Teaching Without Testing: Assessing the Complexity of Children's Literacy Learning

Teaching without Testing: Assessing the Complexity of Children’s Literacy Learning by Denny Taylor is the second book in Garn Press Women Scholars Series. This book revisits Taylor’s seminal and influential work based on her Biographic Literacy Profiles Project. Teaching without Testing: Assessing the Complexity of Children’s Literacy Learning is a timely book that challenges the scientific assumptions of standardized testing in developing effective instruction to meet the literate lives of all students. Through detailed observations of student learning, Taylor encourages readers to consider alternative ways of assessing children’s reading and writing based on observable literacy behaviors. Supporting a humanistic perspective to the education of children, Taylor argues that standardized and diagnostic methods of assessment and teaching, based on test-driven, cooperate-led accountability practices, have detrimental effects on children and result in the de-professionalization of teachers.

Denny Taylor is a lifelong activist and scholar committed to nurturing the imagination and human spirit. She regards art, literature, and science inseparable. She has organized more than 30 international scholars’ forums, and speaks to diverse national and international audiences on a broad range of issues. In 1983, Taylor published Family Literacy, which is regarded a classic in the field; Growing Up Literate received the MLA Shaughnessy award in 1988; and Toxic Literacies, published in 1996, was nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2004, Taylor was inducted into the IRA’s Reading Hall of Fame. She is Professor Emeritus of Literacy Studies at Hofstra University, and the founder and CEO of Garn Press. Her most recent books are Save Our Children, Save Our School, Pearson Broke the Golden Rule, Rosie’s Umbrella, Rat-a-tat-tat! I’ve Lost My Cat! which received the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award, and Split Second Solution.

Bobbie Kabuto, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Literacy Education in the Elementary and Early Childhood Education Department at Queens College, City University of New York. In addition, she is the Director of the City University B-6 Literacy Program and the Senior Editor for the Garn Press Women Scholars Series. Her research interests include the relationships among early bi/literacy, socially constructed identities, and language ideologies. She currently works with families of struggling beginning readers and writers. Her work has been highlighted in journals such as Reading Research Quarterly, The Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, and Early Childhood Research and Practice. Her first book Becoming Biliterate: Identity, Ideology, and Learning to Read and Write in Two Languages was published by Taylor and Francis in July 2010.