The Test: Why Our Schools are Obsessed with Standardized Testing But You Don t Have to Be - Hardcover

Kamenetz, Anya

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1610394410 ISBN 13: 9781610394413

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2015

Synopsis

"[The anti-testing] movement now has a guidebook. . . . Kamenetz shows how fundamentally American it would be to move toward a more holistic system." -New York Times Book Review

The Test is an essential and critically acclaimed book for any parent confounded by our national obsession with standardized testing. It recounts the shocking history and tempestuous politics of testing and borrows strategies from fields as diverse as games, neuroscience, and ancient philosophy to help children cope. It presents the stories of families, teachers, and schools maneuvering within and beyond the existing educational system, playing and winning the testing game. And it points the way toward a hopeful future of better tests and happier kids.

About this title

About the Author:

Anya Kamenetz is the lead digital education correspondent for NPR. Previously, she worked as a staff writer for Fast Company magazine. She's contributed to the New York Times, Washington Post, New York Magazine, Slate, and O, the Oprah Magazine, and has won multiple awards for her reporting on education, technology, and innovation. She is the author of four books on education and technology, Generation Debt, DIY U, The Test, and The Art of Screen Time. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Review:

"[Kamenetz's] journalistic talents coupled with her role as a mother of a student on the brink of testing humanizes this book, making it a perfect entry for parents who are too deep in the muck of testing to have the clarity of distance."―Boston Globe

"High-stakes testing in our public schools puts enormous pressure on everyone in the system. Using real-and often quite moving-stories, Anya Kamenetz shows teachers, parents, administrators, and students how to survive, even thrive, in an education system that many understandably believe needs a course correction."
―Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and To Sell Is Human

"Thorough research and illuminating interviews... With abundant data assembled in an accessible format, the book is a must-read for anyone in the educational system or any parent who has a child old enough to enter preschool... An informative and enlightening appraisal of the regimented tests that American schoolchildren of all ages are subjected to taking on a regular basis."
―Kirkus Review

"Anya Kamenetz's The Test is a fearless expose of how testing permeates our schools, our homes, even kids' psyches. People will be talking about this important, provocative book for years to come."
―Ashley Merryman, co-author of NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children and Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing

"A must-read. The Test is a vital contribution to the growing debate about how to evaluate our students, schools, and teachers. And Kamenetz offers invaluable guidance to the people so often caught in the middle: parents."
―Tony Wagner, author of The Global Achievement Gap and Creating Innovators

"The Test is a brilliant, passionate, insightful, and useful look at America's destructive obsession with high stakes testing. Anya Kamanetz yet again shows why she is one of America's truly original thinkers on how we should be educating the next generation- and how we are failing. If I still believed in grades after reading this book, I'd give The Test an A+."
―Cathy N. Davidson, author of Now You See It and Distinguished Professor and Director, The Futures Initiative

About this edition

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1610394410
• ISBN 13: 9781610394413
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272