In the rush to implement high-stakes testing and impose standards, the interests of two key groups of stakeholders - students and teachers - have been ignored, according to two new books from Heinemann Press.
In Testing Is Not Teaching, author Don Graves shows how testing encroaches on teacher freedom; considers how narrow standards can actually reduce student achievement; asks questions that can help teachers to cope with these new restrictions; and discusses practices that support humane teaching in a testing environment.
In today's educational climate, teachers have lots of questions about the meaning of standards and tests. In Testing and Standards: A Brief Encyclopedia, author Sandra Wilde not only defines technical terms, she makes sense of the ethics and politics involved. She also provides ammunition to challenge policies relating to testing and standards that do not benefit students. The book questions how passing scores for state tests are set, whether schools are using unethical practices to raise test scores and whether newspapers are describing test results accurately.
The books cost $15 and $13, respectively. For more information, call (603) 431-7894 or visit the publisher's website http://www.heinemann.com/.
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