Award-winning author, public intellectual, and former Assistant Secretary of Education, critiques a lifetime's worth of school reforms and reveals the simple, yet difficult, truth about how we can create actual change in public schools. A passionate plea to preserve and renew public education, this work is a radical change of heart from one of America's best known education experts. The author, a leader in the drive to create a national curriculum,...

Standards-based grading paradigm allows methods to support students rather than judge, empowers learning rather than control, gives choices rather than mandates, and dignifies failure as a part of learning.-p.37.

"No sooner is a child walking and talking than the ABCs and 1-2-3s give way to the full-on alphabet soup: the ERBs, the OLSAT, the IQ, the NCLB for AYP, the IEP for ELLs, the CHAT and PDDST for ASD or LD and G & T or ADD and ADHD, the PSATs, then the ACTs and SATs-all designed to assess and monitor a child's readiness for education. In many public schools, students are spending up to 28% of instructional time on testing and test prep. Starting this...

Joseph P. Farrell, well known for his widely-discussed investigations on contemporary banks and ruling structures, co-writes this fascinating book regarding contemporary schooling with long-time New York state instructor Gary Lawrence. Both authors maintain that the future of American education stands in a tradition of social engineering, data mining, pseudo-psychology, and dumbing down classroom strategies. Says Farrell, "It it is our contention...

"Since the 2002 implementation of No Child Left Behind, the American public education system has been fundamentally changed. Excessive testing, standardized curriculums, destructive demands on children, corporate-style evaluations, and top-down mandates have become the norm. In response, record numbers of demoralized educators have quit, and millions of students have been left educationally impoverished. This troubling transformation has been exhaustively...

"For too long so-called education reformers, mostly billionaires, politicians, and others with little or no background in teaching, have gotten away with using standardized testing to punish our nation's youth and educators. Now, across the country, students are walking out, parents are opting their children out, and teachers are refusing to administer these detrimental exams. In fact, the "reformers" today find themselves facing the largest revolt...

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (naep) is the only continuing measure of the achievement of U.S. students in key subject areas. The National Research Council's Committee on the Evaluation of National and State Assessments of Educational Progress conducted an evaluation of the naep. This report contains the conclusions this committee reached in its evaluation. If implemented, the recommendations in this report will enhance the usefulness...