In the November 1998 editorial, Alberto Rodriguez raised several questions on the power of the researcher to choose whether to be an agent of change while engaged in research. I would like to continue to probe such issues in the context of addressing the construct of agency in educational research (see Rodriguez, 1998).
Policymakers and educators associated with the process of schooling use testing and tracking to determine who has access to education and who has access to training. While the focus of this editorial is upon testing and tracking, I believe it is important to clarify the purposes of schooling, education, and training before proceeding further. Schooling is primarily a mode of social control. Education has the potential to transform society, with the learner functioning as an active subject committed to self and social empowerment. Training refers to a type of functional literacy in which students learn to read, write, and acquire skills for specialized employment, with the learner typically being subjected to a classroom where transmission, standardization, and control are the defining principles of the curriculum. Present-day variations on the corporate-inspired reform movement referred to as "school-to-work" epitomize the values of training and the desire to reduce the curriculum to little more than job preparation. Educators ought to be concerned about the dual threat of such corporate-inspired reforms: the shifting of the cost to train employees to the public schools and the loss of control of the educational system to corporate intervention, commercialization, and consumerism/consumption. Giroux (1994) notes that what is at risk "is both the traditionally civic, democratic function of public schooling and the very nature of how we define the democratic community, critical citizenship, and the most basic premises of teaching and learning" (p. 51).
Test-based decision making and tracking of students exert a powerful influence on curriculum and instruction and the educational opportunities afforded students. Through the (mis)use of test scores and tracking, students are placed into different courses, levels, and kinds of instructional programs that result in either enhancing or limiting their life-long learning and career opportunities. The fact of the matter is that the great majority of youth who attend school are tracked for the purpose of being trained to respect authority, as well as to acquire vocational skills and work habits to function as workers. These students find themselves in low-track classes (often referred to as "basic"), in which they are seldom challenged, offered a curriculum oriented toward lower order cognitive skills, and continually exposed to less-demanding academic pursuits. The lived experience of students in such classes is an exposure to "science" that focuses upon mechanical, lower-order skills, and the rapid recognition of factual information, an experience that emulates what is valued by standardized tests. And, what I have observed over the past decade is that as teachers are pressured to ensure that student performance on stan-