Customer Reviews

Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us

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It is incredibly hard to figure out how good a school is, especially compared to other schools. For a long time, we have used test scores to judge schools -- and even students!! But what do those scores really mean? We all remember teachers who were easy graders or hard graders, or even inconsistent graders. It turns out that "standardized tests" are no more straightforward than the grades we all got in school. Measuring Up explains how and why. Because test scores are now used as to judge students, schools and even to compare schools, this might be the single most important topic in education, certainly for non-educators and perhaps for educators as well.

The brilliant thing about this book is how clear and easy to follow it is. Educational testing is a technical field, but the author explains it in terms that those outside the field can understand. Through generous use of examples and personal anecdotes, Daniel Koretz shows both how thing work and how they fail to work. Having read this, you will not only know the ways are supposed to be, but the reality of how things really are. Koretz shares stories from his own experiences the illustrate what is really going on.

Because testing is here to stay, this book will remain a gem for many years, but it is especially timely today. NCLB is up for reauthorization soon, and testing remains the most controversial part of the law. Most of the debates about the law are about testing, and it looks like the the most active voices in the debates -- be they politicians, parents or the press -- have rather little understanding of the underlying issues.

Measuring Up does not shy from the controversial or most difficult questions about testing. There's a chapter about testing and special education, a chapter about test bias and one about inflated test results. Do not think, however, the author is an opponent of standardized testing. Rather, he want them to be used properly and their results to be understood. He does not want students or schools to be rewarded or punished because tests are misused or are poorly designed in the first place.

If you are a parent trying to choose a school for your children or a neighborhood to live in, this book will make you a really smart consumer of test score information. If you are a teacher working in the NCLB paradigm, this book will help you to understand both the real strengths and the real weaknesses of this system. If you work in or care about education policy -- local school board member, policy analyst, department of education worker, elected official, member of a PTA or concerned member of the community -- this book will show you what you really need to understand to make informed decisions about testing and how your schools and/districts ought to respond to respond to test results.

This truly is a great book. If I were ran a school, I'd make every teacher read it. If I ran a school leadership program, I'd make it a core text. And if I worked for an elected official, I'd make him/her read it.

Professor Koretz teaches a course on standardized testing for non-statisticians at Harvard. This book is based on that course. There is no complicated math, but lots of clear explanations and easily understood examples. What I found most interesting was that much of the information about the limits of these tests came not from their critics, but from their developers. This should be required reading for all who work with the results of these tests. I only wish that more of Professor Koretz's examples had come from the California Standards Tests that I have to give each year.

What will surprise you about this book is that it is fun to read! Koretz is a leader in the field of educational measurement, so it is no surprise that his book is both informative and useful. He presents an enormous amount of information - from the history of educational testing to the ways in which testing is currently used (both appropriately and inappropriately). He tells us what testing actually means for our children - what influences the scores as well as their possible repercussions. His arguments are extraordinarily clear and data driven, not doctrinaire. All this is to be expected and the book should prove useful to parents, educators and policy makers alike. But what makes this book accessible and a pleasure to read is its presentation. The author speaks in a clear, down-to-earth and - dare I say - entertaining voice. He even manages to make the statistical background clear and enjoyable. Now, that's an accomplishment! He draws on his long experience in this field as an educator and researcher (and a parent) and sprinkles the text with amusing and instructive anecdotes. (This must be the way he teaches. I would love to be a student in his class; I imagine he is both exacting and humorous.) "Measuring Up" explores a critical topic and is both informative and enjoyable! Who could ask for more? This clearly is a must read for anybody who wants to understand the current debate over testing. But, don't despair - you actually will enjoy it!

This book covers all of the important material that I found covered in a Master's-Level course on Statistical Methods in Assessment, but is presented with great clarity and without the details of many of the numerical methods. I have long searched for a way to explain to those without a strong mathematical or statistical background just how complex the issues are when it comes to collecting, summarizing, and making decisions based on educational "data".

So far I have found both this book and Standardized Minds: The High Price of America's Testing Culture and What We Can Do to Change It to do a good job of this. This book is much stronger in its presentation of the statistical methods and their limitations, and it does not take sides. The latter book, which has a clear anti-testing bias, explains both the statistical difficulties and societal consequences of the way tests are currently used.

As an educator including teaching and administration for many years, I am very pleased to recommend this book. It is the best exposure to the history and intended purposes, benefits and pitfalls, to standardized testing I have ever read. Concepts are presented in easy-to-understand terms. Extremely useful for test administrators, faculty, students and parents!

While not always a page-turner, this book is an eye-opener for both proponents and opponents of high stakes testing in America's schools. The author describes what inferences we can make based on test data and explains why so many of the inferences currently being made can not be adequately supported by the data. A "must read" book for parents, administrators, superintendents, and education policy makers.

Most of us have opinions about government schools and why they don't or can't work well based on our own largely forgotten memories of how much time we wasted in them. Koretz, by clarifying some things, sharpens the critque but insists on fairness and the proper use of statistics. Some of his findings are going to be counter intuitive but if you persist in studying along in his book the rewards will be in your own clarified thought. School board members will find this book useful in tearing apart the lies and pretensions of school superintendents and other apologists for school failures. Read in conjunction with Charles Murray's book there is almost a pathway out of the morass. The first thing is to know the truth and to speak the truth.

Do you think you know how well students are performing when headlines scream that test scores are going up or down? Do you think you know what it means when No Child Left Behind says that a huge number of students are below grade level and most of our schools are failing? Do you think that all you need to know is how good a school's test scores are to know whether the school is good or not? Whatever we think we know about educational testing and student achievement, this book causes us to think again. It turns out that there's a lot more -- and less -- to a test score than the simple numbers we are fed. And finally, we have a book on testing that mere mortals can understand and even enjoy. Though Koretz is clearly an expert, he writes in plain, conversational and accessible language and uses lots of helpful analogies and anecdotes to help us understand what testing really tells us. Also, unlike many people who write about this subject, Koretz doesn't have an ideological axe to grind for or against testing. For a change, we actually hear from someone who deeply understands testing and seems dedicated to giving parents and a broader public the tools they need to make sense of this hot subject for themselves. I just wish this book had come out years ago. Maybe if policymakers, reformers and media types who deal with education had read it, most of them wouldn't be (mis)using testing to cast more heat than light on the performance of students and schools. Well, it's never too late to reform. And maybe we can help them be more responsible about testing by requiring them to pass a test on Measuring Up and holding them accountable for the results.

Measuring Up is an excellent book that provides a critical review of contemporary issues in educational measurement. The text is accessible and insightful, drawing on current research in the field. I am using it as a required text in my masters-level Classroom Assessment course and the chapters provide a spring-board for thoughtful discussion each week in class. Koretz brings to our attention assessment issues that we should all be thinking about.

In 2008, several hundred public universities joined together in a "Voluntary System of Accountability" (www.voluntarysystem.org) and pledged to begin administering one of three learning outcomes test and posting the results in a common format. The VSA idea is that certainly this would prove that students actually learn things at our colleges and universities. I am involved in efforts to figure out how to get several hundred freshmen and seniors at my school to take standardized tests of their critical thinking and writing skills. My gut reaction to the VSA notion was "Gee, I don't know that standardized testing has worked so well for K-12, how are we going to make this work in public higher education?" After reading Koretz's book, I have even more profound questions about the wisdom of the VSA architects. There may be a time, in the future, that higher education will have the culture and skill base to pull this off, and we will all be wise enough to know how to draw valid conclusions from the results. But not right now. This is an excellent book, well written, and very timely for higher education as well as the more obvious K-12 audience.