Leaving Children Behind: How "Texas-style" Accountability Fails Latino Youth »

The federal government has based much of its education policies on those adopted in Texas. This book examines how "Texasstyle" accountabilitythe notion that decisions governing retention, promotion, and graduation should be based on a single test scorefails Latina/o youth and their communities. The contributors, many of them from Texas, scrutinize state policies concerning highstakes testing and provide new data that demonstrate how Texas's current system of testing results in a plethora of new inequalities. They argue that Texas policies exacerbate historic inequities, fail to accommodate the needs and abilities of English language learners, and that the dramatic educational improvement attributed to Texas's system of accountability is itself questionable. The book proposes a more valid and democratic approach to assessment and accountability that would combine standardized examinations with multiple sources of information about a student's academic performance.

Author Biography: Angela Valenzuela is Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her 1999 book Subtractive Schooling: U.S.Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring, also published by SUNY Press, won both the American Educational Research Association's Outstanding Book Award for 2000 and the American Educational Studies Association's Critics' Choice Award for 2001.