Literacy Assessment and the Politics of Identities

Abstract The wide use of standardized tests as a form of literacy assessment, combined with the assumptions underlying them, inevitably makes the assessment of literacy the assessment of identity. Examples are presented of how assessment in the form of standardized testing recognizes, constrains, or dismisses the multi‐faceted aspects of identities children bring to classrooms. Evidence is presented to argue that standardized tests not only participate in changing the identities of students but also influence the identities of teachers and psychologists whose actions are constrained by a culture that reproduces itself. Readers are challenged to take up new models of assessment that not only engage issues of identity but build upon them.