Measuring Up: Standards, Assessment, and School Reform » (1st Edition)

ROBERT 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.

"The question that dismays all teachers and ought to concern every parent because of what it reveals about what school can do to a child's curiosity — ?Will this be on the test?' — will never be answered again in the same way. Bob Rothman offers a rich and compelling account of the unfolding revolution in testing in America's schools."
— Richard P. Mills, Vermont commissioner of education

An award-winning journalist, Rothman cuts through the assessment debate — a debate often characterized by misrepresentations and jargon — to offer a highly accessible examination of the shift in thinking about testing. He underscores that any change must begin with the And: what we want students to know and be able to do. Such changes demand a new way of knowing what students can achieve—and a system that enables them to achieve.

Publishers Weekly

Prominent among the current educational reforms is the revamping of student assessment-a turning away from traditional testing as a means of evaluating student achievement. The revamped system focuses on ``what students should leave school knowing and being able to do,'' rather than on scores and percentiles, which, as the author points out, can often be misleading. This clear-sighted exploration of achievement testing in elementary and secondary schools by an editor at Education Week shows how the system has operated in specific school districts and takes note of opposition from certain school boards and voters who fear new approaches are ``misguided and potentially dangerous.'' Rothman delineates changes in learning that will be required of teachers and students for implementation of reform. The effort to redefine standards and codify what is expected of students is ongoing, but as Rothman concludes, ``the road to the twenty-first century begins with a new way of knowing what young people know.'' Primarily for educators and policymakers. (Apr.)