Pencils Down: Rethinking High-Stakes Testing and Accountability in Public Schools

Posted by on March 12, 2012

Pencils Down: Rethinking High-Stakes Testing and Accountability in Public Schools
Edited by Wayne Au and Melissa Bollow Tempel

This powerful collection from the groundbreaking Rethinking Schools magazine takes high-stakes standardized tests to task.

Through articles that provide thoughtful and passionate critiques from the frontlines of education, Pencils Down exposes the damage that standardized tests wreak on our education system and the people that populate it. Better yet, it offers visionary forms of assessment that are not only more authentic, but also more democratic, fair, and accurate.

“Here, in one place, is a collection that looks at standardized testing and its alternatives in exactly the ways useful to teachers, parents, and teachers of teachers! What an enormous contribution to us all. It can change what you do at your school—tomorrow.”
—DEBBIE MEIER, author of The Power of Their Ideas and Save Our Schools steering committee member

“No questions asked, Pencils Down is one of the most comprehensive, scholarly (and yet eminently readable) take-downs of the nation’s testing craze ever produced. Combining a just-right mix of quantitative analysis, with the compelling personal narratives of educators trying to reach children in ways a test can never measure, this volume is a must read for teachers, administrators, parents and policy makers.”
—TIM WISE, author, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, and Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/ProdDetails.asp?ID=9780942961515