Alignment and Convergence for What? And How? Tensions of Writing Instruction Within a Test-Based Accountability System

Abstract

Alignment between standards, instruction, and assessments is typically portrayed as an ideal system of education that is often thwarted by political and logistical obstacles. I present a case where a State system was well-aligned around text-based writing instruction. Teachers also had common understandings of the policies and aligned their goals for instruction. However, whether this was a successful system depends on the learning theory used to evaluate it. The coherent and tightly aligned system is a “success” within a behaviorist or cognitivist frame, but in tension with sociocultural theories: both in what was emphasized and lost and how alignment and convergence occurred. High-stakes tests were the lynchpin of alignment, which created institutional pressures for teachers to acculturate their writing instruction to test-based goals. As a result, educational discourse narrowed and converged, but at the expense of engaging with the sociopolitical, epistemic, ethical, and cultural aspects of literacy.