Fairness for sale: the hidden costs of international language tests.
This Counterpoint challenges the claim that international standardised assessments benefit both learners and teachers. While acknowledging that such tests are unlikely to disappear, we argue that they harm language education. We first deconstruct the historical myths used to legitimise standardisati...
| Publicado en: | ELT Journal: English Language Teaching Journal Vol. 80; no. 1; pp. 100 - 110 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Jan2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=192320373&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 192320373 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 09510893 ELT jtl: ELT Journal: English Language Teaching Journal issn: 09510893 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jan2026 vid: 80 iid: 1 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 192320373 10.1093/elt/ccaf061 ppf: 100 ppct: 10 formats: tig: atl: Fairness for sale: the hidden costs of international language tests. aug: au: Hashimura, Elizabeth McDorman, Richard E Chong, Sin Wang su: Language ability testing Standardization Linguistics Language teachers Foreign language education sug: subj: Language ability testing Standardization Linguistics Language teachers Foreign language education keyword: copyrightHolder:Oxford University Press copyrightYear:2026 edu-washing inLanguage:en language assessment publisher:Oxford University Press raciolinguistic bias sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccaf061 standardisation test fairness ab: This Counterpoint challenges the claim that international standardised assessments benefit both learners and teachers. While acknowledging that such tests are unlikely to disappear, we argue that they harm language education. We first deconstruct the historical myths used to legitimise standardisation, revealing it as a rhetorical move that substitutes genealogy for evidence. We then trace the resulting harms in three ways: mechanistically, through overstandardisation that flattens language and threatens validity; systemically, through the economic machinery of the testing-industrial complex, where 'edu-washing' casts profit as benevolence; and ideologically, through a fiction of fairness that conflates sameness with justice, concealing raciolinguistic, and algorithmic biases. Against this, we propose a human-centred re-orientation of assessment, where validity is both statistical and ethical, and fairness an ongoing relationship rather than a calculation. Reform, we suggest, will not come from better metrics but from empathy, from a willingness to remember what it feels like to be measured. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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