Anya Kamenetz's The Test Points the Way to the Future
Anya Kamenetz's The Test will stand on its own as an excellent work of scholarship. It will not be research findings, philanthropists, the USDOE, or even teachers who will determine the role of testing in the next generation of public schools. It will be the students and the parents of the children who have endured fourteen years of test-driven schooling who will decide whether high stakes testing survives. I suspect that Kamenetz is one of the first, as well as one of the most articulate, of the voices of these new generations.
Kamenetz's book comes from the conversation she's had again and again with parents. She and they have "seen how high-stakes standardized tests are stunting children's spirits, adding stress to family life, demoralizing teachers, undermining schools, paralyzing the education debate, and gutting our country's future competitiveness." Like so many Gen X and Gen Y parents, Kamenetz sees how "the test obsession is making public schools ... into unhappy places."
One of the best aspects of The Test is Kamenetz's vivid metaphors and her concise summaries of educators' views. She writes, "Pervasive assessment is a nightmare version of school for most students. It's like burning thirsty plants in a garden under a magnifying glass, in the hope they will grow faster under scrutiny." She summarizes the indictment of bubble-in accountability by a proponent of portfolio assessment of students, "Standardized testing leads to standardized teaching."
Even better, The Test puts faces on the children who are damaged by testing. Because she so close to the reality on the ground that top-down reformers inadvertently created, Kamenentz is a mom who can explain what education jargon means in the real world. For instance, the words "'targeted interventions'" means that "whatever subject the kids hate most ... take over all of school." She concludes, "instead of customizing learning to each student," the term really means that "standardization dictates one best way. In the end it seems pretty much everyone gets left out."
The next great thing about The Test is that it is honest about the dilemmas faced by parents, and the temptations they face in regard to testing. In the section, "The Anya Kamenetz's The Test Points the Way to the Future | John Thompson:
Anya Kamenetz
www.anyakamenetz.net/
