Lesley Rex investigates the impact of the Michigan MEAP test
Observing the effects of high stakes testing accountability from the perspective
of teachers in classrooms, Associate Professor Lesley Rex has investigated
the impact of the Michigan MEAP test. In a recent article published in the
Teachers
College Record (June 2004, pp. 1288-1331), she and research assistant
Matt Nelson present ethnographic profiles of two Michigan high school teachers
who attempted to respond to mandated accountability measures, including required
test preparation. They describe how the two teachers unwittingly stymied their
own test preparation objectives, despite powerful personal commitments, targeted
professional development, specialist support, and site leadership. Rex and
Nelson illustrate the powerful influence of teacher beliefs and dispositions
on policy enactment. They conclude that “Teachers’ choices about
how and what to teach in preparation for a test emerge not from following,
disobeying, or transcending rules. Rather, teachers act practically in the
moment, over time, and in different but related contexts based upon what they
are able to discern as honorable and necessary amidst conflict and ambiguity.” They
add that “increasing external accountability measures on teachers is
counterproductive when they compete with teachers’ internal accountability,” and
argue that there is a need to support professional development initiatives
that “defuse … escalating teacher outrage, diminishing morale,
and the exiting of committed teachers…from teaching.”
This article appears in the Fall 2004 edition of Innovator.
