by-testing as a tool for promoting equity emphasize its use to monitor the effectiveness of efforts to improve teaching and learning. For example, Reyes, Scribner, and Scribner (1999) found that four high-performing Hispanic schools in Texas used assessment for advocacy rather than sim-
ply to assign grades or describe achievement levels. There, norm-referenced testing was used regularly to monitor progress. Testing itself, however, was not dwelt upon. Instead, the schools used additional assessment processes to improve instruction on a daily basis, making considerable use of au-
thentic assessment, as will be discussed later in this chapter. The schools also regularly assessed students' proficiency in both English and Spanish; teachers understood that bilingual children may know more in one lan-
guage than they can demonstrate in another.
Many reports show measured achievement in specific school districts and states to be improving, and gaps among subgroups closing (Fuller & Johnson, 2001; Haycock, 2001; Palmaffy, 1998; Roderick, Jacob, & Bryk, 2002; Skrla, Scheurich, Johnson, & Koschoreck, 2001). For example, the Education Trust (2003) pointed out that the achievement gap between White students and African American and Latino students narrowed on the National Assessment of Education progress during the 1970s and 1980s, then remained constant. The report went on to cite high-minority, low-
income schools in which there has been a significant recent closing of the achievement gap as well as outstanding academic performance on stan-
dardized tests. Engelhard Elementary School in Louisville, Kentucky, and Hambrick Middle School in Aldine, Texas, are two such schools. Advocates of reform by testing argue that schools can no longer simply ignore low expectations and underachievement of students from historically oppressed communities, and that testing serves as a tool for addressing this problem. Further, advocates sometimes point out that since tests are used in col-
leges and elsewhere, everyone needs to learn to take them effectively (C. D. Lee, 1998).
Those who question the use of tests as a tool for promoting equity express concerns about three main areas: (1) the track record of standard-
ized testing in communities of color, (2) curricular consequences of test-
ing, and (3) inequitable student and community consequences. In regard to the first concern, there are equity-related historic reasons to distrust reform by testing. Kornhaber (2004) explained that "historically . . . over-
reliance on testing for making decisions about students has not produced sustained efforts to improve educational equity in the United States" (p. 99). Critics point to the history of connections between intelligence test-
ing and the eugenics movement, and the uses of testing to track students of color into lower tracks, classify them as retarded or in need of special edu-
cation, and block entry into higher education (C. D. Lee, 1998). Townsend