Based on a large-scale international study of teachers in Los Angeles, Chicago, Ontario, and New York, this book illustrates the ways increased use of high-stakes standardized testing is fundamentally changing education in the US and Canada with a negative overall impact on the way teachers teach and students learn. Standardized testing makes understanding students' strengths and weaknesses more difficult, and class time spent on testing consumes scarce time and attention needed to support the success of all students—further disadvantaging ELLs, students with exceptionalities, low income, and racially minoritized students.
In Writing and School Reform, Joanne Addison and Sharon James McGee respond to a testing and accountability movement that has imposed increasingly stronger measures of control over our classrooms, shifted teaching away from best practices, and eroded teacher and student agency. Drawing on historical and empirical research, Writing and School Reform details the origins of the accountability movement, explores its emerging effects on the teaching of writing, and charts a path forward that reasserts the agency of teachers and researchers in the field.
Kohn's central message is that standardized tests are "not a force of nature but a force of politics--and political decisions can be questioned, challenged, and ultimately reversed."
Radically reimagine our ways of being, learning, and doing Education can be transformed if we eradicate our fixation on big data like standardized test scores as the supreme measure of equity and learning. Instead of the focus being on "fixing" and "filling" academic gaps, we must envision and rebuild the system from the student up—with classrooms, schools and systems built around students’ brilliance, cultural wealth, and intellectual potential. Street data reminds us that what is measurable is not the same as what is valuable and that data can be humanizing, liberatory and healing. By breaking down street data fundamentals: what it is, how to gather it, and how it can complement other forms of data to guide a school or district’s equity journey, Safir and Dugan offer an actionable framework for school transformation. Written for educators and policymakers, this book · Offers fresh ideas and innovative tools to apply immediately · Provides an asset-based model to help educators look for what’s right in our students and communities instead of seeking what’s wrong · Explores a different application of data, from its capacity to help us diagnose root causes of inequity, to its potential to transform learning, and its power to reshape adult culture Now is the time to take an antiracist stance, interrogate our assumptions about knowledge, measurement, and what really matters when it comes to educating young people.
What is assessment literacy? It’s a handful of fundamental understandings about the testing concepts and procedures that influence educational decisions. And it just might be the most cost-effective means of real school improvement. With characteristic humor and aplomb, assessment expert W. James Popham strips away the psychometrician-speak and condenses the complexities of educational testing to six practical and action-oriented understandings about validity, reliability, fairness, score reporting, formative assessment, and affective assessment. This book is for busy educators at the classroom and leadership levels who want • Tests that are worth the valuable time they take to administer. • Tests that accurately measure what student have learned. • Tests that fairly reflect teacher and school effectiveness. • Tests that provide the instructionally useful data that will help students learn faster and better. Assessment Literacy for Educators in a Hurry is the fastest route to acquiring the measurement moxie necessary to understand and advocate for better assessment practices and build a case for stopping ineffective and harmful ones. In just a few hours’ time, you can pick up the knowledge you need to do a whole lot of good—for your students, yourself, and our schools.
Everyone invested in the success of American education, from parents to policymakers, are affected by or concerned about educational testing. The education reform movement of the past 15 years has focused on raising academic standards. Some standards advocates attach a testing mechanism to gauge the extent to which high standards are actually accomplished. On the other hand, some critics view the push for standards and testing as precisely what ails American education. They view testing generally as an impediment to reform, an antiquated technology that reflects an antiquated view of teaching, learning, and social organization, and perpetuates inequality. At the same time, the testing profession has produced advances in the format, accuracy, dependability, and utility of tests. Never before has obtaining such an abundance of accurate and useful information about student learning been possible. And, never before has the American public been in such agreement about the value of testing for measuring student performance, monitoring the performance of educational systems, gauging the success of reforms, and accountability. acknowledge the benefits of testing. Many of these measurement specialists also believe that those benefits have been insufficiently articulated in the public discussions of testing. Although much has been written over the past decade on standardized testing policy, little has been published by measurement specialists who support the use of external, high-stakes standardized testing. Most of the published material has been written by those opposed to such testing. The contributing authors of this volume are both accomplished researchers and practitioners who are respected and admired worldwide. They bring to the project an abundance of experience working with standardized tests. standardized testing situation, arguments, and strategies; explain and refute many of the common criticisms of standardized testing; document the public support for, and the realized benefits of, standardized testing; acknowledge the genuine limitations of, and suggest improvements to, testing practices; provide guidance for structuring and administering large-scale testing programs in light of public preferences and the "No Child Left Behind Act" requirements; and present a defense of standardized testing and a practical vision for its promise and future. Defending Standardized Testing minimizes the use of technical jargon so as to appeal to all who have a stake in American educational reform - parents, policy makers, school board members, teachers, administrators, and measurement specialists.
The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis--and the seemingly endless cycle of multigenerational poverty. It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education. The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension "skills" at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware. But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.
As the current recession ends, many workers will not be returning to the jobs they once held--those jobs are gone. In The New Division of Labor, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane show how computers are changing the employment landscape and how the right kinds of education can ease the transition to the new job market. The book tells stories of people at work--a high-end financial advisor, a customer service representative, a pair of successful chefs, a cardiologist, an automotive mechanic, the author Victor Hugo, floor traders in a London financial exchange. The authors merge these stories with insights from cognitive science, computer science, and economics to show how computers are enhancing productivity in many jobs even as they eliminate other jobs--both directly and by sending work offshore. At greatest risk are jobs that can be expressed in programmable rules--blue collar, clerical, and similar work that requires moderate skills and used to pay middle-class wages. The loss of these jobs leaves a growing division between those who can and cannot earn a good living in the computerized economy. Left unchecked, the division threatens the nation's democratic institutions. The nation's challenge is to recognize this division and to prepare the population for the high-wage/high-skilled jobs that are rapidly growing in number--jobs involving extensive problem solving and interpersonal communication. Using detailed examples--a second grade classroom, an IBM managerial training program, Cisco Networking Academies--the authors describe how these skills can be taught and how our adjustment to the computerized workplace can begin in earnest.
