Tests, Testing, and Genuine School Reform: Volume 610 (Hoover Institution Press Publication) - Hardcover

Herbert J. Walberg, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education, taught for thirty-five years at Harvard and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Author or editor of more than sixty books, he has written extensively for educational and psychological scholarly journals on measuring and raising student achievement and human accomplishments. His most recent book is Tests, Testing, and Genuine School Reform (Hoover Institution Press, 2011). He was appointed a member of the National Assessment Governing Board and the National Board for Educational Sciences and a fellow of several scholarly groups, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Academy of Education, and the Royal Statistical Society. He chairs the Beck Foundation and the Heartland Institute.

The critical role of testing in improving student achievement

How do we reliably assess the progress of students?

High standards, valid tests and testing, and accountability the keys to improving America s schools

The American school crisis has begun to change the role of testing, and educators are increasingly being held accountable for achievement results. Much research supports the positive and substantial effects of standardized tests, and they clearly merit expanded roles in improving achievement. In Tests, Testing, and Genuine School Reform, Herbert J. Walberg draws on scientific studies of tests and their use to inform citizens, legislators, parents, and educators about the most important new ideas in achievement testing and the steps necessary to develop good tests. In addition, he describes the ways that tests can be best used including using tests for student incentives and paying teachers for performance, preventing test fraud by students and teachers, and the role of tests in meeting the new state and national standards. In view of the continuing technical and political problems of tests and testing, the last chapter argues that, for accountability, to improve tests and testing, and to prevent fraud, the development, administration, scoring, and reporting test results should be conducted independent of traditional school authorities.

The pressing need to improve achievement in American schools is now widely recognized. This book offers some promising research-based solutions.

In the past several decades, costs of public schools have steadily and substantially risen, yet student achievement has remained stagnant. In response, schools, school districts, states, and the federal government are adapting a framework of standards-assessment-accountability, and achievement tests play a central role in determining what students have learned during a given period. They allow educators to assess the progress of students, to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and, in response, to plan curriculum and teaching revisions. They allow parents to objectively monitor their children s learning and similarly help them solve their problems and intensify pursuit of their studies. And they inform citizens and legislators about the schools achievement progress in the light of how much is spent in schools and on what activities it is spent.

In this book, world-renowned education expert Herbert J. Walberg draws from current research on tests and their use to inform citizens, educators, and policy makers about well-established principles of testing, current problems, and promising evidence-based solutions. He explains the central considerations in developing and evaluating good tests and tells how tests can best be used, covering such topics as using tests for student incentives, paying teachers for performance, and the use of tests to attain new state and national standards. To minimize mistaken policies and practices, the book also describes testing technology to enable readers to evaluate and make better use of tests. And because valid tests cannot be developed without clear, specific standards, one chapter is devoted to discussing standards and how they should determine the plans and development of tests and testing.

In view of the continuing test and testing problems, the last chapter argues that, to better achieve accountability, K 12 education should become more businesslike. Like the boards of business firms that employ independent accounting and auditing firms, the development, administration, scoring, and reporting test results should be conducted independently of those school authorities who have been unable to develop technically sound standardized tests, employ them effectively, or hold themselves accountable to the public.