How Testing Came to Dominate American Schools

How Testing Came to Dominate American Schools
Author: Gerard Giordano
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2005
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780820472553

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.

An Age of Accountability

An Age of Accountability
Author: John L. Rury
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2023-10-13
Genre: Education
ISBN: 197883229X

An Age of Accountability highlights the role of test-based accountability as a policy framework in American education from 1970 to 2020. For more than half a century, the quest to hold schools and educators accountable for academic achievement has relied almost exclusively on standardized assessment. The theory of change embedded in almost all test-based accountability programs held that assessment with stipulated consequences could lead to major improvements in schools. This was accomplished politically by proclaiming lofty goals of attaining universal proficiency and closing achievement gaps, which repeatedly failed to materialize. But even after very clear disappointments, no other policy framework has emerged to challenge its hegemony. The American public today has little confidence in institutions to improve the quality of goods and services they provide, especially in the public sector. As a consequence, many Americans continue to believe that accountability remains a vital necessity, even if educators and policy scholars disagree.

Testing in American Schools

Testing in American Schools
Author:
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 62
Release: 1992
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780941375757

Concludes that educational tests can be misleading or worse when used for purposes other than which they were originally designed. Charts and tables.

Encyclopedia of the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education: A-H ; 2, I-Z ; 3, Biographies, visual history, index

Encyclopedia of the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education: A-H ; 2, I-Z ; 3, Biographies, visual history, index
Author: Eugene F. Provenzo
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 1393
Release: 2009
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1412906784

The 'Encyclopedia' provides an introduction to the social and cultural foundations of education. The first two volumes consist of A-Z entries, featuring essays representing the major disciplines including philosophy, history, and sociology, and a third volume is made up of documentary, photographic, and visual resources.

Common Sense Questions about School Administration

Common Sense Questions about School Administration
Author: Gerard Giordano
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2015-03-06
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1475812620

Parents have questions for school administrators. They want to know how they hire teachers, erect facilities, select learning materials, protect students, allocate budgets, use data, make forecasts, measure progress, and compete with for-profit schools. This book examines the questions they pose, the answers they elicit, the allies they attract, the adversaries they arouse, and the improvements they prod.

The ABCs of Educational Testing

The ABCs of Educational Testing
Author: W. James Popham
Publisher: Corwin Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2016-11-02
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1506351530

Amplify your assessment literacy. Formative, data-driven, high-stakes—we all know the buzzwords surrounding educational testing. But we often shelve our understanding of these because they are overwhelmingly complex. Those who care about our schools and students—teachers, administrators, policymakers, parents, citizens—will discover how and why testing should be taken upon ourselves to advance. Using a nontechnical approach, this book offers fundamental knowledge to free you from testing fogginess—all framed around practical actions you can take to strengthen your assessment literacy. Inappropriate tests are leading to mistaken decisions, and this book provides everything you need to know to change that, including Reasons for tests Reliability/validity Fairness Test-building

Handbook of Social Influences in School Contexts

Handbook of Social Influences in School Contexts
Author: Kathryn R. Wentzel
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 626
Release: 2016-01-13
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317670868

The Handbook of Social Influences in School Contexts draws from a growing body of research on how and why various aspects of social relationships and contexts contribute to children’s social and academic functioning within school settings. Comprised of the latest studies in developmental and educational psychology, this comprehensive volume is perfect for researchers and students of Educational Psychology. Beginning with the theoretical perspectives that guide research on social influences, this book presents foundational research before moving on to chapters on peer influence and teacher influence. Next, the book addresses ways in which the school context can influence school-related outcomes (including peer and teacher-student relationships) with specific attention to research in motivation and cognition. Within the chapters authors not only present current research but also explore best-practices, drawing in examples from the classroom. With chapters from leading experts in the field, The Handbook of Social Influences in School Contexts provides the first complete resource on this topic.

American Special Education

American Special Education
Author: Gerard Giordano
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2007
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780820486956

This book is an account of the epic struggle for special education in America's schools. It chronicles the actions of community leaders, families, caregivers, instructors, physicians, scientists, lawyers, judges, lawmakers, businesspersons, journalists, social activists, and persons with disabilities. It details the creation of facilities in which special learners would be safe, productive, independent, respected, and self-fulfilled. The book discusses techniques for assessing the presence, scope, and etiology of disabilities. Finally, American Special Education describes novel, sometimes expensive, and frequently controversial interventions, and places each development within the remarkable confluence of social and political circumstances that propelled the transformation of special education.

Handbook of Human and Social Conditions in Assessment

Handbook of Human and Social Conditions in Assessment
Author: Gavin T. L. Brown
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 719
Release: 2016-06-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317608178

The Handbook of Human and Social Conditions in Assessment is the first book to explore assessment issues and opportunities occurring due to the real world of human, cultural, historical, and societal influences upon assessment practices, policies, and statistical modeling. With chapters written by experts in the field, this book engages with numerous forms of assessment: from classroom-level formative assessment practices to national accountability and international comparative testing practices all of which are significantly influenced by social and cultural conditions. A unique and timely contribution to the field of Educational Psychology, the Handbook of Human and Social Conditions in Assessment is written for researchers, educators, and policy makers interested in how social and human complexity affect assessment at all levels of learning. Organized into four sections, this volume examines assessment in relation to teachers, students, classroom conditions, and cultural factors. Each section is comprised of a series of chapters, followed by a discussant chapter that synthesizes key ideas and offers directions for future research. Taken together, the chapters in this volume demonstrate that teachers, test creators, and policy makers must account for the human and social conditions that shape assessment if they are to implement successful assessment practices which accomplish their intended outcomes.