Beyond Standardized Truth: Improving Teaching and Learning through Inquiry-Based Reading Assessment (Principles in Practice)

Beyond Standardized Truth, included in the Principles in Practice imprint, is the result of the author's own efforts to bridge the gap between valuing reading and being able to respond with appropriate instruction or evaluate growth in reading.

Scott Filkins brings us into his classroom and the classrooms of his colleagues to demonstrate how high school teachers across the disciplines can engage in inquiry-based reading assessment to support student learning. Based in the IRA–NCTE Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing, Revised Edition, the classroom portraits highlight the importance of incorporating genuinely formative assessment into our instruction.

Filkins unpacks his own history with assessment through engaging “confessions" of his early practices and eventual growth toward a framework that situates reading assessment in an inquiry model. Throughout the book, he showcases his colleagues' attempts to use an inquiry framework, including the various tools and documentation methods that help them inquire into their students' habits and thoughts as readers, use formative assessment to fuel the gradual release of responsibility framework, and use reading assessment as a means of professional reflection.

Finally, Filkins challenges us to broaden the conversation about assessment to a wider range of stakeholders and offers a vision of assessment as an expression of care for the students in our charge.

Scott Filkins is an English and math teacher at Central High School in Champaign, Illinois. He co-directs the University of Illinois Writing Project and is currently engaged in a five-year study of eight students’ transition to college writing and their development as writers in college.

Scott worked at the National Council of Teachers of English on the ReadWriteThink.org project. He is the author of Beyond Standardized Truth: Improving Teaching and Learning through Inquiry-Based Reading Assessment (NCTE, 2012). He lives in Urbana, Illinois, with his son Colin.