Objectifying measures: mapping the terrain of statistical discourse in the hegemony and racial politics of high stakes testing
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The way that the policy of high-stakes testing obtains a hegemonic status in Texas can be conceptualized through an analysis of statistical discourse. High-stakes testing historically emerged in the context of conservative opposition to (and deferring of) desegregation. Conservative deconstruction of statistical proofs of racial discrimination has accompanied a rearticulation of public school accountability in a discourse of markets, heavily relying on statistical indexes. Statistical discourse serves as a means of both “efficiently” managing students and structuring public conceptions of the progress of public education. In order to maintain the statistical guise of progress, many schools target students of color as potential risks and engage in acts that prevent the scores of students of color “at risk” of failing from being counted. Statistical discourse protects neoliberal and neoconservative interests in privatizing public education by both making possible the profitability of high-stakes testing as a business, and also constructing a discourse that “proves” equitable public schooling to be inefficient and an inevitable failure. By negotiating uncertainty, representing a collective, and serving as a form of proof, statistical discourse also provides a means by which the “truth” about high-stakes testing can be formed. Counter-hegemonic struggles against high-stakes testing centered precisely on a counter-discourse to statistics: narrative, particularly students’ stories of experiencing objectification. The case for radically democratizing statistics and testing through multiple criteria (or multiple assessments) is discussed.