Test Questions: Organizing, Motivating, and Mobilizing Opposition to Accountability Testing

Paquin Morel, Richard

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-jx64-g637

Work

Test Questions: Organizing, Motivating, and Mobilizing Opposition to Accountability Testing

Public

Download PDF

Standard-based accountability policies have profoundly shaped the landscape of public education in the United States. At the heart of these policies are standardized assessments, administered annually, which are used to evaluate schools and, at times, teachers. While always controversial, opposition to these policies increased following the widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards in 2010. By 2013, opponents of accountability testing organized boycotts of annual assessments in several states throughout the country, with the most widespread boycotts occurring in New York. In this dissertation, I use the case of test boycotts in New York State to analyze the origins, development, and motivating factors contributing to the spread of boycotts. Across three studies, I show that opposition to accountability testing and participation in test boycotts was driven primarily by local and individualistic concerns. In Study 1, I used longitudinal network analysis and content analysis of digital trace data to document the growth of the movement over time. Using the movement infrastructure model of movement outcomes, I analyzed the composition and structure of a network of movement-aligned groups from 2010-2016. I then analyzed posts to social media pages for movement-aligned groups. The results showed that the network grew from one that had a focus on general education issues and consisted of primarily of blogs and traditional groups like advocacy groups and unions, to one that focused on mobilizing test boycotts and on local educational issues. The network became regionally-focused and consisted primarily of newly founded specialist groups. The analysis of social media posts showed that group members used social media instrumentally, to facilitate test boycotts in local schools. In Study 2, I used social media data to analyze how participants in the movement framed issues related to testing and accountability. Framing is a critical movement activity used to build support, recruit participants, and motivate collective action. Using a text corpus consisting of posts to movement-aligned social media pages from 2010 to 2014, I found that in the early stages of the movement, participants in these groups used frames that characterized testing as a social problem by framing testing as a tool used by government or corporate actors to undermine the public school system. These frames embedded beliefs common to contemporary political ideologies. Over time, however, these frames were replaced by frames that characterized testing as a local or technical problem. Participants characterized testing as harmful to their children or local schools, often sharing stories of their children’s experiences in school. Or they attacked the legitimacy of testing by characterizing technical problems–that the test was poorly designed or invalid. These local and technical frames came to dominate the framing activities in these movement-aligned social media groups. Finally, in Study 3, I analyzed factors contributing to participation in test boycotts in local schools. Synthesizing insights from the literature on the role of threat in social movements and the literature on the influence of accountability policies, I hypothesized that increases in the share of Black and Latinx students in a school under conditions of general accountability pressure increased participation in test boycotts among white students. General accountability pressure occurred due to the implementation of Common Core-aligned accountability tests in 2013, which greatly increased the number of schools in New York facing accountability pressure–especially predominately white schools in suburban areas. Using a panel of school-level accountability and demographic data from 2009 to 2016 and a difference-in-differences analytic framework, I found that schools that experienced a net increase in their share of Black and Latinx students after the onset of Common Core-aligned testing had about an eight percentage-point greater test boycott rate for white students compared to schools without such an increase. These results were concentrated in predominately white schools in affluent, non-urban areas with little previous experience with accountability pressures. This suggests that participation in the movement was motivated by concerns over the loss of local control over educational resources and decisions.

Creator