Chapter 15: The Future of High-Stakes History Assessment: Possible Scenarios, Potential Outcomes

High-stakes assessment has been the most significant policy change in education during the past decade. Accountability measures shape most considerations related to public education, as resource allocation, curriculum, staffing, and perceptions of success increasingly depend on high-stakes tests. In social studies curriculum history specifically, the implementation of high-stakes assessment has been uneven, and generally, unexamined (Grant, 2003). While there has been some debate within the field as to whether social studies should be included in high-stakes assessments, many argue that a failure to include social studies may cause the withering of history teaching (Savage, 2003). This volume provides ample evidence that such tests do matter. The heuristic that what gets tested is what gets taught is problematized and enriched, however, as illustrated by Jill Gradwell’s study in New York and Stephanie van Hover’s work in Virginia.