Richard P. Phelps, with a foreword by Herbert J. Walberg and a preface by J.E. Stone, Transaction Publishers
2003
This book reads like a Shelby Foote Civil War history, chock-full of martial phrases like "Attack Strategies and Tactics," "The Battle Rages," and "Agony of Defeat." Phelps isn't describing the death and destruction of Gettysburg, but rather the combat between those who support standardized testing and those who attack it. As Phelps notes, most Americans support standardized testing, preferably with high stakes. This war, then, is largely among elites. Those who oppose standardized testing are the "education providers - education professors, teachers' unions, and a proliferation of education administrator groups with large memberships and nationwide organization." The animosity of these groups is not aimed at testing per se, since education providers like using tests, and the data they generate, to inform what they do in schools. They just don't want the education consumer - the general public, parents, students, and employers - to know what they know and they don't think tests should make any real difference with respect to accountability for students, educators or schools. Phelps (who is rather more adept at asserting conclusions than documenting them) describes in detail the strengths and weaknesses of standardized testing. Phelps quotes University of North Carolina psychometrician Greg Cizek, who states emphatically that "High-stakes tests have evolved to a point where they are: highly reliable; free from bias; relevant and age appropriate; higher order; tightly related to important, public goals; time and cost efficient; and yielding remarkably consistent decisions." Despite public support, Phelps asserts, opponents keep on the offensive through a "protracted propaganda effort." Critics of standardized testing contend in education journals and the general press that test boosters are "right-wing ideologues" hell-bent on forcing all children into a one-size-fits-all model of education. Meanwhile, the battle rages. The publisher is Transaction. The ISBN is 0765801787. To order a copy, go to http://www.transactionpub.com/cgi-bin/transactionpublishers.storefront.
