Measuring Up: Standards, Assessment, and School Reform Tapa dura - 1995

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.An award-winning journalist, Rothman cuts through a debate often characterized by misrepresentations and jargon to offer a highly accessible examination of the shift in thinking about testing. Through illustrative case studies of assessment programs in pioneering schools in Colorado, California, Vermont, and Kentucky, he goes inside the classrooms to see how change came about and what the new methods actually look like in practice. In their own words, teachers and administrators describe how changes in testing have affected teaching and learning and what the schools now expect of students.The author also reveals the myriad problems reformers are encountering, including research findings that show the difficulty of accurately measuring performance and opposition from parents and community members who consider the reforms misguided and even dangerous.Throughout the book, Rothman 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.