The belief that the achievement of students in the United States schools was falling behind other countries led politicians in the 1970s to instigate a minimum competency testing movement to reform our schools. States began to rely on tests of basic skills to ensure, in theory, that all students would learn at least the minimum needed to be a productive citizen (Amrein & Berliner).

In 1983, the National Commission of Education released a Nation at Risk, the most influential report on education in the past several decades. A Nation at Risk called for an end to the minimum. The competency testing movement and the beginning of the high-stakes testing movement that would raise the nation's standards of achievement drastically. This was a direct result of the perception that America was falling behind other nations in the education of their youth.

In discussing current high-stakes testing practices, test scores were often...
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