Hugging the Middle: Teaching in an Era of Testing and Accountability, 1980-2005

Creator

Larry Cuban

Files

Publisher

Arizona State University, University of South Florida

Publication Date

January 2007

Abstract

In the last quarter-century and especially the last decade, testing and accountability have come to dominate education policy at the state and national levels. The common concern about the effects of such testing is that it reshapes teaching in the classroom. But such claims do not look at the evidence of deeper classroom structures (the mix of teacher-centered and student-centered practices) in historical context. This article extends historical research in How Teachers Taught (Cuban, 1993) to the present in three metropolitan school districts. While testing and accountability have become more obvious concerns of teachers, the hybridized classroom environment documented in How Teachers Taught have become more pervasive. This article documents this continuing ubiquity and addresses the apparent inconsistency between evidence of a hybridized classroom environment and the unintended consequences of testing and accountability.

Keywords

United States. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Classroom environment, Instruction

Extent

29

Geographic Location

Denver (Colo.); Arlington (Va.); Oakland (Ca.)

Volume

15

Issue

1

Language

English; Spanish

Media Type

Journals (Periodicals)

Format

Digital Only

Note

Citation: Cuban, L. (2007). Hugging the middle: Teaching in an era of testing and accountability. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 15(1). Retrieved [date] from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v15n1/

Identifier

E11-00508

Creative Commons

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Cuban, Larry, "Hugging the Middle: Teaching in an Era of Testing and Accountability, 1980-2005" (2007). Education Policy Analysis Archives (EPAA). 222.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/usf_EPAA/222