Paul E. Barton, Educational Testing Service
July 2001
The Educational Testing Service has a new unit called the Educational Policy Research Institute, led by Sharon Robinson, former NEA official and (in the early Clinton administration) assistant secretary of education for research and improvement. She summoned up this brief report by the perceptive Paul Barton, which contends that standards-based reform, while necessary, cannot do the entire job. He worries that today's emphasis on testing is overwrought and not enough is being done to deal with classroom order, peer pressures, parental attitudes, low college-admission standards and inattentive employers. He also contends that incentives and motivations need more attention and that technology is underutilized. It may not be worth the $10.50 that ETS asks for hard copies (which can be ordered by calling 609-734-5694) but you can download a PDF version by surfing to http://www.ets.org/research/.
