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The
pressure is on at schools across America: No Child Left Behind and the
reforms that paved its way have created a new vision of education
emphasizing measurable progress for every student, every school, every
year. Schools are judged almost solely on the bottom line: test scores.
To meet these expectations, educators give struggling students more
attention than ever — not just teaching children but in many
ways raising them.
A Book Sense Notable pick!
To discover whether this approach is producing better students, Linda Perlstein immersed herself in a Maryland elementary school once deemed a chaotic failure but now held up as an example of reform done right. Perlstein explores the rewards and costs of that transformation, through the experiences of the people who lived it.
Third-graders meditate to activate their brains before exams and perfect the “brief constructed response” to essay questions, but they never write a story or put on a skit. Teachers follow rigid guides about not just what to teach but how. The tireless enthusiasm of the principal — by turns a CEO, therapist, data analyst, and PR agent — is tinged with a hidden dose of ambivalence about the changes she must manage and intensifying anxiety as test day approaches.
Tested illuminates real-world considerations of many of the topics under discussion in today’s educational policy debate, including:
- Changes in how reading is taught.
- The academic intensity of kindergarten.
- The paradox of teaching children as individuals while expecting them to reach the same levels in the same time — particularly with special ed and ESOL.
- What's gained — and what skills are left behind — when schools go “back to basics.”
- The intense focus on test preparation.
- How disadvantaged students are getting a different education than their affluent neighbors.
- Ways schools try to improve teacher quality and retention, and the complexities of merit pay.
- How character and behavior problems impede learning, and what schools do to address them.
- The severe limits of what tests tell us about our students.
- The increasing role of educational consultants and business practices in schools.
TESTED IN THE NEWS
PRAISE FOR TESTED:
David Simon, author of The Corner and
executive producer of HBO's “The Wire”
“When reform itself becomes the lie, what
then? Linda Perlstein’s Tested is essential
reading for anyone who still believes that statistics alone can be the
measure of a child’s
educational potential and standing — and for
those, as well, who have long doubted the simplistic premise of No
Child Left Behind but were without the facts to affirm those
doubts. Tina McKnight, the principal of Tyler Heights
Elementary, is a woman worth cheering, but the crusade she and others
have been asked to fight is far more suspect. Children,
teachers, school administrators — this is the
human element, the souls actually at stake, and they are now — all of them — prisoners
of politics and public perception.”
Jay Mathews, The Washington Post
“This is the best book ever written about No Child Left Behind. ...
All sides can learn from her book, because it is vivid, unpredictable,
fair, balanced and — I am not kidding — very entertaining. Perlstein
has a storyteller’s grasp of the fun to be found in the lives of
teachers and students at a well-run school. ... Despite all the time I
have spent in schools, I know much more about the impact of our
testing system on teaching and learning than I did before, just from
having read this deep and revealing book.”
E.D.
Hirsch Jr., author of The Dictionary of Cultural
Literacy and The Knowledge Deficit
“If you want to know what is going on in
our schools in the age of No Child Left Behind, this is the book to
read. To the heroism of our over-blamed teachers and to the
cluelessness of our administrators and policy makers, especially those
who have imposed unwise test regimens in response to the new law, Linda
Perlstein’s gripping story is an indispensable
guide.”
Larry Cuban,
Stanford University education professor and author of The Blackboard and the Bottom Line
“I have read many case studies of schools over the years, and Tested has to rank as one of the best. It is detailed without being overwhelming, aware of what goes on in the classroom and principal’s office, and shows a deep understanding of the policy world in which teachers and administrators operate. The impact of the Maryland School Assessment becomes evident in the accumulated detail of its wear and tear on teachers, students, and the principal of Tyler Heights.”
Publishers Weekly
“Tales of third graders prepping for an exam prove genuinely,
surprisingly dramatic; Perlstein crafts a gripping narrative out of
the day-to-day business of education through solid reporting, taking
into consideration the politics, goals, interests and architects of
the program. ... The faces of children, teachers and administrators
emerge vividly, and Perlstein largely avoids taking sides in favor of
an honest, enlightening look at the complex reality of this
much-debated policy.”
Eric Mackey,
Anniston Star
“Perlstein tells the story in such plain language and makes the story
so real that you will truly be able to empathize with these wonderful
teachers and their amazing principal. ... It is, after all, a great
story that will leave you feeling both triumphant and a little bit
melancholy. Most of all, you will feel like you understand the
pressures and challenges of teaching a little better than you did
before--even if you are a teacher yourself.”
Susan Gardner,
Daily Kos
“What Perlstein has managed to do in this excellent book is the same
magical trick Barbara Ehrenreich pulled off so well in Nickled
and Dimed: taking public policy and its consequences down to
the micro-personal level and making it real to readers. ... The result
is a smooth, captivating, heartbreaking read that’s informative on
policy and devastating in depicting the crushing test environment. ...
As the chapters wind down, the dramatic interest ramps up, proving
that you can write about public policy in way that makes it as
engaging as a summer blockbuster.”
Mark David Bradshaw,
Watermark Books
&ldquo'Tested is a testament to the will and dedication of American
teachers, who often struggle against unbelievable odds — sometimes
including the education system itself. It’s a very timely look at the
changing shape of our schools, and it’s a crash course in the
pressures and predicaments facing today’s kids. A thoughtful,
well-researched book, its test will be whether it can bring the
necessary attention to the important issues it addresses.”
“These books are great and worth a read. ... In Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade, Linda Perslstein embedded for a year in an elementary school and exits with a clearer vision of just how complicated an endeavor improving schools can be.”
Steven Mintz, author of Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood
“This book is absolutely fantastic: gripping, sparkling with insights,
and deeply moving. I consider it a must-read for anyone who has the
slightest interest not only in education but in poverty, family life
in low income communities, and, of course, contemporary childhood. The
story is all the more devastating because Perlstein isn’t promoting an
unambiguously anti-No Child Left Behind agenda.”
Luther Spoehr, The Providence Journal
“As Congress discusses whether and how to reform NCLB this fall, Perlstein’s readable book will enlighten anyone who wants to put human faces on the data and think about how to help our children become educated, not merely ‘literate.’”
Robert Johnston, The Chicago Tribune
“No author has cataloged the complexities, and the costs, of No Child
Left Behind as vividly and intelligently as has Linda Perlstein. ...
Perlstein’s pen makes test prep come alive as a semitragic drama, full
of passion, disappointment, hopes sustained and dreams dashed.
Perlstein also has a flair for fun, as well as a quiet wit, that make
‘Tested’ a consistently compelling read. ... ‘Tested’ has such immense
power that every policymaker involved with No Child Left Behind has a
moral obligation to read ... this careful, wise, humane and terribly
important book.”
Booklist
“Perlstein brings telling details, engagement, and perception to her
investigation of how a single school coped with the high stakes
attached to standardized tests. As educators and lawmakers ponder the
renewal of No Child Left Behind, this book offers some piercing
insight into the reality of reliance on standardized tests to measure
a school’s effectiveness.”
Jal Mehta, The American Prospect
“In a field that is dominated by ideological polemics and dry academic
studies, Perlstein has written a vivid, carefully documented, and even
suspenseful book ... that offers the general reader and scholar alike
an engaging, if often grim, portrait of life under NCLB. Unlike most
educational policy researchers, who emphasize the scientifically
quantifiable, Perlstein’s writing also reflects a humanistic
sensibility and concern for the ultimate purposes of education.”
Susan Troller, (Madison) Capital TImes
“She lets the struggling students and staff of Tyler Heights
Elementary tell a beautifully crafted, well-researched cautionary tale
about the human cost of success according to No Child Left Behind.
Compassionate, lively, infuriating and heartbreaking, Tested provides
a rich backdrop for understanding why most teachers ... believe a
single-minded focus on testing and ‘making adequate yearly progress’
hurts children and damages schools.”
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