The Education Policy Analysis Archive has posted a report entitled Will Standards-Based Reform Increase Cultural Capital Among Low-Income and Minority Students?. The report concludes that
these policies seemed to have had deleterious effects on curriculum, instruction, the percentage of students excluded from the tests, and student dropout rates. As a result, the policies seemed to have had mixed effects on students’ opportunities to acquire embodied and institutionalized cultural capital.
The report's abstract appears below, and the full text of the report is available here.
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Will Standards-Based Reform Increase Cultural Capital Among Low-Income and Minority Students?
Won-Pyo Hong, Peter Youngs
Abstract
This
article draws on research from Texas and Chicago to examine whether
high-stakes testing enables low-income and racial minority students to
acquire cultural capital. While students’ performance on state or
district tests rose after the implementation of high-stakes testing and
accountability policies in Texas and Chicago in the 1990s, several
studies indicate that these policies seemed to have had deleterious
effects on curriculum, instruction, the percentage of students excluded
from the tests, and student dropout rates. As a result, the policies
seemed to have had mixed effects on students’ opportunities to acquire
embodied and institutionalized cultural capital. These findings are
consistent with the work of Shepard (2000), Darling-Hammond (2004a),
and others who have written of the likely negative repercussions of
high-stakes testing and accountability policies.
Full Text: PDF
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