Educational accountability and state-mandated tests intend to foster school improvement and to increase academic performance for all students. The core assumption is to establish high educational standards, to assess performance against those standards, and to make students, teachers, parents, and schools accountable for the academic performance of students. Schools and teachers are supposed to thoroughly analyze performance feedback data and to seek for data-based instructional improvements. Visscher and Coe (2003), referring to Rossi and Freeman (1993), described this kind of teacher responses to educational accountability as instrumental or direct use of feedback information. In contrast to the positivistic rationale of educational policy makers, a large body of empirical research in traditionally test-dominated countries (USA, UK) indicates shortcomings and even harmful effects of state mandated testing (e.g. Stecher 2002; Herman 2004; Cheng & Curtis 2004). The consequences, attached to test results, force teachers and schools to "game the system" (Heilig & Darling-Hammond 2008). Visscher and Coe (2003), referring to Smith (1995), define these unintended consequences of mandatory testing as strategical use of feedback data. Furthermore, collegial sensemaking of performance feedback data in schools is often described as poor and depends on internal prerequisites of schools and local support systems (Wikeley, Stoll, & Lodge, 2002; Demie, 2003; Louis, Febey, & Schroeder, 2005). The German federal states commenced to establish test-based school accountability in 2002 as a reaction to sobering results of large-scale assessments in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Thuringia, for example, implemented a value-added testing system for monitoring student performance in the secondary school system (Nachtigall & Jantowski 2007). Although German educational policy makers share the above mentioned belief of educational accountability, mandatory testing in Germany serves other functions than in the U.S. and England. The incentives attached to test results are low, reports are accessible only for teachers and feedback information is aimed to provide performance data for professional development and school self-evaluation. This paper seeks to answer the question how teachers respond to mandatory testing systems in Germany, using the example of Thuringia. It is assumed that the absence of high stakes (e.g. publishing of performance data) and an emphasis on data-based school improvement are fostering teachers' instrumental use of feedback information. The study also aims at describing strategical teacher responses to mandatory testing in Thuringia.

Analysis draws on 18 qualitative interviews with teachers in two grammar schools and seven comprehensive schools in Thuringia. The sampled schools were selected by chance in one urban and one rural school district. Interviews focused on 6th and 8th grade teachers in math, German language, and English language. The study was conducted in late 2007, right after all reports of the 2006/07 mandatory testing cycle were available for schools. In a semi-structured interview, teachers were asked if they use test feedback on the classroom level as additional diagnostic information and evaluative information for critically reflecting on their instruction. A third topic of the interview was the discussion of test scores in faculty meetings. The answers were classified as either instrumental or strategical use of feedback information. Instrumental use encompassed a direct connection of feedback information to the professional knowledge of teachers. Unintended responses were classified as strategical use.

Results suggest that mandatory testing systems in Germany face similar problems as described in the international literature. Some teachers use performance feedback for professional decision making (instrumental use). However, the practical relevance of these data-based decisions is relatively low and confined to reflections on isolated assignments and curricular decisions. There is no single case showing how feedback data could systematically be used for professional reflection. Other teachers report on interpretation strategies which had been classified as strategical use. A common pattern is to blame students and parents for poor test results and to account oneself for satisfactory test results. Another strategy is to reject feedback data as invalid information as of bad alignment with the enacted curriculum. There is little evidence that mandatory testing systems in Germany, so far, can provide instructionally sensitive feedback information.