John Thompson wrote an excellent review of Daniel Koretz’s “The Testing Charade” in the Huffington Post.
“Daniel Koretz’ TheTesting Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better may be the best book on testing since his Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us. We should all be grateful to Koretz’ editor who told him to stop “pulling your punches.” That’s why The Testing Charade “finally” uses “honest adjectives to describe the harm high-stakes testing has done to students and teachers.”
“That being said, Koretz had been correct to use “carefully measured” academic language in his earlier discussions of education policy. Since he was such a respected scholar, even the most true-believing, accountability-driven reformers had to listen to Koretz’ advice. He also had to be diplomatic in order to negotiate access to data that school systems carefully guard, and advise superintendents and other education leaders. In some of the most valuable parts of the book, Koretz is thus able to explain the edu-politics that created a testing regime that remains “Beyond All Reason.” (Emphasis is Koretz’)
“These conversations illustrate why Koretz had to conclude his analysis with a reminder that thirty years ago he and other social scientists warned that test-based accountability “wouldn’t succeed.” The stakes attached to tests were much smaller back then but he predicted that even those milder accountability systems would “face only three options: cheat, find other ways to cut corners, or fail.” However, neither Koretz or anyone else “predicted just how extreme the failures of test-based reform would be.” He didn’t anticipate cheating on the scale that it occurred. He expected bad test prep, but he “didn’t expect states and districts would openly peddle it to their teachers.”
Read the Review. Read the book.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, Happy New Year and thanks for posting this interesting and unsettling book review about the negative (and, HMMM, unpredicted–really?) effects of testing policies set by experts and our government.
As I read it, I realized that these concerns go far beyond testing. Policy makers and experts set “unreasonable targets” in many, many arenas of public education. Take, for example, my area of concern and expertise–special education–and the policies that affect all students and all schools–often, with unintended (unpredicted–really?) and absurd negative consequences. Yet we carry on. Who will stop this maddening train?
Too often, targets created by policy makers in Washington and beyond– in the testing and other arenas–don’t hit the mark and damage the very schools we are trying to improve.
When will WE ever learn?
I have read both books. I heartily recommend them both to everyone that is interested in a “better education for all.”
I would also recommend reading them in the order of their appearance, because the second doesn’t [needlessly] repeat many of the key points that the first one does.
Rather than pick out this or that aspect of either, let me do a little “Ionesco” on y’all.
How do you answer someone that is all in for the self-proclaimed “new civil rights movement of our time” (as corporate education reformers label themselves when they attempt to overcome resistance to their smash-and-grab pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$) when they throw up posers like the following:
“If you’re going to teach to the test, make sure it’s a test worth teaching to”?????
😳
*Keeping in mind David Coleman [KrazyKommonKorester par excellence] who spoke of “the great rule that I think is a reality,” namely, “teachers will teach to the test.”
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePrXlPQdVDw
‘Nuff said.
😎
P.S. Ionesco: “It is not the answer the enlightens, but the question.”
Re: Coleman. He was right that curricula would start to match the tests but I wonder if he’s finally figured out that his ill-conceived tests have spawned truly God-awful mutant test prep curricula that eat up much if not all of a kid’s school day, and that it’s not making kids any smarter. His half-baked dream of having kindergarteners ape the close reading he did in his 12th grade Andover English courses has come true and it’s not pretty. Kids are learning almost nothing. They’re just being asked to find supporting evidence or guess the motivations of the author over and over and over. Will this make them better readers? No –reading ability is mostly a function of background knowledge, which they’re not getting from the curriculum. I fear kids are literally gaining nothing from school these days. I often sincerely wonder if my incoming 7th graders have learned anything from the last four years of Common Core. I see no evidence of it. Math teachers at my school see DECLINE in math ability among the kids who’ve had four years of Common Core. Kids’ hatred of school is skyrocketing. Coleman is the Robert McNamara of education reform.
yes yes yes
Like McNamara (and Johnson), Coleman almost certainly knows his policy has failed — and is simply lying when he claims otherwise.
This is the type who let millions suffer (and even die) before admitting they are wrong.
I’ve asked my children if they were encouraged to cheat on standardized tests or if their teachers helped them cheat. They say no. I wonder, then, how one child was a “bad” student, as far as classroom grades, could score “above proficient” on these tests & how my “good student” could get lower than average on standardized tests. My children seem to do well academically when the social pressures, that are uncontrolled in a classroom setting, are removed.