Test, Measure, Punish: How the Threat of Closure Harms Students, Destroys Teachers, and Fails Schools: 16 (Critical Perspectives on Youth)

The risk of closure and repression in schoolsIn the last two decades, education officials have closed a rising number of public schools nationwide related to low performance.These schools are mainly located in neglected neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty.Despite this credible threat of closure, relatively few individual schools threatened with closure for low performance in the United States are actually shut down.Yet, as Erin Michaels argues, the looming threat is ever present.Test, Measure, Punish critically shifts the focus from school shutdowns to the more typical situation within these strained public schools: operating under persistent risk of closure. Many K-12 schools today face escalating sanctions if they do not improve according to repressive state mandates, which, in turn, incentivize schools to put into place nonstop test drills and strict student conduct rules.Test, Measure, Punish traces how threats of school closure have distorted education to become more