Leveling the Playing Field? Students' Educational Attainment and States' Performance Testing

Sociologists and policy makers have hotly debated whether American public schools reflect the common ideal, in which all students have access to similar opportunities for learning, and how reform may better approximate that ideal. In the analyses reported here, the authors explore variations among states in the relationships of students' educational attainment with their family backgrounds, eighth-grade course placements, and high school teachers' assessments of their academic potential. The focus is on whether states' mandatory testing policies are associated with differences in public school students' attainment, measured by the likelihood of obtaining a high school diploma and the amount of advanced mathematics course credits students earn. The findings indicate that eighth-grade mathematics courses and teachers' expectations have a weaker relationship with these student outcomes in states with more extensive academic testing and that socioeconomic status has a stronger relationship with these outcomes in states that link test performance to consequences for schools. The results also suggest that outcomes are likely to vary significantly among states for academically vulnerable students.