Abstract of

One Reading Specialist's Response to High-Stakes Testing Pressures

Lori Assaf

Pressures to help students pass high-stakes tests affect teachers' reading instruction, their responsiveness to students' learning needs, and their professional effectiveness. This article reports on how one reading specialist responded to testing pressures in her urban elementary school. She believed that what was “right” for her students was to nurture them as real readers and give them opportunities to engage in authentic book discussions, but she felt pushed to consider test scores over all other literacy practices and found herself neglecting long-term goals for short-term test success.

The author considers the difficulties this reading specialist experienced and provides insights on ways teachers can push back against pressures to teach to the test in order to stay true to their own educational values and professional knowledge.

Abstract from Assaf, L. (2006, October). One Reading Specialist's Response to High-Stakes Testing Pressures. The Reading Teacher, 60(2), 158–167. doi: 10.1598/RT.60.2.6