On the Front Lines of Testing the Reader and Reading to the Test: Revisiting How Assessment Battles Serve the Reading Wars

• In Event: Reading Research

Abstract

The paper aims to revisit the “reading wars” (Pearson, 2004) referring to a dialectic between phonics and whole-language as main methods of reading instruction. Our work focuses on the intersection of the “curricular” (with a special focus on tasks/items and tests) and “political” (standardized testing serving accountability purposes gaining foothold) grounds of the war (Pearson, 2004). We make an attempt to reframe the phenomenon through the lenses of the educational Testing Standards (2014) and the NRC assessment framework (2001). We argue that the reading wars shifted from instruction to assessment, and that a focus on the underlying logic of assessment better explains “who wins” the reading battles and why and how one side holds an advantage through technical means.

Authors

• Agnes Hodi, University of Szeged

• Brent Duckor, San José State University