How Standardized Examinations Negatively Impact Minority Youth

HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 1 Danielle Ligocki Martha Wilkins How Standardized Examinations Negatively Impact Minority Youth Spring 2013 Dr. Brad Porfilio HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 2 Introduction High-stakes standardized examinations have all but taken over public schooling. They are pervasive, harmful, biased and invalid and they are impacting all students, but especially those of color in unspeakable ways. Because of the negative effects on students and teachers, the all-consuming nature of standards and testing and the narrow-minded focus that curriculum is taking on in response to these exams, schooling and education as a whole need to take a giant step away from these exams. Catherine Horn sums up this position concisely when she states, “Given their limited nature and the potentially adverse impacts they can have, using state mandated large-scale testing for student-level high-stakes purposes is unadvisable” (Horn, 2003, p. 30). History of High Stakes Exams According to Horn, the „minimum competency era‟ of the 1970s and 1980s is what ushered in the implementation of wide-spread testing. This was impacted further by the 1983 publishing of A Nation at Risk, which essentially used scare tactics to spell out to U.S. citizens that our children were falling behind their foreign counterparts and that drastic reforms needed to be implemented in order to avoid falling behind further. Within about three years, the landscape of standardized testing changed dramatically, with most states adopting some type of high-stakes exam with which to gauge the academic achievement of their students. Fast forward to 2013 and we have all 50 states involved in high-stakes testing, many of which are not only using these tests as an indicator of achievement or even ability, but they are also using them to make decisions regarding retention and even graduation from high school. Because of the importance placed upon these tests and all of the politics and financial assistance tied to these tests, states are under an inordinate amount of pressure to prove that their schools HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 3 are not „failing‟, which then trickles down to the teachers and students in the classroom. What seems to be ignored however is the disastrous effects that these standardized policies are having on the nature of education. Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota spoke quite honestly when he said, Making students accountable for test scores works well on a bumper sticker and it allows many politicians to look good by saying that they will not tolerate failure. But it represents a hollow promise. Far from improving education, high stakes testing marks a major retreat from fairness, from accuracy, from quality and from equity. (Kohn, 2000, p. 36) The Impact of High Stakes Exams on Minority Students While all students are currently suffering from the effects that standardized tests are having on public education, minority students are impacted more deeply than their White counterparts. Horn states clearly that “non-White, non-Asian students, as well as students with special needs and English Language Learners, are among the groups most deeply affected by high-stakes testing” (p. 30). There are a number of reasons for these amplified effects. A major reason is that there seems to be a necessity of middle-class knowledge to perform well on these exams. Obviously, not all students possess this knowledge. Another reason for the widespread gap in achievement can be attributed to test bias. This then produces a vicious cycle, because in poor minority classrooms where students do not score well on the tests, an incredible amount of time is then spent on test preparation which takes away the focus from any type of real teaching of critical thinking skills and shifts it to more rote-based, low-level thinking activities. Middle class knowledge, skills and experiences are not possessed by all students in public schools. However, high-stakes tests seem to be directly correlated to this type of knowledge. If research has shown that there is a direct correlation between performance on standardized tests and socio-economic status, then why aren‟t a variety of backgrounds and HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 4 social classes being taken into account when designing these tests? Clearly, there are differences in how all children are raised, but there is often a great difference between the lives of Black children and those of White children. Green and Griffore state clearly, “Discrimination infects all of our institutions and consequently makes the experience of growing up Black quantitatively and qualitatively different from that of growing up White” (1980, p. 239). They expound on these differences between class and race when they write that the lives of Black youth have often . . .been marked by inferior schools, inferior housing, inferior opportunities for employment, inferior incomes, and inferior health care, it is difficult to imagine that their innate abilities would be sufficiently strong to overcome these deficiencies to the point that they would be able to compete on an equal basis with members of a group not similarly and deliberately discriminated against. (p.240) Because of these differences in life experience, and because it is the experiences of those in the White middle class that are taken into account and valued when writing these exams, minority students begin the test already at a disadvantage. This disadvantage based on class and race can be directly connected to one type testing bias that Green and Griffore describe, namely „bias due to content‟ (p. 240). The concept of bias due to content is related to issues of who writes the test, who the tests are tried out on, differences in dialect and the use of irrelevant, difficult test items. Green and Griffore describe to their readers the idea that, “there are cultural differences between test authors and lower SES users of the test in style of thinking, perceiving and reasoning, and in values and expectations” (p.241). They also offer an interesting point about children with small hearing vocabularies being penalized because of where they come from or the language spoken at home. As Green and Griffore advance their argument of test bias due to content, they address the fact that sample test items are often not tried out on children from a variety of backgrounds, so again the HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 5 test is tailored to the middle class white children that questions are tested on. Therefore, if the test sample does not match the actual students taking the exam, then the exam itself is biased. Another issue concerning bias due to content has to do with dialect. There are differences between the language and dialect of majority and minority students. In one example cited by the authors concerning an oral reading test for Black students in the 4th grade, it was noted that “46 perfect of the errors made by the total group could be attributed to dialect difference” (p. 242). This then continues that vicious cycle mentioned earlier – students score low on reading readiness tests, so we place them in low reading groups. These students then receive low level instruction, which does not further their skills or knowledge and consequently leaves their reading skills at a low level. These subpar skills and the lack of critical thinking skills that are taught end up only hindering progress on high-stakes exams further when placed up against the middle class knowledge that is often tested on these exams. If this is the type of knowledge that is being tested (and that many minority students do not possess), then we should not be making claims about measuring aptitude or achievement, but rather about measuring how students do in terms of making judgments on knowledge. That would be a more appropriate description. In addition to bias due to content, Green and Griffore address two other types of testing bias: bias due to norms and bias due to the testing situation. If we look at the norm referencing that high-stakes exams take part in, the sectioning of students that is used as the norm-reference is often not representative across class, race and economics, just as the knowledge being tested and the test subjects are not. Not only are minority students approaching these tests at a disadvantage due to lived experiences, differences in dialect and a test built for a sample of the population that does not represent their own situation, but there are also issues of bias in HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 6 regards to what the Green and Griffore call “atmosphere variables” (p. 244). Atmosphere variables include things such as the structure of the answer sheet, the characteristics of the examiner, the naivety in terms of how to even approach a test of this nature and even the ability to work under timed conditions. These variables, combined with some of the research that shows that “generally an examiner of the same race is more likely to be facilitative, especially with young children” (p. 246), but that often the examiner does not share the same race as their pupils makes for a messy, uncomfortable testing situation in which minority students are clearly at a disadvantage. What makes matters worse is the fact that, as Peter Sacks states in Standardized Testing: Meritocracy’s Crooked Yardstick, standardized tests generally have a questionable ability to predict academic success; standardized test scores are highly correlated with socioeconomic class and standardized tests reward superficial learning, drive instruction in undesirable directions and thwart meaningful reform. Essentially, we are placing minority students in this unhealthy environment of non-stop testing and test preparation all for tests that are invalid and reward a lack of deep thinking. Implications for Minority Students When we look at these different circumstances of test bias and combine it with the lack of middle class knowledge that helps students to perform well on these exams, it is clear that minority students are not participants in a fair game. Sacks tells his reader, “these attacks on standardized testing were back up by a mounting body of evidence that such tests played a key role in a rigged game, one that favored society‟s well-positioned elites under the guise of „merit‟” (p. 26). This deck that is already stacked against minority students was examined in detail by Lomax, et al. in The Impact of Mandated Standardized Testing on Minority Students. This HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 7 article reinforces the ideas that test questioning is focused on low-level thinking skills, that the amount of time spent preparing for the test for students in classrooms with a high minority population is overemphasized and that the link between testing and teacher performance is one that is ultimately hurting instruction. We can see that the consequences that standardized tests are having on minority students are devastating. It is bad enough that that they already sit at a disadvantage at test time when compared to their White counterparts, but these consequences become even more meaningful when the results of these tests are being used to decrease the quality of instruction, increase the time spent on test preparation in the classroom and eventually lower the morale of both students and teachers in the classroom. As if this is not enough, these test results are also being used as a way to retain students by grade level, to prevent graduation and the acquisition of a diploma and thus raise the drop-out rates for students of color. When quality of instruction is discussed and analyzed, it becomes clear that the more test preparation is focused on in the classroom, the less curriculum deviates from state mandated topics. The strict following of the standards leaves very little time for open discussion and dialogue and even higher order questioning. For example, Lomax, et. al. write that, “On the standardized mathematics tests, 95% of the items were found to test low-level thinking, while 97% tested low-level conceptual knowledge” (1995, p. 175) If this is the test that we are teaching children to pass, then obviously our instruction will follow the same patterns that the tests do, namely teaching low-level thinking skills. With all of the time that is being spent on testing concepts, much of the content that is being taught is substandard knowledge. Therefore, the tests themselves are not even accurate gauges of ability or achievement, let alone higher level knowledge and thinking skills. HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 8 This poor quality of instruction and the heavy focus on test preparation is true across many schools that are under the reign of standardized tests, but it is especially heavy in classrooms with a 60% or higher population of minority students (Lomax, et. al). Gone are the days of open conversation or even scrapping the day‟s lesson in order to address a „teachable moment‟ that arose in the classroom. In their place are lessons tailored to meeting pre- packaged standards and curriculum with a sole purpose of producing high test scores. It is mind numbing at best, harmful at worst. However, as Lomax, et.al. discovered, “teachers of high-minority classes were more likely than teachers of low-minority classes to view mandated tests as having extremely or very important uses in their work” (p.177). What this heavy reliance on test preparation and the usage of test scores in decision-making results in is a double-edged sword. Not only are these tests heavily biased against Black and minority students, but then these faulty results are then used against them to seal their educational fate. When examining this shift in quality of instruction and the way that time is spent in the classroom, it becomes easy to see why morale would be suffering in educational institutions. The pressure that is placed on teachers for students to perform well on these exams not only compromises the instruction in the classroom, but it also crushes the spirits of those involved in this faulty process. From teachers who constantly feel defeated to those who have to give in to the demands in order to keep their jobs to those who have now resorted to cheating on high- stakes exams, we see teachers who have lost their love for teaching. When this happens, it cannot help but rub off on the pupils in front of them. If the sole purpose of coming to work every day is to read scripted lessons to disengaged students and the sole purpose of attending school every day is to fill in some bubbles and do the minimum to get by, then it is clear that HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 9 educational institutions have simply become school buildings and not sites of education. This is nothing sort of tragic. Even more crippling than the loss of true love for education and genuine learning is the thought that the stakes involved in these mass-produced exams are now so high that they are resulting in retention of students, as well as the withholding of diplomas. Roderick and Nagaoka examined the retention of students based on standardized tests, specifically in Chicago Public Schools. What they found was that “there is little evidence to support the contention that retaining students actually improves long-term educational outcomes” (2005, p. 310). Proponents of using retention as a means to drive achievement forward look at the negative attitudes and feelings about being retained as something that children, parents and teachers will work hard to avoid. The reality is that retaining students often leads to few long- term gains, achievement gains that are often difficult to measure or that sometimes do not even exist, an increase in placement in special education classes and an increase in drop-out rates for students of color. Looking at impacts like this, how can anybody say that letting standardized exams rule the world of education is a good idea? Alfie Kohn made a beautiful point when writing about the impact of high-stakes testing on minority students. He says, It is not only understandable but entirely appropriate that civil rights groups, attorneys, and sympathetic judges would condemn the disparities between Black and White, rich and poor. But when they uncritically rely on standardized tests as indicators of how much progress has been made to close these gaps, they may be unaware of how much harm they are doing by legitimating and perpetuating a reliance on such testing – a reliance that ultimately damages low-income and minority students most of all. P.38 Not only do we need to understand the negative effects on children that these tests are having, but we also need to move beyond the notion that we can close the achievement gap and rely on  HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 10 these horribly fallible tests as the measuring stick by which to gauge our progress and the progress of students across the nation. Conclusion Clearly, standardized examinations are negatively impacting minority youth in a monumental way. Not only do these tests value one specific type of knowledge and function in a multitude of biased ways, but they are also dramatically affecting the level of instruction, thinking and morale in the classroom. These faulty exams are both ruining our children and our schools and then compounding this disaster further by making faulty, unfair decisions regarding minority children and their futures. The American Educational Research Association acknowledged this erroneous process when they published the following statement, as cited by Catherine Horn: “Decisions that affect individual students‟ life chances or educational opportunities should not be made on the basis of test scores alone” (pg. 84). More than the bad tests and the poor decision making however, is the idea of the continued social problems that will arise should we continue to rely on these high-stakes examinations. Horn makes this very clear when writing, “test score differences between Whites and minorities may be real, but inability to measure the other predictors of performance, on which Blacks and (Hispanics) seem to be far less disadvantaged, poses a huge social problem” (p. 84). There need to be solutions outside of exams that schools, professionals, teachers and students alike can respect as a means of pushing the learning process forward and use as a way to assess what our children actually know. Green and Griffore offer some clear suggestions as how to revise these faulty tests as well as ways to dig beneath the tests themselves. The authors suggest that “there should be a  HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 11 full involvement of minority professionals in developing, revising, and reviewing standardized achievement tests” (p. 250). This would be a starting point at which the focus can shift to some of the bias in the tests. They also recommend that “educators in public school systems and universities must acknowledge the social, political and economic ramifications of testing” (p. 251). This point is hugely important. If we can get those who hold the power to acknowledge that these tests have a lot more at stake than which Math class to place a child in, then maybe the immediacy of what needs to be done will be realized. Finally, Green and Griffore state that “it has been repeatedly documented that racial and social class bias exists in society, and this bias is reflected in the construction and the use of standardized tests” (p. 252). This idea is powerful: we need to get at the bias that exists in society, in addition to the construction of these exams. We cannot continue to ignore these underlying issues. More powerful than simply „fixing‟ these tests though would be to throw them out completely, to build a system together that would allow students to show off the knowledge that they possess; to be valued for what they bring to education; to really get their hands dirty and create and think and collaborate and articulate what it is that they know. That would be powerful, authentic and valuable assessment. While we are not naïve enough to believe that any major changes like this loom on the horizon, it is always worth it to push for something greater than what we currently have, especially when it comes to our students.  HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 12 Works Cited Au, W. (2009). Unequal by Design. New York: Routledge. Gorlewski, J., Gorlewski, D., & Porfilio, B. (2012). Using Standards and High-Stakes Testing for Students. New York: Peter Lang. Green, R. & Griffore, R. (1980). “The impact of standardized testing on minority students.” Journal of Negro Education. 49(3), 238-252. Horn, C. ( 2003). “High stakes testing and students: Stopping or perpetuating a cycle of failure?” Theory into Practice. 42(1), 30-41. Kohn, A. (2000). The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools. Portsmouth: Heinemann Publishing Company. Lomax, G., Maxwell-West, M., Harmon, M., Viator, K., & Madaus, G. (1995). “The impact on mandated standardized testing on minority students.” Journal of Negro Education. 4(2), 171-185. Roderick, M. & Nagaoka, J. (2005). “Retention under Chicago‟s high-stakes testing program: Helpful, harmful, or harmless?” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. 27(4), 309-340. Sacks, P. (1997). “ Standardized testing: Meritocracy‟s crooked yardstick.” Change. 29(2), 24-31 

HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 1 Dr. Danielle Ligocki Dr. Martha Wilkins How Standardized Examinations Negatively Impact Minority Youth Introduction  HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 2 High-stakes standardized examinations have all but taken over public schooling. They are pervasive, harmful, biased and invalid and they are impacting all students, but especially those of color in unspeakable ways. Because of the negative effects on students and teachers, the all-consuming nature of standards and testing and the narrow-minded focus that curriculum is taking on in response to these exams, schooling and education as a whole need to take a giant step away from these exams. Catherine Horn sums up this position concisely when she states, “Given their limited nature and the potentially adverse impacts they can have, using state mandated large-scale testing for student-level high-stakes purposes is unadvisable” (Horn, 2003, p. 30). History of High Stakes Exams According to Horn, the ‘minimum competency era’ of the 1970s and 1980s is what ushered in the implementation of wide-spread testing. This was impacted further by the 1983 publishing of A Nation at Risk, which essentially used scare tactics to spell out to U.S. citizens that our children were falling behind their foreign counterparts and that drastic reforms needed to be implemented in order to avoid falling behind further. Within about three years, the landscape of standardized testing changed dramatically, with most states adopting some type of high-stakes exam with which to gauge the academic achievement of their students. Fast forward to 2013 and we have all 50 states involved in high-stakes testing, many of which are not only using these tests as an indicator of achievement or even ability, but they are also using them to make decisions regarding retention and even graduation from high school. Because of the importance placed upon these tests and all of the politics and financial assistance tied to these tests, states are under an inordinate amount of pressure to prove that their schools are not  HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 3 ‘failing’, which then trickles down to the teachers and students in the classroom. What seems to be ignored however is the disastrous effects that these standardized policies are having on the nature of education. Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota spoke quite honestly when he said, Making students accountable for test scores works well on a bumper sticker and it allows many politicians to look good by saying that they will not tolerate failure. But it represents a hollow promise. Far from improving education, high stakes testing marks a major retreat from fairness, from accuracy, from quality and from equity. (Kohn, 2000, p. 36) The Impact of High Stakes Exams on Minority Students While all students are currently suffering from the effects that standardized tests are having on public education, minority students are impacted more deeply than their White counterparts. Horn states clearly that “non-White, non-Asian students, as well as students with special needs and English Language Learners, are among the groups most deeply affected by high-stakes testing” (p. 30). There are a number of reasons for these amplified effects. A major reason is that there seems to be a necessity of middle-class knowledge to perform well on these exams. Obviously, not all students possess this knowledge. Another reason for the widespread gap in achievement can be attributed to test bias. This then produces a vicious cycle, because in poor minority classrooms where students do not score well on the tests, an incredible amount of time is then spent on test preparation which takes away the focus from any type of real teaching of critical thinking skills and shifts it to more rote-based, low-level thinking activities. Middle class knowledge, skills and experiences are not possessed by all students in public schools. However, high-stakes tests seem to be directly correlated to this type of knowledge. If research has shown that there is a direct  HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 4 correlation between performance on standardized tests and socio-economic status, then why aren’t a variety of backgrounds and social classes being taken into account when designing these tests? Clearly, there are differences in how all children are raised, but there is often a great difference between the lives of Black children and those of White children. Green and Griffore state clearly, “Discrimination infects all of our institutions and consequently makes the experience of growing up Black quantitatively and qualitatively different from that of growing up White” (1980, p. 239). They expound on these differences between class and race when they write that the lives of Black youth have often . . .been marked by inferior schools, inferior housing, inferior opportunities for employment, inferior incomes, and inferior health care, it is difficult to imagine that their innate abilities would be sufficiently strong to overcome these deficiencies to the point that they would be able to compete on an equal basis with members of a group not similarly and deliberately discriminated against. (p.240) Because of these differences in life experience, and because it is the experiences of those in the White middle class that are taken into account and valued when writing these exams, minority students begin the test already at a disadvantage. This disadvantage based on class and race can be directly connected to one type testing bias that Green and Griffore describe, namely ‘bias due to content’ (p. 240). The concept of bias due to content is related to issues of who writes the test, who the tests are tried out on, differences in dialect and the use of irrelevant, difficult test items. Green and Griffore describe to their readers the idea that, “there are cultural differences between test authors and lower SES users of the test in style of thinking, perceiving and reasoning, and in values and expectations” (p.241). They also offer an interesting point about children with small hearing vocabularies being penalized because of where they come from or the language  HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 5 spoken at home. As Green and Griffore advance their argument of test bias due to content, they address the fact that sample test items are often not tried out on children from a variety of backgrounds, so again the test is tailored to the middle class white children that questions are tested on. Therefore, if the test sample does not match the actual students taking the exam, then the exam itself is biased. Another issue concerning bias due to content has to do with dialect. There are differences between the language and dialect of majority and minority students. In one example cited by the authors concerning an oral reading test for Black students in the 4th grade, it was noted that “46 perfect of the errors made by the total group could be attributed to dialect difference” (p. 242). This then continues that vicious cycle mentioned earlier – students score low on reading readiness tests, so we place them in low reading groups. These students then receive low level instruction, which does not further their skills or knowledge and consequently leaves their reading skills at a low level. These subpar skills and the lack of critical thinking skills that are taught end up only hindering progress on high-stakes exams further when placed up against the middle class knowledge that is often tested on these exams. If this is the type of knowledge that is being tested (and that many minority students do not possess), then we should not be making claims about measuring aptitude or achievement, but rather about measuring how students do in terms of making judgments on knowledge. That would be a more appropriate description. In addition to bias due to content, Green and Griffore address two other types of testing bias: bias due to norms and bias due to the testing situation. If we look at the norm referencing that high-stakes exams take part in, the sectioning of students that is used as the norm-reference is often not representative across class, race and  HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 6 economics, just as the knowledge being tested and the test subjects are not. Not only are minority students approaching these tests at a disadvantage due to lived experiences, differences in dialect and a test built for a sample of the population that does not represent their own situation, but there are also issues of bias in regards to what the Green and Griffore call “atmosphere variables” (p. 244). Atmosphere variables include things such as the structure of the answer sheet, the characteristics of the examiner, the naivety in terms of how to even approach a test of this nature and even the ability to work under timed conditions. These variables, combined with some of the research that shows that “generally an examiner of the same race is more likely to be facilitative, especially with young children” (p. 246), but that often the examiner does not share the same race as their pupils makes for a messy, uncomfortable testing situation in which minority students are clearly at a disadvantage. What makes matters worse is the fact that, as Peter Sacks states in Standardized Testing: Meritocracy’s Crooked Yardstick, standardized tests generally have a questionable ability to predict academic success; standardized test scores are highly correlated with socioeconomic class and standardized tests reward superficial learning, drive instruction in undesirable directions and thwart meaningful reform. Essentially, we are placing minority students in this unhealthy environment of non-stop testing and test preparation all for tests that are invalid and reward a lack of deep thinking. Implications for Minority Students When we look at these different circumstances of test bias and combine it with the lack of middle class knowledge that helps students to perform well on  HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 7 these exams, it is clear that minority students are not participants in a fair game. Sacks tells his reader, “these attacks on standardized testing were back up by a mounting body of evidence that such tests played a key role in a rigged game, one that favored society’s well-positioned elites under the guise of ‘merit’” (p. 26). This deck that is already stacked against minority students was examined in detail by Lomax, et al. in The Impact of Mandated Standardized Testing on Minority Students. This article reinforces the ideas that test questioning is focused on low-level thinking skills, that the amount of time spent preparing for the test for students in classrooms with a high minority population is overemphasized and that the link between testing and teacher performance is one that is ultimately hurting instruction. We can see that the consequences that standardized tests are having on minority students are devastating. It is bad enough that that they already sit at a disadvantage at test time when compared to their White counterparts, but these consequences become even more meaningful when the results of these tests are being used to decrease the quality of instruction, increase the time spent on test preparation in the classroom and eventually lower the morale of both students and teachers in the classroom. As if this is not enough, these test results are also being used as a way to retain students by grade level, to prevent graduation and the acquisition of a diploma and thus raise the drop-out rates for students of color. When quality of instruction is discussed and analyzed, it becomes clear that the more test preparation is focused on in the classroom, the less curriculum deviates from state mandated topics. The strict following of the standards leaves very little time for open discussion and dialogue and even higher order questioning. For example, Lomax, et. al. write that, “On the standardized mathematics tests,  HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 8 95% of the items were found to test low-level thinking, while 97% tested low-level conceptual knowledge” (1995, p. 175) If this is the test that we are teaching children to pass, then obviously our instruction will follow the same patterns that the tests do, namely teaching low-level thinking skills. With all of the time that is being spent on testing concepts, much of the content that is being taught is substandard knowledge. Therefore, the tests themselves are not even accurate gauges of ability or achievement, let alone higher level knowledge and thinking skills. This poor quality of instruction and the heavy focus on test preparation is true across many schools that are under the reign of standardized tests, but it is especially heavy in classrooms with a 60% or higher population of minority students (Lomax, et. al). Gone are the days of open conversation or even scrapping the day’s lesson in order to address a ‘teachable moment’ that arose in the classroom. In their place are lessons tailored to meeting pre-packaged standards and curriculum with a sole purpose of producing high test scores. It is mind numbing at best, harmful at worst. However, as Lomax, et.al. discovered, “teachers of high- minority classes were more likely than teachers of low-minority classes to view mandated tests as having extremely or very important uses in their work” (p.177). What this heavy reliance on test preparation and the usage of test scores in decision-making results in is a double-edged sword. Not only are these tests heavily biased against Black and minority students, but then these faulty results are then used against them to seal their educational fate. When examining this shift in quality of instruction and the way that time is spent in the classroom, it becomes easy to see why morale would be suffering in educational institutions. The pressure that is placed on teachers for students to  HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 9 perform well on these exams not only compromises the instruction in the classroom, but it also crushes the spirits of those involved in this faulty process. From teachers who constantly feel defeated to those who have to give in to the demands in order to keep their jobs to those who have now resorted to cheating on high-stakes exams, we see teachers who have lost their love for teaching. When this happens, it cannot help but rub off on the pupils in front of them. If the sole purpose of coming to work every day is to read scripted lessons to disengaged students and the sole purpose of attending school every day is to fill in some bubbles and do the minimum to get by, then it is clear that educational institutions have simply become school buildings and not sites of education. This is nothing sort of tragic. Even more crippling than the loss of true love for education and genuine learning is the thought that the stakes involved in these mass-produced exams are now so high that they are resulting in retention of students, as well as the withholding of diplomas. Roderick and Nagaoka examined the retention of students based on standardized tests, specifically in Chicago Public Schools. What they found was that “there is little evidence to support the contention that retaining students actually improves long-term educational outcomes” (2005, p. 310). Proponents of using retention as a means to drive achievement forward look at the negative attitudes and feelings about being retained as something that children, parents and teachers will work hard to avoid. The reality is that retaining students often leads to few long-term gains, achievement gains that are often difficult to measure or that sometimes do not even exist, an increase in placement in special education classes and an increase in drop-out rates for students of color. Looking at impacts like this, how can anybody say that letting standardized exams rule the world of education is a good idea? HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 10 Alfie Kohn made a beautiful point when writing about the impact of high- stakes testing on minority students. He says, It is not only understandable but entirely appropriate that civil rights groups, attorneys, and sympathetic judges would condemn the disparities between Black and White, rich and poor. But when they uncritically rely on standardized tests as indicators of how much progress has been made to close these gaps, they may be unaware of how much harm they are doing by legitimating and perpetuating a reliance on such testing – a reliance that ultimately damages low- income and minority students most of all. P.38 Not only do we need to understand the negative effects on children that these tests are having, but we also need to move beyond the notion that we can close the achievement gap and rely on these horribly fallible tests as the measuring stick by which to gauge our progress and the progress of students across the nation. Conclusion Clearly, standardized examinations are negatively impacting minority youth in a monumental way. Not only do these tests value one specific type of knowledge and function in a multitude of biased ways, but they are also dramatically affecting the level of instruction, thinking and morale in the classroom. These faulty exams are both ruining our children and our schools and then compounding this disaster further by making faulty, unfair decisions regarding minority children and their futures. The American Educational Research Association acknowledged this erroneous process when they published the following statement, as cited by Catherine Horn: “Decisions that affect individual students’ life chances or educational opportunities should not be made on the basis of test scores alone” (pg. 84). More than the bad tests and the poor decision making however, is the idea of the continued social problems that will arise should we continue to rely on these  HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 11 high-stakes examinations. Horn makes this very clear when writing, “test score differences between Whites and minorities may be real, but inability to measure the other predictors of performance, on which Blacks and (Hispanics) seem to be far less disadvantaged, poses a huge social problem” (p. 84). There need to be solutions outside of exams that schools, professionals, teachers and students alike can respect as a means of pushing the learning process forward and use as a way to assess what our children actually know. Green and Griffore offer some clear suggestions as how to revise these faulty tests as well as ways to dig beneath the tests themselves. The authors suggest that “there should be a full involvement of minority professionals in developing, revising, and reviewing standardized achievement tests” (p. 250). This would be a starting point at which the focus can shift to some of the bias in the tests. They also recommend that “educators in public school systems and universities must acknowledge the social, political and economic ramifications of testing” (p. 251). This point is hugely important. If we can get those who hold the power to acknowledge that these tests have a lot more at stake than which Math class to place a child in, then maybe the immediacy of what needs to be done will be realized. Finally, Green and Griffore state that “it has been repeatedly documented that racial and social class bias exists in society, and this bias is reflected in the construction and the use of standardized tests” (p. 252). This idea is powerful: we need to get at the bias that exists in society, in addition to the construction of these exams. We cannot continue to ignore these underlying issues. More powerful than simply ‘fixing’ these tests though would be to throw them out completely, to build a system together that would allow students to show off the knowledge that they possess; to be valued for what they bring to education; to  HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 12 really get their hands dirty and create and think and collaborate and articulate what it is that they know. That would be powerful, authentic and valuable assessment. While we are not naïve enough to believe that any major changes like this loom on the horizon, it is always worth it to push for something greater than what we currently have, especially when it comes to our students. Works Cited Au, W. (2009). Unequal by Design. New York: Routledge. Gorlewski, J., Gorlewski, D., & Porfilio, B. (2012). Using Standards and High-Stakes Testing for Students. New York: Peter Lang. Green, R. & Griffore, R. (1980). “The impact of standardized testing on minority students.” Journal of Negro Education. 49(3), 238-252. Horn, C. ( 2003). “High stakes testing and students: Stopping or perpetuating a cycle of failure?” Theory into Practice. 42(1), 30-41. Kohn, A. (2000). The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools. Portsmouth: Heinemann Publishing Company. HOW STANDARDIZED EXAMINATIONS NEGATIVELY IMPACT MINORITY YOUTH 13 Lomax, G., Maxwell-West, M., Harmon, M., Viator, K., & Madaus, G. (1995). “The impact on mandated standardized testing on minority students.” Journal of Negro Education. 4(2), 171-185. Roderick, M. & Nagaoka, J. (2005). “Retention under Chicago’s high-stakes testing program: Helpful, harmful, or harmless?” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. 27(4), 309-340. Sacks, P. (1997). “ Standardized testing: Meritocracy’s crooked yardstick.” Change. 29(2), 24-31