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ELANA SHOHAMY. The power of tests: A critical perspective on the usesof language tests. London: Longman, 2001. Pp. 208. Pb. £17.99.

Reviewed by CLAIRE KRAMSCHDepartment of German

University of California5319 Dwinelle Hall

Berkeley, CA 94720-3243, USAE-mail: ckramsch@socrates.berkeley.edu

This is an impassioned book, written with all the urgency of someonewho is not only an expert in language-testing research, but who has first-hand knowledge of language-policy issues, and of the uses and misusesof tests in social life. Together with Alan Davies, Bernard Spolsky andTim McNamara, Elana Shohamy represents the voice of Critical Testingresearch, a voice that is becoming increasingly heard in a field that, likeApplied Linguistics itself, straddles research and practice. This book is notabout test design, but about the uses, effects and consequences of tests inpublic life.

The book has four major parts. Part I, “The Power of Tests” describestraditional testing and its human and educational casualties. Drawing ontest-takers’ testimonies and on Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, it showsthe detrimental effects tests can have on test-takers, their use as disci-plinary tools and the features that enable them to be used as instrumentsof power and control. It recapitulates the history of the emergence of testsin the USA in the name of equality and democracy. It compares the usesof tests in centralized and decentralized systems of education, drawing onthe distinction, made by sociolinguists, between “ascribed” (centralized)societies, which select their elites according to predetermined citizens’roles and functions, and “achieved” (decentralized) societies, in which“individuals have rights and opportunities to find their places regardlessof their backgrounds and affiliations” (p. 26). In the USA, standardizedtests are believed to achieve this equal opportunity for all, and to effectquality control in an educational system that lacks the central authoritynecessary to impose any common definition of knowledge on its citizens.Tests are therefore tempting for policy-makers, school boards and parentsalike.

Parts II and III, “Uses of Tests,” report on three studies that documentthe relationship between intentions and effects of tests in three large-scalelanguage tests in Israel: a reading comprehension test administered to4th and 5th-grade students in 1993, which was used for standardization

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and control rather than for improving the teaching of reading in schools;an Arabic test, which was meant to raise the level of Arabic-languageinstruction in schools, but in fact only served to redirect textbooks andteaching practices exclusively to the test, and, ultimately, made the testinconsequential for the curriculum; and a high-stake English oral test,which was administered to all students graduating from high school, andwhich failed to bring about changes either in the curriculum or in thetraining of teachers. The author then describes the various uses and effectsof tests. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic power, she decries theunethical and undemocratic ways in which tests are used to make policy,and to perpetuate class differences.

Part IV, “Democratic Perspectives on Testing,” offers strategies forminimizing the misuse of tests. The notion of Critical Language Testingserves to raise the awareness of policy-makers, test designers, and test-takers as to their social responsibility, and to help them monitor the usesand misuses of tests. Taking as a given that “a valid test is one that bringsabout, or induces, an improvement in the tested skills” (p. 142), Shohamyadvocates using multiple assessment procedures, giving ample feedbackand recommendations for pedagogical strategies of language improve-ment, and diversifying the knowledge tested to accommodate the variedcompetencies of individuals in multicultural societies. She urges policy-makers, test-makers and -takers alike to maintain an ongoing dialogue todetermine what knowledge is valued and what short- and long-term effectsexisting tests have on test-takers, education and society. The last threechapters represent an unequivocal call for action, as they lay out a testers’code of ethics and a list of test-takers’ rights. Two appendices give the fulltext of the International Language Testing Association’s (ILTA) Code ofEthics adopted in March 2000, and excerpts from the Australian Councilof State School organizations and the Australian Parents’ Council Codeof Practice regarding the evaluation and reporting of language develop-ment. As the series’ editor concludes: This book is “applied linguistics inaction.”

The power of tests is intended to be a wake-up call for test researcherswho remain too often on the level of psychometrics and neglect the socialand political dimension of their research. It is well written and it drivesits message home in the strongest possible terms. However, preciselybecause it is a message that needs to be heard and heeded, I would havewished for somewhat more documentation and analysis of actual testsamples, as well as for more concrete and detailed cases of test misuse.For, one could argue, misuses of EFL tests for immigration purposes pose

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a different problem from misuses of tests at educational institutions. Ialso would have wished to see a greater variety of educational systemsrepresented in the book beyond Australia, the US and Israel – all threemodels of “achieved” societies. What about the uses and misuses of tests in“ascribed” societies, which form a large proportion of educational systemsin the world? The author rightly draws on Foucault and Bourdieu, but, ofcourse, both thinkers base their theories on French educational practices.These practices are typical of societies in which a centralized educationalsystem is designed to discriminate between the well-educated and the lesswell-educated citizenry and to recruit well-educated elites for the bettergood of society. Foucault would argue that the disciplinary power wieldedby such discriminatory practices is inseparable from the French republicanideal of liberté, égalité, fraternité. Can they be separated from the bestAmerican democratic ideals of liberty and justice for all?

By calling for a dialogue among policy-makers, test-makers and test-takers, the author encourages readers to engage in an open discussion aboutthe many larger issues raised by this book. Some of those that linger in mymind are:

(1) How can “democratic” tests improve education, i.e., give everyoneaccess to the good life, and at the same time serve as gate keepingmechanisms, that have to include some and exclude others?

(2) How can tests at the same time assess a multiplicity of knowledges,and value some knowledges more than others?

(3) If the purpose of tests is to improve learning, then indeed they shouldnot be used for political purposes. But then on what grounds shouldimmigration authorities, educational systems, or employment agenciesgive access to some and refuse access to others?

(4) What would replace all that a test stands for, e.g., rite of passage,ceremonial event, exclusive hierarchy, index of public self-worth,economic value on the job market, in a democratic society that hasreplaced caste privilege with individual merit, nobility of birth withnobility of success?

The great merit of this book is to have thrown the gauntlet for such adiscussion. The challenge deserves to be picked up and engaged with.