Standardised testing achieves many objectives for business including those that are publicly stated:
measuring whether schools are performing – accountability
providing a basis for parental choice of schools
and those that are unstated:
ensuring teachers and school principals focus on standardised curricula
screening and sorting students for employers
facilitating discontent with public schools
shifting the blame for economic and social problems to schools
enabling a few corporations to make hundreds of millions of dollars a year from test preparation materials, tutoring, and running and evaluating tests
Reference: Alfie Kohn, ‘Introduction: The 500-Pound Gorilla’, in Alfie Kohn and Patrick Shannon (eds) Education, Inc. Turning Learning into a Business, revised ed. Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 2002b, p. 4.
fostering a corporate ideology of competition, evaluation, obedience to authority, reward and punishment
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Standardised testing achieves many objectives for business including those that are publicly stated:
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