Does High-Stakes Testing Increase Cultural Capital

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Won-Pyo Hong and Peter Youngs
Michigan State University

Citation: Hong, W.-P., & Youngs, P. (2008). Does high-stakes testing
increase cultural capital among low-income and racial minority students?.
Education Policy Analysis Archives, 16(6). Retrieved [date] from
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v16n6/.

Abstract
This article draws on research from Texas and Chicago to examine whether
high-stakes testing enables low-income and racial minority students to
acquire cultural capital. While students' performance on state or district
tests rose after the implementation of high-stakes testing and
accountability policies in Texas and Chicago in the 1990s, several studies
indicate that these policies seemed to have had deleterious effects on
curriculum, instruction, the percentage of students excluded from the tests,
and student dropout rates. As a result, the policies seemed to have had
mixed effects on students' opportunities to acquire embodied and
institutionalized cultural capital. These findings are consistent with the
work of Shepard (2000), Darling-Hammond (2004a), and others who have written
of the likely negative repercussions of high-stakes testing and
accountability policies.

Keywords: cultural capital, high-stakes testing, accountability, K-12
schooling in the U.S.