Examining the Myth of Accountability, High-Stakes Testing, and the Achievement Gap

In this article we outline how notions of accountability and the achievement gap have relied upon the massive expansion of high-stakes exams in our nation’s schools. Texas-style test and punish accountability manifested in various ways within schools and school culture across the nation via NCLB, which undermined notions of trust within education. More than decade of national education policy focused on high-stakes testing and accountability—despite that the fact that the rise of high-stakes testing also involved considerable legal, ethical, and social considerations. We argue the practice of spending large amounts of time on test preparation and test taking must be reversed lest we continue on the path of maintaining schools solely as machinery for stratification. We conclude that market- and business-oriented ideology, has reinforced the racist under- and overtones of testocracy in the United States and has neither closed the achievement gap nor fomented meaningful accountability or success