In this article, Anagnostopoulos discusses the influence that standardized testing results have on not only the curriculum of a teacher’s classroom, but also the impact that these results may have on the teaching process itself. Through this research, there seems to be several disparities among teachers, especially between “old-school” and “new-school” teachers.
These studies suggest that teachers’ subject-matter beliefs, years of experience, departmental status, and involvement in professional learning communities mediate their responses to external testing (Smagorinsky, Lakly, & Johnson, 2002; Zancella, 1992; Zigo, 2001). More experienced teachers with high departmental status, constructivist views of subject matter, and connections to professional networks tend to resist “teaching to the test,” while novice teachers, and those with conventional subject-matter views and low departmental status, often acquiesce to testing pressures by altering their curriculum in ways that fragment and narrow its scope (177-8).
Anagnostopoulos qualifies these findings by explaining, “These studies illuminate the variability of teachers’ responses to external tests. None, however, closely examine the tests, making it difficult to specify the relationships between the tests and teachers’ instructional practices” (178). This article is talking about many of the issues that we have been discussing over the semester as far as standardized testing and “teaching for the test,” rather than coming up with your own curriculum (refer to findings on pg 189 and on…).
This is a valuable study and it is unfortunate that testing is hurting the education system.
What's On My Mind... 
Jeff,
This article saddened me greatly because I could see who was going to lose and as usual it is the students. With all the information out there from studies and theorists why are we still struggling to find a curriculum that works? We have become so performance based that we are loosing sight of the future-the children. The capitalistic world designates and controls how are schools are run, instead of educators who have many years of practice in the education system. Teachers unfortunately will continue to struggle until a solution can be found.
I share your distaste for the current system. There seems to be a distrust in the people that are actually with the students all day (i.e. teachers); I think they would be the ones to know best what students should and should not need to be exposed to.
I too, share you shared disgust! Standardized testing is just bad vibes all around.
My biggest problem is that the construction of what defines something important enough to be tested is deemed by bureaucracies and people completely separate to schools, teaching, and universities. Our society and educational models have outgrown the paradigms that call for standardized testing. I just wonder is there is anything, anyone can do to change it?
/bangs head against screen
What struck me is how tests confine and disempower the teachers themselves, who are assessed on how well their students do on these tests.
I wonder whether there could be tests that are less destructive and that actually test something valuable, something worth testing?