Product Description: Social Justice and Educational Measurement addresses foundational concerns at the interface of standardized testing and social justice in American schools. Following John Rawls’s philosophical methods, Stein builds and justifies an ethical framework for guiding practices involving educational measurement...read more

Product Description: Measuring Up revisits vital issues of equity and assessment through the research efforts and insights of many of the nation's most prominent educators and assessment experts. As its most urgent purpose, the publication aims to sensitize readers to the unfairness and inappropriate uses of testing instruments which under optimal circumstances have the potential to benefit all students...read more

Product Description: Addressing the disparity in test scores between black and white children remains one of the greatest social challenges of our time. Between the 1960s and 1980s, tremendous strides were made in closing the achievement gap, but that remarkable progress halted abruptly in the mid 1980s, and stagnated throughout the 1990s...read more

Product Description: A volume in Contemporary Perspectives in Race and Ethnic Relations Series Editors:M. Christopher Brown II, Alcorn State University and T. Elon Dancy II, University of Oklahoma Filling in the Blanks is a book dedicated to helping policymakers, researchers, academics and teachers, better understand standardized testing and the Black-White achievement gap...read more

Providing all students with a fair opportunity to learn (OTL) is perhaps the most pressing issue facing U.S. education. Moving beyond conventional notions of OTL - as access to content, often content tested; access to resources; or access to instructional processes - the authors reconceptualize OTL in terms of interaction among learners and elements of their learning environments. Drawing on sociocultural, sociological, psychometric, and legal perspectives, this book provides historical critique, theory and principles, and concrete examples of practice through which learning, teaching, and assessment can be re-envisioned to support fair OTL for all students. This book offers educators, researchers, and policy analysts new to sociocultural perspectives a readable and engaging introduction to fresh ideas for conceptualizing, enhancing, and assessing OTL; encourages those who already draw on sociocultural resources to focus attention on OTL and assessment; and nurtures collaboration among members of discourse communities who have rarely engaged one another's work.

Product Description: This book is about the impact of testing on the academic futures of students.

Product Description: American schools are often the victims of numbers games because its education is in the hands of politicians, the populace, and pundits. How Americans view numbers, science, and research profoundly impacts the ability of politicians to manipulate our schools from pre-K through graduate education...read more

Product Description: To better understand how high-stakes accountability has influenced teaching and learning, this book takes an in-depth look at the myriad consequences that high-stakes tests hold for students, teachers, administrators, and the public...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Assessment has become one of the most significant areas of interest in educational policy development, as well as the focus of complex political, economic and cultural expectations for change. Increasingly, governments worldwide have become aware that curricula and teachers can be indirectly controlled through programmes of assessment. Opponents of centralized systems of mass assessment claim they are ill-suited to the diverse and changing needs of learners and users of assessment. In this text, the UK and US writers take the reader beyond the obvious functions of assessment, and focus upon the roles it performs in the social structuring of society. They examine the myths and assumptions that underpin assessment and testing and draw attention to its cultural context. This collection is devoted explicitly to socio-cultural studies of assessment and attempts to map the terrain of some 30 years of study in the field. Chapters are organized thematically, with background text providing comparative perspectives, key issues and further reading. The book provides a wide-ranging, structured and accessible approach to the study of socio-cultural origins and impacts of assessment.

Product Description: More and more states require students to pass large-scale tests as a condition of promotion or graduation. What are the forces that have pushed high-stakes testing to the forefront of K-12 educational policy? Are such tests the best way to gauge educational attainment? This volume, commissioned by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, examines the economic and educational assumptions underlying the call for high-stakes tests...read more

Product Description: More and more states require students to pass large-scale tests as a condition of promotion or graduation. What are the forces that have pushed high-stakes testing to the forefront of K-12 educational policy? Are such tests the best way to gauge educational attainment? This volume, commissioned by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, examines the economic and educational assumptions underlying the call for high-stakes tests...read more

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Product Description: The long arm of standardized testing is reaching into every nook and cranny of education. Yet relying on standardized tests distorts student learning, exacerbates inequities for low-income students and students of color, and undermines true accountability...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Assessment has become one of the most significant areas of interest in educational policy development, as well as the focus of complex political, economic and cultural expectations for change. Increasingly, governments worldwide have become aware that curricula and teachers can be indirectly controlled through programmes of assessment...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)