Measuring Up Standards, Assessment, and School Reform [Hardcover]

The question that dismays all teachers and ought to concern everyparent because of what it reveals about what school can do to achild's curiosity -- ?Will this be on the test?' -- will never beanswered again in the same way. Bob Rothman offers a rich andcompelling account of the unfolding revolution in testing inAmerica's schools.
-- Richard P. Mills, Vermont commissioner of education

An award-winning journalist, Rothman cuts through the assessmentdebate -- a debate often characterized by misrepresentations andjargon -- to offer a highly accessible examination of the shift inthinking about testing. He underscores that any change must beginwith the And: what we want students to know and be able to do. Suchchanges demand a new way of knowing what students can achieve--anda system that enables them to achieve.1. A Clash of Visions
2. 150 Years of Testing
3. The Emperor Has No Clothes
4. Pioneers in the State Houses
5. A Test for the Nation?
6. Between Rhetoric and Reality
7. Toward an AgAnda for ReformROBERT ROTHMAN is a senior associate at the National Alliance for Restructuring Education. As an associate editor for Education Week, he covered a broad range of national, state, and local education issues. Rothman also spent a year as a visiting researcher at the Center for Research Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at the University of California, Los Angeles Graduate School of Education.In recent years, schools have been sweeping away traditional notions of how we know what students know. Testing is on the front lines of the education reform debate--by one estimate, the 41 million schoolchildren in America take 127 million tests annually--and the shift in student assessment is turning education itself upside down. In Measuring Up, Robert Rothman clearly and objectively explains the upheaval in thinking about testing that could dramatically transform American education.AlS