Authors: Alfie Kohn
ISBN-13: 9780325003252, ISBN-10: 0325003254
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Heinemann
Date Published: September 2000
Edition: 1st Edition
Alfie Kohn was recently described by Time magazine as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores." He is the author of seven previous books on education and human behavior, including Punished by Rewards (1993), Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community (1996), and The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards" (1999). A former teacher, Kohn now works with educators across the country and speaks regularly at national conferences. He lives (actually) in Belmont, Mass. and (virtually) at www.alfiekohn.org.
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:
Also available on Audiotape: The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools, read by Alfie Kohn.
Measuring what Matters Least | 1 | |
The Worst Tests | 11 | |
Burnt at the High Stakes | 19 | |
Poor Teaching for Poor Kids | 35 | |
If not Standardized Tests, then what? | 41 | |
Fighting the Tests | 50 | |
Notes | 67 | |
Further Reading | 79 | |
References | 82 | |
Index | 91 |