Abstract
The purpose of this article is to analyze, from a critical perspective, how standardized tests operate in contemporary schools and to discuss their contribution to the improvement of education. Considering the power that evaluation has acquired over the past three decades around the world —as manifested in their ability to influence both curriculum design and expected outcomes of learning—, it is important to reflect on how standardized testing works, since these type of tests are the instruments par excellence employed by most national educational systems from developing countries to assess school performance. The article also contrast the situation of how evaluation is conducted in developed countries with that of developing ones, where the first ones are living in an era of poststandarization while in the second, standardized tests have increased their hegemony and influence. The paper closes with an analysis of the scope and limitations of standardized testing for the improvement of education, stopping, particularly in the case of Mexico.
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