There may also be a race or class component to this issue. For example, while a story about racism by Richard Wright might upset some middle-class White students, it might powerfully engage some Black students and spur them to do better. Research indicates that students perform better on topics of interest to them. On the other side, some research suggests that middle class students are better able to deal with decontextualized or depersonalized material than are students from lower-income families. Thus, stories that appear removed from their lives or couched in a supposedly neutral language might be so uninteresting to working- class students that they are not inspired to try.
Openness is again the best path to a solution.
More people should be involved in selecting stories, the pool of stories should be known, and the kinds of questions chosen should be publicly discussed. The state should try out stories and questions on various groups to find out which ones anger and upset, which encourage thoughtful responses, and whether different stories and prompts produce responses that differ by demographic groups. This will not make the tensions between arousing interest and provoking anger vanish, but it should lessen the likelihood of inflammatory stories being used on exams. At the same time, it should help build support for performance assessment by encouraging discussion. Uncertainty about the uses of the test also caused problems in California.