Raising the stakes: high-stakes testing and the attack on public education in New York

Beginning in the 1980s, several states in the USA, most notably Texas (Haney 2000) and Florida (Amrein and Berliner 2002), began to administer to students not just standardized tests but high-stakes tests, tests that could prevent students, no matter how well they performed in their courses, from graduating from secondary school or advancing to a higher grade in primary school. In the 1990s, New York State similarly moved to high-stakes testing, as the New York State Board of Regents and the Commissioner of Education began the process of making graduation from secondary school contingent on passing five statewide standardized exams, one each in English, science, math, global studies and United States history.