The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better

Description

For decades we’ve been studying, experimenting with, and wrangling over different approaches to improving public education, and there’s still little consensus on what works, and what to do. The one thing people seem to agree on, however, is that schools need to be held accountable—we need to know whether what they’re doing is actually working. But what does that mean in practice? High-stakes tests. Lots of them. And that has become a major problem. Daniel Koretz, one of the nation’s foremost experts on educational testing, argues in The Testing Charade that the whole idea of test-based accountability has failed—it has increasingly become an end in itself, harming students and corrupting the very ideals of teaching. In this powerful polemic, built on unimpeachable evidence and rooted in decades of experience with educational testing, Koretz calls out high-stakes testing as a sham, a false idol that is ripe for manipulation and shows little evidence of leading to educational improvement. Rather than setting up incentives to divert instructional time to pointless test prep, he argues, we need to measure what matters, and measure it in multiple ways—not just via standardized tests. Right now, we’re lying to ourselves about whether our children are learning. And the longer we accept that lie, the more damage we do. It’s time to end our blind reliance on high-stakes tests. With The Testing Charade, Daniel Koretz insists that we face the facts and change course, and he gives us a blueprint for doing better. Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgments......Page 8 1. Beyond All Reason......Page 10 2. What Is a Test?......Page 20 3. The Evolution of Test-Based “Reform”......Page 30 4. Campbell’s Law......Page 46 5. Score Inflation......Page 58 6. Cheating......Page 82 7. Test Prep......Page 102 8. Making Up Unrealistic Targets......Page 128 9. Evaluating Teachers......Page 146 10. Will the Common Core Fix This?......Page 170 11. Did Kids Learn More?......Page 184 12. Nine Principles for Doing Better......Page 202 13. Doing Better......Page 218 14. Wrapping Up......Page 252 Notes......Page 258 Index......Page 274