The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis--and the seemingly endless cycle of multigenerational poverty. It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education. The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension "skills" at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware. But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.

Current information about tests and testing procedures is provided for school district staff, particularly in districts without specially trained testing directors. Practical information is given about selecting and administering tests and about reporting results effectively. This guide opens with a discussion of the basic principles of testing. The various types of district-level tests are described, and different types of test scores are presented. The advantages and limitations of certain types of tests and scores are reviewed. The viewpoints of measurement experts on important issues in testing are expressed in the following chapters: (1) "Common Misuses of Standardized Tests" (Eric Gardner); (2) "Preparing Students To Take Standardized Achievement Tests" (William A. Mehrens); (3) "Matching Your Curriculum and Standardized Tests" (Jane C. Conoley); (4) "Using Customized Standardized Tests" (Paul L. Williams); (5) "Interpreting Test Scores for Compensatory Education Students" (Gary Echternacht); and (6) "Working with the Press" (Allan Hartman). Four additional discussions are appended: "Finding Information about Standardized Tests' (Lawrence M. Rudner and Kathryn Dorko); Organizations That Provide Test Information" (Ronald T. C. Boyd); "Putting Test Scores in Perspective: Communicating a Complete Report Card for Your Schools" (M. Kevin Matter); and "Major Achievement Tests and Their Characteristics" (Northwest Regional Education Laboratory). Names and addresses of major test publishers, and a glossary of testing terms are also included. (SLD)

Kohn's central message is that standardized tests are "not a force of nature but a force of politics--and political decisions can be questioned, challenged, and ultimately reversed."

"[The anti-testing] movement now has a guidebook. . . . Kamenetz shows how fundamentally American it would be to move toward a more holistic system." -- New York Times Book Review The Test is an essential and critically acclaimed book for any parent confounded by our national obsession with standardized testing. It recounts the shocking history and tempestuous politics of testing and borrows strategies from fields as diverse as games, neuroscience, and ancient philosophy to help children cope. It presents the stories of families, teachers, and schools maneuvering within and beyond the existing educational system, playing and winning the testing game. And it points the way toward a hopeful future of better tests and happier kids.

An approach to performance-based assessments that embeds assessments in digital games in order to measure how students are progressing toward targeted goals. To succeed in today's interconnected and complex world, workers need to be able to think systemically, creatively, and critically. Equipping K-16 students with these twenty-first-century competencies requires new thinking not only about what should be taught in school but also about how to develop valid assessments to measure and support these competencies. In Stealth Assessment, Valerie Shute and Matthew Ventura investigate an approach that embeds performance-based assessments in digital games. They argue that using well-designed games as vehicles to assess and support learning will help combat students' growing disengagement from school, provide dynamic and ongoing measures of learning processes and outcomes, and offer students opportunities to apply such complex competencies as creativity, problem solving, persistence, and collaboration. Embedding assessments within games provides a way to monitor players' progress toward targeted competencies and to use that information to support learning. Shute and Ventura discuss problems with such traditional assessment methods as multiple-choice questions, review evidence relating to digital games and learning, and illustrate the stealth-assessment approach with a set of assessments they are developing and embedding in the digital game Newton's Playground. These stealth assessments are intended to measure levels of creativity, persistence, and conceptual understanding of Newtonian physics during game play. Finally, they consider future research directions related to stealth assessment in education.

Science educators in the United States are adapting to a new vision of how students learn science. Children are natural explorers and their observations and intuitions about the world around them are the foundation for science learning. Unfortunately, the way science has been taught in the United States has not always taken advantage of those attributes. Some students who successfully complete their Kâ€"12 science classes have not really had the chance to "do" science for themselves in ways that harness their natural curiosity and understanding of the world around them. The introduction of the Next Generation Science Standards led many states, schools, and districts to change curricula, instruction, and professional development to align with the standards. Therefore existing assessmentsâ€"whatever their purposeâ€"cannot be used to measure the full range of activities and interactions happening in science classrooms that have adapted to these ideas because they were not designed to do so. Seeing Students Learn Science is meant to help educators improve their understanding of how students learn science and guide the adaptation of their instruction and approach to assessment. It includes examples of innovative assessment formats, ways to embed assessments in engaging classroom activities, and ideas for interpreting and using novel kinds of assessment information. It provides ideas and questions educators can use to reflect on what they can adapt right away and what they can work toward more gradually.

America's leading expert in educational testing and measurement openly names the failures caused by today's testing policies and provides a blueprint for doing better. 6 x 9.