Anti-standardization and testing opt-out movements in education: Resistance, disputes and transformation

Abstract

Testing, scoring comparison and accountability policies have become a ubiquitous part of schooling across most countries in the 21st century. The persistence of these hyper-surveillance measures has occurred in spite of an accumulative and increasing amount of evidence that illustrates negative effects of these kinds of policies. Meanwhile, diverse school actors have grown increasingly skeptical of how tests are being used, leading various groups to mobilize and resist such trends in education. This special issue looks at these resistance movements to school accountability measures across the world, gathering experiences of resistance from movements in countries in South America, Europe, North America, and Asia. This paper provides theoretical tools for analyzing resistance and presents an overview of these movements, highlighting common trends and variations referring to their goals, political strategies and outcomes.