Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences Valenzuela / Significance of the TAAS The Significance of the TAAS Test for Mexican Immigrant and Mexican American Adolescents: A Case Study Angela Valenzuela The University of Texas at Austin This article draws primarily from a 3-year qualitative case study to offer evidence that high-stakes testing is one among a number of alienating features of schooling. The focus is on low-achieving Mexican-origin students attending a segregated, urban high school located in Houston, Texas. The data show that the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills test often discourages regular- track, Mexican American and Mexican immigrant stu- dents from completing high school or considering a college education. The required, English-only nature of the exit test is also highlighted as a key reason why limited-Eng- lish-proficient, primarily Mexican immigrant, students fail to meet the passing require- ment at high rates. High-stakes testing is characterized herein as embedded within a larger logic that systematically negates Mexican youths’ culture and language. Although proponents of the current system of accountability in Texas see it as a system that has brought attention to previously underserved children (e.g., Sklar & Scheurich, 2000), I submit that this system reflects yet another way in which children and their communities are objectified or treated as objects. The summaries captured in the current Special Issue help illustrate how this system of high-stakes testing—from its development to its imple- mentation—is something that has been done to rather than with minority youths and their communities. This treatment not only makes students feel as though they are not cared for, but such objectification is part of a very long history of cultural disparagement and dismissiveness in our public school system. Operating under the guise of technical rationality, high-stakes testing is thus party to a larger logic that fosters alienation toward schooling through a systematic negation of these students’ Mexican culture and language. 1 Unproductive relations, divisions, and conflict between acculturated Mexi- Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 22 No. 4, November 2000 524-539 © 2000 Sage Publications, Inc. 524