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Author: H. Dickson Corbett
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
This book represents one of the first extensive investigations of the effects of statewide testing policies on local school districts. It focuses on the increasingly popular tool in education of promoting reform by comparison. There is a prevailing assumption among policymakers and state education officials that they can pressure schools into action by comparing schools, school districts, and states on test performances. However, this pressure often pushes schools into taking the wrong actions. The authors have detailed the local responses to statewide, minimum-competency testing programs in two states and conclude that these responses do not in any way resemble the kind of serious examination of purpose, process, and structure involving educators and education stakeholders that one would associate with the term reform. They argue that the blame for this lack of progress lies not with educators' misuse of tests, nor necessarily with the tests themselves, but with policymaker's misuse of testing as a tool for reform. The authors' hope is that this volume will contribute to the demise of a type of educational policy that blocks reform much more than stimulates it.
Author: H. Dickson Corbett
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 200
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book represents one of the first extensive investigations of the effects of statewide testing policies on local school districts. It focuses on the increasingly popular tool in education of promoting reform by comparison. There is a prevailing assumption among policymakers and state education officials that they can pressure schools into action by comparing schools, school districts, and states on test performances. However, this pressure often pushes schools into taking the wrong actions. The authors have detailed the local responses to statewide, minimum-competency testing programs in two states and conclude that these responses do not in any way resemble the kind of serious examination of purpose, process, and structure involving educators and education stakeholders that one would associate with the term reform. They argue that the blame for this lack of progress lies not with educators' misuse of tests, nor necessarily with the tests themselves, but with policymaker's misuse of testing as a tool for reform. The authors' hope is that this volume will contribute to the demise of a type of educational policy that blocks reform much more than stimulates it.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309049814
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
To achieve national goals for education, we must measure the things that really count. Measuring What Counts establishes crucial research- based connections between standards and assessment. Arguing for a better balance between educational and measurement concerns in the development and use of mathematics assessment, this book sets forth three principlesâ€"related to content, learning, and equityâ€"that can form the basis for new assessments that support emerging national standards in mathematics education.
Author: Gail M. Jones
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1461715474
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 189
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Book Description
To better understand how high-stakes accountability has influenced teaching and learning, this book takes an in-depth look at the myriad consequences that high-stakes tests hold for students, teachers, administrators, and the public. By focusing on these tests and spending large amounts of time on test preparation and driving teachers to teach low-level, rote memorization, schools are essentially wiping out non-tested subjects such as science, social studies, physical education, and the arts. Although testing is promoted as a strategy for improving education for all, research shows that testing has differential effects on students with special needs, minority students, students living in poverty, and those for whom English is a second language. The Unintended Consequences of High Stakes Testing unpacks the assumptions and philosophical foundations on which testing policies are based. The authors' arguments are grounded in extensive interviews and research. Through an examination of research, these authors show that high-stakes testing promotes students' dependence on extrinsic motivation at the cost of intrinsic motivation and the associated love of learning—which has tangible impacts on their education and lives. Features: -Examines how high stakes testing from the perspectives of teachers, students, and adminstrators. -Considers how testing impacts the curriculum including tested subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics as well as non-tested subjects such as science, social studies, physical education, and the arts. -Documents how teachers and administrators engage in test preparation and discusses ethical and unethical test preparation practices. -Reviews the evolution of testing through history and how it mpacts the curriculum. -Examines the differential effects of testing on students with special needs, minority students, students living in poverty, and those for whom English is a second language.
Author: Evgeny Finkel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108847498
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 98
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Book Description
Throughout history, reform has provoked rebellion - not just by the losers from reform, but also among its intended beneficiaries. Finkel and Gehlbach emphasize that, especially in weak states, reform often must be implemented by local actors with a stake in the status quo. In this setting, the promise of reform represents an implicit contract against which subsequent implementation is measured: when implementation falls short of this promise, citizens are aggrieved and more likely to rebel. Finkel and Gehlbach explore this argument in the context of Russia's emancipation of the serfs in 1861 - a fundamental reform of Russian state and society that paradoxically encouraged unrest among the peasants who were its prime beneficiaries. They further examine the empirical reach of their theory through narrative analyses of the Tanzimat reforms of the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, land reform in ancient Rome, the abolition of feudalism during the French Revolution, and land reform in contemporary Latin America.
Author: Walter M. Haney
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401121966
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 378
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Book Description
Standardized testing in the United States has been increasing at a rapid pace in the last twenty-five years. The market for tests has not only been expanding rapidly, but has also been changing sharply in structure into a fractured marketplace. Indeed, one of the main features of this book is that the market for standardized testing is highly fractured - with segments of the market facing monopoly conditions, others facing oligopoly conditions and still others where near free-market conditions exist. One of the main premises of the book is that the structures of markets have strong implications for how those markets perform. While this notion is widely accepted among economists, it is not widely appreciated in educational research. A second motivation for the book is that very little scholarly attention has been focused on the standardized testing industry. This topic - the structure of the testing industry and implications for the quality of tests and test use - affects how we evaluate the learning of students, the effectiveness of teaching, the quality of schools and the educational health of the nation. Of particular concern to the authors is one vital aspect of test quality: test validity. This book is the most current and authoritative review and analysis of the market for standardized testing.
Author: Michael Russell
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1607529831
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
As a nation, we spend more than $1 billion a year on federally mandated educational tests that 30 million students must take each year. The country spends an additional $1.2 billion on test preparation materials designed to help students pass these tests. While test mandates were put in place with good intentions, increasingly educational leaders and policy makers are questioning these test based reform efforts. Some question whether these programs are doing more harm than good. Others call for the development of more and better tests. Given the vast amount of resources our nation pours into testing, is it time we pay closer attention to these testing programs? Is it time we hold the testing industry and policy makers accountable for the tests they make and use? Is it time we invest resources to develop new ways of testing our students? The Paradoxes of High-Stakes Testing explores these and other questions, as it helps parents, teachers, educational leaders, and policy makers better understand the complexities of educational policies that use tests as a lever for improving the quality of education. The book explores: >> how testing is used to enable teachers and schools to be more effective and improve student learning, >> why testing is so ingrained in the American psyche and why policy makers rely on testing policies to reform our educational system, >> what we can learn from a long history of test-based reform efforts that have occurred over centuries and across continents, >> what effects testing has on teaching and learning in our schools when it is used to solve political, social, or economic problems. Most importantly, the book describes several ways in which testing can be improved to provide more accurate and more useful measures of student learning. Many of these improvements capitalize on technology to provide teachers with more detailed, diagnostic information about student learning and measure skills that some leaders argue are essential for the 21st century work force. Exploring what is within reach is critical because current testing policies are hindering these improvements. Finally, given that testing is and will continue to be an integral part of our educational system, the book concludes that, like other sectors of our society, educational testing must be more closely monitored to ensure that high quality tests are used to measure student achievement and to minimize the negative effects that testing has on students, schools, and our society. Given the opportunity our nation has to rethink and redesign its testing policies, The Paradoxes of High-Stakes Testing presents a clear strategy to maximize the positive effects of educational testing.
Author: Laura S. Hamilton
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833033980
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
Test-based accountability systems that attach high stakes to standardized test results have raised a number of issues on educational assessment and accountability. Do these high-stakes tests measure student achievement accurately? How can policymakers and educators attach the right consequences to the results of these tests? And what kinds of tradeoffs do these testing policies introduce? This book responds to the growing emphasis on high-stakes testing and offers recommendations for more-effective test-based accountability systems.
Author: Maria Teresa Tatto
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1607523337
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 283
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Book Description
(Originally Published in 2007 by Symposium Books) This book seeks to raise the discussion of globalisation's effects on teacher education, development and work, and its reforms and institutions, to a more theoretical and analytical level, and to provide specific examples in the comparative tradition to illustrate teacher policy in the context of education systems' widespread variability and complexity. The contributors critically analyse current arrangements in teacher education, development and work, and highlight the forces that enter in this contested terrain, the sources of conflict and convergence, and the implication of these for teaching and learning, and for indigenous forms of knowledge and knowledge construction in the globalisation era.
Author: Gerard Giordano
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820472553
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
Although originally designed as instruments to gauge students' progress, tests eventually were used to modify curricula, learning materials, pedagogy, and many practical features of schooling. Tests were employed to shape attitudes toward national issues such as employment, immigration, and defense. Worried about the enormous consequences that were at stake, advocates and opponents pitched their cases to educators, parents, journalists, and policymakers and also targeted special audiences. Testing proponents pleaded with military leaders, businesspeople, and scholastic publishers while their adversaries appealed to job seekers, college applicants, racial minorities, and anti-establishmentarians. This book illustrates how all of these parties showed interest; many became passionate; and some decisively influenced the course of American educational testing.
Author: Elizabeth Anne Yeager
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1607526824
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
The chapters in this volume illustrate how teachers are bringing creativity, higher-order thinking, and meaningful learning activities into particular school settings despite pressures of standards and testing. We chose the word wise for the title of this book, and we use it frequently to describe the pedagogical practices we have identified. The words powerful and ambitious are used as well. The larger point, as Keith C. Barton makes in his chapter, is that there is no necessary connection between content standards and high-stakes tests on the one hand, and lowlevel, rote instruction on the other. He reminds us, as Thornton (1991) and Wiggins (1987) previously have argued, that "teachers play a crucial role in mediating educational policy, and their intentions and interpretations have at least as much influence on classroom practice as does the content of standards and highstakes tests." Barton also asserts that “this makes it all the more crucial to identify the wisdom of practice that enables teachers . . . to engage students in powerful educational experiences.”
