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.

Discusses how school choice, misapplied standards of accountability, the No Child Left Behind mandate, and the use of a corporate model have all led to a decline in public education and presents arguments for a return to strong neighborhood schools and quality teaching.

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.

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.

Lopsided Schools introduces readers to the case method and helps the reader to use the case method to examine the scholastic challenges that critics posed from World War I to the present. Some critics have stirred up educators with threats to reduce their budgets or fire them. Others upset them with disconcerting questions. Should parents demand that their children learn speed reading? Should teachers emphasize vocational activities? Should principals train their own successors? Should superintendents award bonuses to teachers? Should employers hire the graduates with the highest scores on standardized tests? Should politicians assume greater responsibility for schooling? Should journalists publicize information about lopsided schools? This book examines these and the numerous other questions that critics posed.

Beyond Testing describes seven forms of assessment that are more effective than standardized test results. These assessments are more honest about what we can and cannot know about childrens knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Readers can compare and contrast each approach to determine which is most appropriate for their school.