Teacher Autonomy: A Multifaceted Approach for the New Millennium ...

For example, one teacher told his students that he would delay beginning a novel because he had to prepare them for the upcoming state test (Rex & Nelson, 2004). From my experience, this separation of test preparation from the “regular curriculum” is not unusual. Because of its assigned secondary status, test preparation is often treated as a separate entity entirely unrelated to the curriculum rather than seamlessly integrated into the curriculum.

Rex and Nelson (2004) painted a clear picture of the power of teachers’ personal beliefs to dictate what was taught and what was given priority in the classroom. Let us contrast this with research by Smith (1991) on the effects of external testing on teachers. Smith contended that external accountability in the form of testing affected teachers in three ways. First, Smith found that teachers feared losing autonomy and control over both curriculum and their work lives. Second, they feared that in spending so much time preparing students for tests, they lost the ability to personalize instruction and meet the individual needs of students. Finally, teachers who resisted pressure to boost test scores felt threatened with a loss of autonomy and were constantly defending their programs. Unlike Rex and Nelson (2004), Smith (1991) showed a much different picture of how teachers perceived the effects of external accountability on their autonomy. While the former focused on professional identity and discussed how teachers often separate and relegate test preparation to secondary status (almost in defiance), the latter painted a bleaker picture of fear—fear of losing autonomy due to students’ poor test performance and fear of being unable to serve individual students in the most effective way possible.

In a survey study of 193 primary and secondary teachers (102 teachers in grades 7–12 and 91 teachers in grades K–6) in a suburban northwest Ohio school district, Kubow and DeBard (2000) made an effort to represent teachers’ perspectives on proficiency testing.