Au, Wayne and Bollow Tempel, Melissa (eds.): Pencils Down: Rethinking High-Stakes Testing and Accountability in Public Schools

Abstract

I confess: I delayed reading Pencils Down for as long as I could. I purchased the book before it was even released, because I knew it was an important volume for those of us who work with teachers in urban schools in the U.S. I decided to review it immediately, realizing that I wanted to join efforts to make people aware of it. Yet I could not bring myself to read it. I dreaded it. I avoided it. I suppose this was because I have long understood and resented the damage that over-testing and misuse of standardized tests have wrought on our public schools, from pre-k, to college and teacher education. In fact, it was having to force my group of recent immigrant fourth graders through 3 weeks of English-only norm-referenced testing in 1998 in California—and then having to ‘‘assess our program’’ based on those scores—that drove me to graduate school. I was afraid that having to wade through an entire volume of anecdotes and evidence would simply depress me. This book sat on my to-do list for six solid months before a long plane ride and no other options finally got me to crack it open. I was not entirely wrong in my foreboding. The first three sections of the book are full of very depressing stories contributed by teachers and parents and teacher educators in the ‘‘trenches’’ of U.S. urban public schools. For example, Kelley Dawson Salas writes about having to force ELL students in a well-established twoway dual language program in Milwaukee, WI to transition their literacy skills to English in a month (rather than the full academic year built into their program) in order to take a battery of state mandated tests in English for the first time. Melissa Bollow Tempel describes middle-school students denied access to electives in order to focus on ‘‘reading skills’’ in exceedingly dreary skill-based classes. Soren Wuerth writes about a Yup’ik high school senior denied a diploma despite a full transcript