However, crises can be manufactured and policed in the interests of pursuing political goals. This is not to say that the public consciousness simply accepts the rhetoric of social and political forces, for indeed the rhetoric must correspond to some conception within the public understanding of schools and society. The complexity of the argument lies in the notion that a crisis in authority does not necessarily correspond to a crisis in materiality. What the power structure describes as problematic may or may not actually exist. This essay proposes that the rise of high-stakes testing in American education primarily follows the model of a 'law and order' response to a crisis in authority of hegemonic power.

In order to understand the relationship between high-stakes testing and its synonymous projection on history as the 'age of accountability,' Stuart Hall's Policing the Crisis (Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, & Roberts, 1978) provides an interesting parallel depiction of the response of the dominant forces in the power structure to changing social and political relations.

Harry order of the phoenix pdf