Professional Resource Review

Swope, K. & Miner, B. (Eds.) (2000). Failing our kids: Why the testing craze won’t fix our schools. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools, Ltd.

What is the book about?

This collection of articles and essays from students, parents, teachers and community members make an argument against test-based school reform. The book builds the case against the standardized testing craze by providing an historical overview, giving personal reflections of students, teachers and parents, providing data and research in support of alternative testing approaches and concluding with recommendations for affecting policy and a creating a vision for affective school reform.

This book is a helpful tool for understanding what is harmful about standardized testing; and is a resource for teachers to use in addressing questions raised by parents about testing.

The book is a publication of Rethinking Schools (www.rethinkingschools.org). As stated on their website, the organization is committed to equity and to the vision that public education is central to the creation of a humane, caring, multiracial democracy. The selections included in Failing our kids: Why the testing craze won’t fix our schools, certainly reflect this commitment.

Essential Beliefs

Test-based school reform moves the discussion away from what is truly needed to transform schools; equitable funding, smaller class sizes, improved teacher training and elimination of child poverty.

Standardized tests have a long history of cultural bias. The use of such tests to inform school curriculum and funding decisions further marginalizes children of color and children of low socio-economic status.

High-stakes testing has resulted in teachers and administrators focusing instruction on test content and test preparation. The outcome is that development of complex, critical thinking skills is lost, rich, interesting curriculum is dropped, and many excellent and talented teachers choose to leave the field of education.

Golden Lines

Standardized tests will never answer the question of what our children need to learn to be leaders and informed citizens in a multicultural, ever-changing world. (pg. 8)

…If our scores aren’t good, then people won’t think our schools are good, and they won’t want to move here, which will make the real estate people mad, and they will yell at the school board, who will yell at the superintendent, who will yell at the principal, who will yell at me. This is not about writing; this is about not getting yelled at. This the kids understand. (pg. 38)

Premature testing, no matter how well intentioned, is discouraging to the learner –like having a work-in-progress exposed to summary judgment. (pg. 41)

If we can turn the discussion around so that it focuses on the quality of service rather than on the analysis of children and their families, then maybe, just maybe, we might be one step ahead when the topic comes u again. (pg. 69)

I want it [Oregon Dept. of Education] to admit that wisdom is more than information –that the world can’t be chopped up into multiple-choice questions, and that you can’t bubble-in the truth with a number two pencil. (pg. 92)