The Lower-Order Expectations of High-Stakes Tests: A Four-State Analysis of Social Studies Standards and Test Alignment

DeWitt, Scott W.; Patterson, Nancy; Blankenship, Whitney G.; Blevins, Brooke; DiCamillo, Lorrei; Gerwin, David; Gradwell, Jill M.; Gunn, John H.; Maddox, Lamont E.; Salinas, Cinthia; Saye, John W.; Stoddard, Jeremy D.; Sullivan, Caroline C.

doi:10.1080/00933104.2013.787031

Cited by 27 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In social studies education, interest is growing in providing insight on the constraints and affordances of the state social studies standards with regard to engaging students in critical thinking. For example, DeWitt et al (2013) examined the extent to which four states mandated social studies assessments promoted grades 9-12 students' higher-order thinking, highlighting the alignment between test scores and the competencies laid out in state standards using Bloom's Taxonomy. They found several states' social studies standards content and benchmarks expected students to demonstrate higher-order thinking and problem-solving.…”

Section: Theoretical Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Available evidence on critical thinking, as it relates to social studies content standards for students, provides unique insights. As DeWitt et al (2013) reported for high school students, many states' standards and their learning objectives favor lower-level thinking while others expect students to demonstrate higher-order thinking and problem-solving. There are fewer evidence to substantiate these findings for elementary social studies education.…”

mentioning

confidence: 90%

See 1 more Smart Citation

K-5 social studies content standards: investigating critical thinking for informed action

Odebiyi

2021

SSRP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore the dynamics of critical thinking for informed action within the frame of six sample US states’ Kindergarten-5 social studies content standards.Design/methodology/approachThis study used quantitative content analysis. In addition to describing how the states’ standards present critical thinking for informed action, four variables were included: the enrollment weight of the states, textbook adoption status to advance standards, summative test status for social studies and grade levels.FindingsThe results indicate complex variations in context-based critical thinking levels are required by the sample states’ content standards with an extensive orientation toward superficial contextual thinking.Originality/valueThe study provides a new lens with which to make sense of students’ context-based critical thinking, as it relates to the expectations found in standards. It discusses the implications of the states’ K-5 standards on engaging students in critical thinking.

show abstract

Section: Theoretical Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 90%

K-5 social studies content standards: investigating critical thinking for informed action

Odebiyi

2021

SSRP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Additionally, the 2015–2016 US history blue print presents evidence that the extended-response item is a measure of literacy in social studies and that its purpose is to evaluate students' abilities to demonstrate their literacy skills in social studies (TDOE, 2015a, Figure A1). This is important to note as DeWitt et al (2013) revealed that even though many states standards focused on students' development of higher-order and critical thinking skills, the states' assessments evaluated students' lower-order skills. In regard to the 2015–2016 TN US history EOC extended-response item, this was not case.…”

Section: Tennessee Us History End Of Course Exam and Associated Accountabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the racial achievement gap on US history written-response state assessment items

Miller

2020

SSRP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PurposeMany states are restructuring their US history state assessments to include written-response assessment items that evaluate students' literacy skills in high-stakes environments. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the addition of an extended-response item to a US history state assessment was associated with an increase in the racial achievement gap.Design/methodology/approachThe theoretical framework included linguistic complexity of standardized assessment items and academic language demand and utilized a difference-in-difference research design.FindingsThe findings indicate that the achievement gap between students of color and White students increased when an extended-response assessment item was added to an exclusively multiple-choice item exam and that this increase in the achievement gap may be contributed to a literacy gap.Research limitations/implicationsThe continued investigation of how students of color perform on different types of extended-response standardized assessment items. And, the continued investigation of evidenced-based instructional practices that focus on developing students' literacy skills in US history as well as culturally responsive instructional practices.Practical implicationsThe knowledge and implementation of literacy instruction and culturally responsive instruction in US history classrooms as well as in preservice teacher education programs and in-service professional development programs.Originality/valueThe current study is one of the first large-scale investigations into the racial achievement gap on US history written-response standardized assessment items and in identifying a literacy gap between students of color and White students on US history written-response state assessment items.

show abstract

“…Breakstone, Smith, & Wineburg (2013) and Ercikan, Seixas, Lyons-Thomas and Gibson (2012) are working on stand-alone assessments that, independent of individual students' historical knowledge, can test different components of historical literacy. On the other hand, state testing in history often remains firmly committed to lower order recall, regardless of what aspirations state standards may have towards historical literacy (DeWitt et al, 2013).…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

An essay review of Building Students Historical Literacies: Learning to Read and Reason with Historical Texts and Evidence. Vol 17 No. 9

Gerwin

2014

edrev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

2017-2018. But individual history teachers are left very much in the lurch by the new Common Core requirements.Building Students' Historical Literacies, Jeffrey Nokes' new book, will help curriculum planners, teacher educators, teacher candidates, teachers, policy makers, and even parents think more clearly about the place of history teaching in the current literacy-focused world. Nokes synthesizes over twenty years of research about how historians encounter texts in writing a book focusing on student literacies that draw upon current concerns about building student understandings represented most prominently by the Common Core. This book will also provide social studies teacher certification candidates with plenty of research-based disciplinary literacy strategies and goals for deployment on the edTPA (discussed below). While up-to-date, the vision for a history classroom Nokes articulates is not new, but is instead in the tradition of longstanding arguments from scholars and educators in favor of social studies classes where students encounter historical scholarship driven by questions and examine evidence that provokes debates over multiple interpretations of the past (Engle, 1960;Holt, 1990).

show abstract

The Lower-Order Expectations of High-Stakes Tests: A Four-State Analysis of Social Studies Standards and Test Alignment

Cited by 27 publications

References 15 publications

K-5 social studies content standards: investigating critical thinking for informed action

K-5 social studies content standards: investigating critical thinking for informed action

Exploring the racial achievement gap on US history written-response state assessment items

An essay review of Building Students Historical Literacies: Learning to Read and Reason with Historical Texts and Evidence. Vol 17 No. 9

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About