Test, Measure, Punish
How the Threat of Closure Harms Students, Destroys Teachers, and Fails Schools
Published on 24. June 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
277 pages
978-1-4798-2339-0 (ISBN)
Description
The risk of closure and repression in schools
In the last two decades, education officials have closed a rising number of public schools nationwide related to low performance. These schools are mainly located in neglected neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty. Despite this credible threat of closure, relatively few individual schools threatened with closure for low performance in the United States are actually shut down. Yet, as Erin Michaels argues, the looming threat is ever present. Test, Measure, Punish critically shifts the focus from school shutdowns to the more typical situation within these strained public schools: operating under persistent risk of closure.
Many K-12 schools today face escalating sanctions if they do not improve according to repressive state mandates, which, in turn, incentivize schools to put into place nonstop test drills and strict student conduct rules. Test, Measure, Punish traces how threats of school closure have distorted education to become more punitive which disproportionately impacts-even targets-Black and Latinx communities and substantially hurts student social development. This book addresses how these new punitive schooling conditions for troubled schools reproduce racial inequalities.
Michaels centers her research in a suburban upstate New York high school serving mainly working-class Black and Latinx students. She reveals a new model of schooling based on testing and security regimes that expands the carceral state, making the students feel dejected, criminalized, and suspicious of the system, their peers, and themselves. Test, Measure, Punish offers a new theory of schooling inequality and shows in vivid detail why state-led school reforms represent a new level of racialized citizenship in an already fragmented public education system.
In the last two decades, education officials have closed a rising number of public schools nationwide related to low performance. These schools are mainly located in neglected neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty. Despite this credible threat of closure, relatively few individual schools threatened with closure for low performance in the United States are actually shut down. Yet, as Erin Michaels argues, the looming threat is ever present. Test, Measure, Punish critically shifts the focus from school shutdowns to the more typical situation within these strained public schools: operating under persistent risk of closure.
Many K-12 schools today face escalating sanctions if they do not improve according to repressive state mandates, which, in turn, incentivize schools to put into place nonstop test drills and strict student conduct rules. Test, Measure, Punish traces how threats of school closure have distorted education to become more punitive which disproportionately impacts-even targets-Black and Latinx communities and substantially hurts student social development. This book addresses how these new punitive schooling conditions for troubled schools reproduce racial inequalities.
Michaels centers her research in a suburban upstate New York high school serving mainly working-class Black and Latinx students. She reveals a new model of schooling based on testing and security regimes that expands the carceral state, making the students feel dejected, criminalized, and suspicious of the system, their peers, and themselves. Test, Measure, Punish offers a new theory of schooling inequality and shows in vivid detail why state-led school reforms represent a new level of racialized citizenship in an already fragmented public education system.
Reviews / Votes
"Erin Michaels's excellent book turns much-needed attention to a stressed high school in the New York suburbs. Hard hit by divestment, white flight, unfair state student performance standards, and the constant threat of closure, Sandview High is a window into the continued and evolving neoliberalization of schooling. As the book makes clear, collective willpower is needed to reverse course on regimes of measuring and punishing that disproportionately harm Black and Latinx young people." - Freeden Blume Oeur, author of Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Male Public Schools"In Test, Measure, Punish, Michaels unveils how punitive regimes of testing and disciplinary sanctions serve to individualize student struggles, reinforcing the cycle of school failure while obscuring deeper systemic issues like racial segregation and economic divestment. Through a powerful exploration of the struggles faced by a New York suburban school, she shows how districts, states, and federal entities impose impossible standards on impoverished schools with high-needs populations, disguised as motivation for improvement. By shedding light on the ways that redistricting allows wealthier families to hoard opportunities, while impoverished, majority Black and Latinx schools, are burdened with surveillance and blame, Michaels provides an eye-opening look at how 'bad' schools are intentionally created and sustained. With limited resources, these schools are subjected to an unforgiving testing culture, where the threat of state takeover looms large. Michaels digs deep into the profound consequences of 'schooling under threat,' offering a vital, sobering analysis of its impact on our most vulnerable youth" - Jennifer Jones, author of The Browning of the New South
"Test, Measure, Punish is an incisive study about how neoliberal accountability policies shape the educational experiences of marginalized youth. Michaels deftly shows how such policies undermine student access to resources and erode their sense of political agency. Test Measure Punish is an urgent call for us to rethink the role of education and accountability politics in fostering young people's democratic engagement and fights for justice." - C.J. Pascoe, author of Nice is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
1 b/w image
Dimensions
Height: 228 mm
Width: 153 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
322 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4798-2339-0 (9781479823390)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Erin Michaels
Test, Measure, Punish
How the Threat of Closure Harms Students, Destroys Teachers, and Fails Schools
E-Book
06/2025
NYU Press
€19.49
Available for download
Person
Erin Michaels is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.