In the 1930s, American colleges and universities began to screen applications using the SAT, a mass-administered, IQ-descended standardized test. The widespread adoption of the test accompanied the development of the world's first mass higher education system--and served to promote the idea that the United States was becoming a…

Two-year colleges provide access and opportunity for students with various academic backgrounds to pursue a post-secondary education. While two-year colleges take pride in admitting any student with a high school diploma or equivalent, in recent years colleges have been under scrutiny for low completion and graduation rates. Particular attention…

Through a Foucauldian theoretical framework, this article contests the efficacy of the modern assessable and visible learning curriculum, and analyses how the current education episteme disempowers the ethical subjectification of the individual, dislocating the development of aesthetic agency. It articulates a tension between education for the…

This paper investigates the impact of the 2016 presidential election on the Opt Out Florida Network (OOFN). Findings indicate that the widespread protests against the Trump presidency after the election highlighted the need to reframe OOFN's message in order to motivate membership to act for democratic schools. We suggest the outcome of OOFN's…

Background: While journalists claim social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been central to the growth of the opt-out movement, there is a lack of empirical research that examines its use by participants. We address this gap by highlighting findings related to the usage of social media by opt-out participants in Ohio. Purpose: This…

In different parts of the world, social movements led by parents, educators, and professional organizations have emerged that resist educational standardisation and use of (high stakes) standardised tests, and that push for educational change. With the aim of extending empirical coverage of protest movements in non-English speaking countries, this…

During recent years there have been many changes in education and assessment. This document tracks some of the changes that have occurred to education in England between 2000 and 2010. The start date was chosen as it coincided with the start of a new curriculum and a major change to A levels. The end date corresponds to the start of the coalition…

This paper examines the reactions of English pupils who were preparing for GCSE and A-Level examinations to the 2020 exam cancellations resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, it addresses a gap in international research related to high stakes testing by presenting pupils' perspectives. It uses a Bourdieusian framework to explore the…

This article examines several important moments in the history of mathematics education history to provide another lens through which to view modern mathematics education in the United States. At the turn of the twentieth century, mathematics education in the United States had been the subject of educational concern for more than a century.…

This article adds to a growing body of research tracing the influence of neoliberal education reforms on policy and practice by showing the ways in which student writers are positioned within market-oriented discourses and values through Texas state exam writing prompts. As a genre-in-use, the writing prompts are seemingly mundane texts that…

External and standardized assessments based on student results are a contested education policy among school actors. Movements of opposition have emerged in different countries, especially in those contexts with high-stakes accountability systems. However, this phenomenon has not been analyzed in soft accountability systems. The objective of this…

Standardized testing results in fourth-grade math have shown that students in the United States continually score below students in many other nations, despite funding education at levels well above the global average. The problem addressed in this study was that fourth-grade math students in the United States were not performing as well on…

Research suggests that school leaders' understanding and process of making sense of educational reform policies and/or laws is shaped by social, organizational, individual factors. This understanding can impact how a school leader understands and interprets the law/policy and ultimately may impact implementation actions. In 2016, Michigan's Read…

Neoliberal policy technologies are spreading across the globe. Most go unrecognised and unopposed, but in some cases, they have provoked reactions and movements that reject or resist them. In this article we focus on one such movement of resistance, consisting of a network of families (the 'opt out' movement) that is boycotting the Standard…

Teachers working in middle and high school Dual Immersion (DI) programs (Spanish-English) face unique sets of challenges: linguistic equity between the two languages of instruction, attrition due to high linguistic and academic expectations, and preparing DI students for standardized tests in English. In this article, we reflect on our current…