Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools

by David C. Berliner and Sharon L. Nichols

Drawing on their extensive research, Nichols and Berliner document and categorize the ways that high-stakes testing threatens the purposes and ideals of the American education system. For more than a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1891792350
• ISBN13: 9781891792359
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Harvard Education PR
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Some Teach; Others Just Test

Many years ago an educator from Britain and I were discussing the direction that public education in America was taking. The signs of the "accountability" movement were becoming evident even then. After a while, my visitor remarked, "What a shame. In England, we don't just test, we teach." That judgment is more true today than ever in the history of American education. What a shame! We have created these tests, and now testing has supplanted teaching in our schools...unless of course you count "teaching the test" as actually teaching, which I do not. Nichols and Berliner have sounded the wake-up call. Who will listen?

Essential book for all members of congress who vote.

Parents, teachers, principals, school board members and members of congress who vote for educational practices should be required to read this book before they impose these conditions on young children. This book is a must read.

A Troubling Take on High-Stakes Testings

The authors of this text make a very pointed and specific argument: that attaching high-stakes to test scores corrupts and invalidates the measure. The extent of cheating and malfeasance is found at the student, teacher, district, and state levels because of the enormous pressure put on all parties to raise standards according to the required standardized testing mandated by 2001's No Child Left Behind Act. Nichols and Berliner describe an environment where schools have taken the power out of the teacher's hands to determine what should be taught. Instead, state standardized testing with high stakes (which is to say funding, employment status for teachers, graduation status for students, and school operability are at stake if certain benchmarks are not met) create an impetus for school administrators to narrow the curriculum to focus the school's energy on that which is being tested. Because there are such high stakes attached almost exclusively to the test results of the students, the authors argue that Campbell's law comes into play: "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." Their body of evidence includes news articles from across the country detailing a number of examples of such corruption, as well as interviews with educators who have witnessed the educational environment change firsthand. The examples can become repetitive, but that may be reason enough to be concerned about the unintended consequences of high-stakes accountability in education. Perhaps most importantly, the authors do not suggest that accountability should be removed from the classroom. Instead, they insist that a more holistic approach should be taken with lower stakes applied to just test scores. It is an accessible read and very timely as this bill faces renewal. Recommended for parents and educators alike.

A must read

This is perhaps the most important book to date on the perverse effects of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its mandates for high-stakes testing. The authors provide irrefutable evidence of the problems of a school accountability system which relies on a single indicator--test scores. They explain how when a single social indicator is used to measure something, it corrupts the very thing it is attempting to measure. The authors provide example after example of how the pressure to raise test scores has led to questionable ethical behavior which is harmful to students, schools, and our nation as a whole. Despite the depressing content, the authors write in a highly accessible and entertaining style, and even manage to interject a bit of humor to lighten the heavy burden which comes when one comtemplates the implications of their findings. It is a must read for all educators, parents, and policy makers. Indeed, I hope the latter will read this book and make changes the authors suggest for a more reasonable acountability system.

A must read for every parent

This book is a must reed for every parent living in one of the 26 states that require an exit exam for graduation from high school.