Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/High-stakes testing


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was Keep (nomination withdrawn). Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:10, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

High-stakes testing
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Removed prod, personal essay. Author added a few sources in response to prod, but none of them gave any solid evidence that they were doing anything other than using ordinary English words with their usual meaning. Trovatore (talk) 22:58, 8 January 2008 (UTC) withdraw nomination


 * Strong keep. A Google search turned up 221,000 results, and the first one is from the widely recognized American Psychological Association. At least in the U.S., high-stakes testing is a major educational issue, made more so by Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates such testing in U.S. schools. Some of the examples in the article may not be the best, but the overview looks pretty sound, and the summary of major sticking points at the end seems right on target. The article definitely needs more sourcing, but the notability of the topic would be difficult or impossible to contest. Valerius (talk) 03:17, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
 * comment While it's possible I was a bit hasty on this nom, what I'd like to see is something indicating that it's a genuine term of art, and not just three English words used with their ordinary meaning. Can you speak specifically to that? Say, with sources that indicate that researchers have isolated a specific concept for which they've agreed to use this terminology? If you could convince me on that point I'd withdraw the nomination (but would suggest that something about it be added to the article). --Trovatore (talk) 03:31, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Here is one example: An Amazon.com search turned up 1,448 results, and at first blush, nearly all of them seem to include the term high-stakes testing. The only uncertainty is whether to hyphenate or not. You might also check the Google results above. Personally, I've seen and heard dozens of news reports on the topic, and I've never heard it called anything else. Education news sources like EdWeek have lots of articles on high-stakes testing. I'd say it's as much a term of art as "ozone layer". Valerius (talk) 04:22, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm still a little uneasy with this; it seems like a lot of people are talking about high-stakes testing, but it's not quite as clear that they all agree on exactly what it is. That can be a formula for an article that can hardly avoid "original research by synthesis". But the term does seem to have a large enough footprint that just deleting the article no longer seems a good option. I would just appeal to those who work on it to be extra scrupulous about avoiding original synthesis. --Trovatore (talk) 04:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.