Part 1: The assessment industry and the concomitant stratification of student populations

Chapter 1 The purpose and function of assessment in policy and politics

Chapter 2 International test comparisons

Chapter 3 Teacher assessment

Chapter 4 Implications for educational stratification related to enduring forms of difference

Part 2: Assessing deviance: Consequential assumptions of assessment and diagnostic practices

Chapter 5 Assessment and identification practices: A critique of paradigmatic assumptions

Chapter 6 Limited English Proficiency

Chapter 7 Intellectual/cognitive impairments and mental disorders

Chapter 8 Specific learning disabilities in the Response to Intervention era

Part 3: The consequences of assessment and identification practices

Chapter 9 The production of inequalities within assessment in relation to race, class and gender

Chapter 10 Over- and under-representation of cultural minorities

Chapter 11 Racial disparities in discipline and disability identification as precursors of the school-to-prison pipeline

Chapter 12 Gaming practices surrounding policy remedies to reduce racial disparities in special education

Part 4: Fair assessment?

Chapter 13 Critical challenges for assessment germane to racial and cultural disproportionalities

Chapter 14 Alternative assessment approaches

Julie Allan is is Professor of Equity and Inclusion and Head of the Department of Disability, Inclusion and Special Needs at the University of Birmingham, UK, and Visiting Professor at the University of Borås in Sweden.

Alfredo J. Artiles is Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and the Ryan C. Harris Professor of Special Education at Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.

This latest volume in the World Yearbook of Education Series focuses on assessment systems and efforts to advance equity in education at a time of growing inequalities. It considers new economic trends and investigates how constraints appear to be influencing assessment and identification practices. The volume is organized around the following main issues: political motives behind the expansion of an assessment industry; the associated expansion of an SEN industry, and; growth in consequential accountability systems. It ultimately seeks to provide reframings and reconceptualizations of assessment and identification by offering new insights into economic and cultural trends influencing them.