high-stakes testing data in particular, anchor the AIC; all things education are tethered to “the test.” This dynamic is a consequence of amalgamation of political and corporate actors that form the AIC. This symposia exposes how the actors within the AIC employ rhetoric to control education outcomes and reinforce neoliberal worldviews. We focus on the rhetoric of the AIC to expose how Edreformers utilize language to normalize and legitimize the value of tests and the data extracted from them.

Authors

• Michelle Tenam-Zemach, Nova Southeastern University

• Daniel R. Conn, Minot State University

• Derek Gottlieb, University of Northern Colorado

• Paul Thomas Parkison, University of North Florida