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Title: Standardized Minds: The High Price of America's Testing Culture and What We Can Do to Change It by Peter Sacks ISBN: 0-7382-0433-1 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: February, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Book for STUDENTS, who are taking these silly tests!
Comment: I am a high school senior so I am currently getting a lot of pressure from my parents to get that silly 1600 on my SAT which will take place in October and December this year. Then there's also the ACTs and the 3 SAT IIs! I was always suspicious of test prep companies, the ETS, and the SATs themselves. Living in Los Angeles, these test prep companies have grown like weeds in the community, sucking up money from middle and upper class students. Though I am fortunate, my parents have also forcefully enrolled me at one of these. My SAT school is doing a nice job with its profits and have managed to get a new paint job, redecorate the "classrooms", and to get more students and more teachers, to just get it bigger and bigger. While my "teachers" explain the concepts of the SAT, I can't help but wish I was in the library reading more books such as this or practicing the piano. It is so unfair that only the rich people can afford these classes and they are the ones who get the good scores on the SATs. After getting a mediocre score on the SAT in June, my parents have now considered me a total idiot, even though my report cards and comments from teachers say otherwise. This book is so chock-full of information that deserves wide reading. The author has done the most extensive research imaginable. The controversy of the standardized tests is something that should have been addressed and Peter Sacks is the best one to do it. He has full of statistics and information to back up everything he says, yet he never just blows them off to you, but explains them. In addition to statistics, are the personal recollections of the people he interviewed-the teachers, educators, college admissions people, and even students. The tale of one student who had 7 tries to take a silly test and not being able to graduate and forced to stay in high school was frightening to the say the least. I am also glad that the author also included a section about the infamous incident in 1998 in Massachusetts when everyone condemned the teachers that they failed "a basic reading and writing test", which had become a punch-line for many of Jay Leno's jokes that year. It was rather strange that the media did not go into detail about the exact questions or the more specifics of that exam, but everyone just wanted to call these teachers "idiots".
The book is comprehensive on all testing, with the exception of secondary school admissions tests such as the ISEE and the SSAT. Going to California private schools, I have become familiar with ERBs and the Stanford 9 tests. In order to get into private high schools, I had to take the ISEE and the SSAT. Now I have the SATs and ACTs to conquer.
This is more than a book analyzing the damaging effects of the testing culture. The author suggest an standing ovation-worthy proposal of evaluating students on what they can do, whether it is projects and more research opportunities such as outside occupational research or conducting a lab or evaluating a student 's portfolio, instead of standardized tests.
Yes, this book should be read by politicians educators, teachers, yet I am here to emphasize STUDENTS should read this book too. Students who are daunted by the SATs need to be educated about our obsessive testing culture and that they are NOT idiots for a silly number.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Good Resource
Comment: Too often, the high-stakes testing debate wanders into the realm smoke and mirrors. If you follow this debate, you'll find the same arguments presented here that have been presented all along: standardized tests are biased, they do not measure intelligence or knowledge, etc. What you don't normally get are the facts that back up this argument, and that is what Sacks provides. This book concretizes what has become (wrongly) a very abstract, political issue, and should be regularly referenced by all who oppose the mediocrity such testing rewards. These tests may sound good in theory, but in practice, Sacks shows with convincing success, they just don't do the job.
Rating: 5
Summary: Must Read For Anyone Interested In Education
Comment: I was in the middle of reading Standardized Minds when I heard a panel of "Experts" talk about the future of LA Unified School District on Which Way LA, a local radio show. Specifically they were discussing the notion of linking teacher bonus pay to the performance of their students on standardized tests. I wish Peter Sacks had been on the program as he successfully demolishes the continued folly of our reliance on standardized tests as a way to judge our schools, our teachers and our students. I wholeheartedly endorse the opinions of the previous two reviewers. Speaking as a parent, I can only say that the more people who read this book, engage in a discussion about the issues so eloquently raised within it and help push the national dialogue on education forward in the directions the author suggests, the better off our kids and we as a society will be.
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Title: The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools by Alfie Kohn ISBN: 0325003254 Publisher: Heinemann Pub. Date: 01 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Contradictions of School Reform : Educational Costs of Standardized Testing (Critical Social Thought) by Linda M. McNeil ISBN: 0415920744 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 28 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: The Schools Our Children Deserve : Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards" by Alfie Kohn ISBN: 0618083456 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 05 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Will Standards Save Public Education by Deborah Meier, Joshua Cohen, Joel Rogers ISBN: 0807004413 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Raising Standards or Raising Barriers?: Inequality and High Stakes Testing in Public Education by Gary Orfield, Mindy Kornhaber ISBN: 0870784528 Publisher: Century Foundation Press Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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