ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I describe my efforts to develop strategies to help pre-service teachers maintain high-quality, equitable classroom instruction in the face of the pressures related to high-stakes testing. Specifically, I describe my efforts to develop in pre-service teachers a culturally relevant assessment literacy (CRAL) that better equips them to face the challenges of the current context posed by the expanded uses of high-stakes testing. The importance of such work is magnified given a review of the available teacher education literature. It seems clear that teacher education programs are not adequately preparing pre-service teachers for the realities and rigors, both personally and professionally, of teaching in an era of intensified test-centric accountability. Given that high-stakes testing has increased in importance, not properly preparing teachers to deal with the rigors and intricacies of standardized assessment and the resulting assessment data is, as Popham (2004) ominously warns, a prescription not only for failure, but for professional suicide for teachers.
