| Chapter 1: | Story of the Research |
|
|
Are objective tests sufficient to assess the depth of thinking required by the standards? Hargrove, Walker, Huber, Corrigan, and Moore (2004) argued that this incongruity between what the standards require and what was actually tested led to more teachers becoming frustrated and actually leaving the profession. According to Hargrove et al., teachers also felt that under the dictates of external accountability, many important concepts go untaught simply because they are untested. Because teachers felt that important concepts go untaught, they became torn between doing what they felt was right and what they knew was tested. This conflict resulting from the lack of freedom to teach the concepts they felt were important led to teacher frustration.
As external forces such as NCLB require all students to meet minimum proficiency standards as defined by each state, school districts are scrambling to meet adequate yearly progress (AYP). As a result, many districts and schools are implementing organization-wide or building-wide changes that affect teachers’ practice.
Sipple et al. (2004) also studied teachers’ responses to high-stakes testing programs. The authors interviewed 133 educators in 95 different interview sessions across five different communities. They found that the most common coded response to the question “What is the most important issue facing your district today and in the coming years?” was “state standards, assessment, and curriculum” (pp. 153–154). In fact, 44% of all responses fell into this category, with standards mentioned twice as often as any other response. Sipple et al. found that there was a great deal to be learned about individual teacher responses to testing environments within the context of this research.