ABSTRACT
The primary goal of the standards movement is for all children to learn challenging content, and standards advocates recognize that teachers must be encouraged to teach in ways that are consistent with this goal. States have traditionally used a variety of sanctions and rewards for these twin purposes-improving learning and teaching-but in recent years testing has become an essential ingredient, if not the centerpiece of accountability. Opponents of greatly expanded testing programs worry that in the process of preparing children for assessments, teaching will become more repetitive and, ironically, less challenging. However, if tests scores reflect the unequal conditions of education more than teaching, all of these concerns may be ultimately misplaced. There is a long history of research going back to the first Coleman Report (Coleman, Campbell, Hobson, McPartland, & Mood, 1966) but continuing to the present day (Heubert & Hauser, 1998), suggesting that test scores reflect differences in family background, and “opportunity to learn” (McDonnell, 1995). State accountability systems, to be effective, must address both of these issues.
