The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools by Alfie Kohn

The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools by Alfie Kohn

Our students are tested to an extent that is unprecedented in American history and unparalleled anywhere in the world. Politicians and businesspeople, determined to get tough with students and teachers, have increased the pressure to raise standardized test scores. Unfortunately, the effort to do so typically comes at the expense of more meaningful forms of learning.

That disturbing conclusion emerges from Alfie Kohn's devastating new indictment of standardized testing. Drawing from the latest research, he concisely explains just how little test results really tell us and just how harmful a test-driven curriculum can be. Written in a highly readable question-and-answer format, The Case Against Standardized Testing will help readers respond to common questions and challenges-showing, for example, that:

• high scores often signify relatively superficial thinking
• many of the leading tests were never intended to measure teaching or learning
• a school that improves its test results may well have lowered its standards to do so
• far from helping to close the gap, the use of standardized testing is most damaging for low-income and minority students
• as much as 90 percent of the variations in test scores among schools or states have nothing to do with the quality of instruction
• far more meaningful measures of student learning-or school quality-are available.

Kohn's central message is that standardized tests are not like the weather, something to which we must resign ourselves. . . . They are not a force of nature but a force of politics-and political decisions can be questioned, challenged, and ultimately reversed. The final section demonstrates how teachers, parents, and students can turn their frustration into action and successfully turn back the testing juggernaut in order to create classrooms that focus on learning.

Also available on Audiotape: The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools, read by Alfie Kohn.

Alfie Kohn writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. The author of thirteen books and scores of articles, he lectures at education conferences and universities, as well as to parent groups and corporations. Kohn's criticisms of competition and rewards have been widely discussed and debated, and he has been described in Time magazine as perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9783250032540
ISBN 10	3250032549
Title	The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools
Author	Alfie Kohn
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Ingram
Year published	2000-09-08
Number of pages	0
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.