Customer Reviews

Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
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"Tested" by Linda Perlstein should be required reading for anyone going into teaching and also every politician who thinks they are an expert of what is happening in our schools as a result of No Child Left Behind. I recently finished reading this book and then wrote a letter to Senator Clinton and inserted it into my copy of the book and gave it to one of her campaign coordinators. This book portrays the reduction of curriculum to teaching to the test especially for Title I schools who can suffer greatly if they do not hit the mark of making adequate yearly progress. As a middle school counselor involved in testing over 1100 students the annual testing required in our building has resulted in students experiencing test anxiety and loosing valuable learning time devoted to the test itself. Linda Perlstein's accounting of one elementary school's exoerience is on the mark when it comes to the loss of creativity and risk taking by seasoned professionals who in spite of knowing what is best for kids have to constrain their efforts to mandated curriculum, schedules and more. Buy this book and then share it with everyone you know so they can understand what public schools that are underfunded face each day.

Linda Perlstein's TESTED should be required reading for all politicians, bureaucrats, and administrators who propose or implement education policy. As a 4th grade teacher in a county adjacent to the one highlighted in the book, I can attest to the accuracy of Perlstein's account of the impact testing mania has had on teaching over the past few years. The book is very readable--not weighed down by education jargon--and gives the reader a clear, real-world sense of the good, the bad, and the ugly of No Child Left Behind.

No Child Left Behind inspires passionate rhetoric from both its supporters and its critics. If you're a supporter, NCLB is a watershed law that finally pulls failing urban and rural schools into the light of day. If you're a critic, NCLB is an oppressive law that cruelly burdens teachers under siege with even more demeaning job requirements. For laymen trying to get an informed position on the law, it's very hard to find books and articles where you can familiarize yourself with the issues and come up with your own opinion. In "Tested", Perlstein provides a powerful story that shows how a successful NCLB school in Annapolis develops a laserlike focus on the tests and ends up getting the scores.

Perlstein clearly dislikes the law and strongly criticizes NCLB in every way. A teacher Perlstein admires ends up leaving the school at the end of the year after becoming overly stressed by the school's focus on test success at the expense of learing. We frequently see some of the artificial techniques that are used to help boost scores such as breathing exercises, incentive plans and even a mascot led assembly. She portrays students as losing the meaning and the life of education as they seek to become masters of BCRs, the mechancially graded Brief Constructed Response questions. And in the end, she questions whether the tests measure anything useful. In the later portions of the book, she alludes to how the test writing process is flawed and how students who struggled with basic writing ended up getting scores that surprised the adults. The third graders who teachers are convinced will fail based on their day to day experiences working with the kids often surprise their teachers with passing scores.

This book falls short of being a definitive text on No Child Left Behind. We're only looking at one school. This Annapolis Middle School is one isolated low-income school in a relatively good district and the experience probably differs in some ways from nearby schools in Washington, DC, Baltimore, or Prince George's County. Perlstein's book would be much more powerful if she provided some stories from other neighboring schools so that we could see how typical the experience in this school is. Perlstein also overlooks the argument that many NCLB supporters will make. NCLB did spur this school to attempt to reach more kids than it did before testing. Yes, the school artificially pursues scores. But NCLB has lit a fire under the administration to succeed that may only need to be better channeled.

The book ultimately succeeds because you develop a real compassion for the kids she describes, the struggles of the principal and the tough choices that the teachers make on a day to day basis. Parents who are new to understanding NCLB can really gain from the stories in this book.

There's still room for a more balanced classic book on NLCB that addresses a wider range of schools and informs and changes the opinions of both supporters and opponents of NCLB. But Tested is a good first step and will help that book get written. I hope this book does well so that publishers can see that there is an audience for well-written, accessible books that help policy makers and the concerned public understand this controversial legislation.

4 stars

--SD

A couple of years ago we lived in Anne Arundel County and our elementary school was in some respects worse than the school described. The administration in our school ELIMINATED recess, Halloween and Valentine's DAy parties, assemblies, and field trips in order to raise those all-important MSA scores. And the elaborate discipline system they had to put into place to handle a bunch of six-year-olds who hadn't been able to move all day was ridiculous.

The crazy thing was, we were a 100% military-dependent school on a military post, and no one in the school would be staying in Maryland more than a year or two. Even the most involved parents couldn't have cared less how the school did on the MSAs-- but it seemed to be the only thing the principals and teachers cared about.

I stayed up later than I should have several nights in a row reading this book. It resonates with my experience teaching fourth grade in Houston and the experiences of every Title I elementary teacher I know, as well as those I spoke with while writing my own book. The author clearly spent enough time on research to get the facts right and enough time in classrooms to get the teaching scenes right. (In my reading experience, the second part of this is rare for non-teachers writing about school.)

A particular strength of the classroom scenes were the captured bits of conversation that not only felt real but also showed how far these kids were from the thinking skills that might lead them to actual reading comprehension rather than parroting back test-taking skills. The details captured in these scenes also showed the imagination and curiosity that teachers are forced to pound out of kids in the name of "learning gains," and the compassion and creativity that is pounded out of educators in the name of "teacher effectiveness."

Those who make high-level decisions about education should read this book now.

Teachers should read this book also, but wait until after testing season unless you can handle the double dose of frustration.

Roxanna Elden
Author
"See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers"

TESTED is an excellent book about the meaning of the test-and-punish philosophy embedded in our federal education law, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

TESTED resounts the choices that the principal and teachers in one Maryland elementary school believe NCLB forces upon them. Perlstein tells the story of the entire 2005-2006 school year she spent at Tyler Heights Elementary, a school that serves very poor children and teeters on the brink of making or losing the Adequate Yearly Progress rating NCLB awards to a 'successful' school.

"Bombard, bombard, bombard those children with the kinds of questions they'll have on the test," the principal rationalizes. "You want the students at a level of automaticity with reading those test-like questions."

The reader spends days stretching into months with the third-grade teaching team. We watch them collaboratively plan each day to the minute, and we listen as the children yearn for more at school---to do some science, read for fun, perform a play. Will the school raise its scores enough? Suspense mounts until the last chapter. Then the reader must weigh the benefits and costs.

"Tested" is a fascinating but depressing account of how the No Child Left Behind act has affected one government-run elementary school serving an overwhelmingly poor & minority population in inner city Annapolis, MD. Test scores at the school are way up, but at the price of doing little aside from drill-and-kill reading and math test prep.

Ms. Perlstein is clearly sympathetic towards the teachers and students (sometimes overly so) and antagonistic towards the hard-nosed district superintendent, state & Federal officials, and NCLB in general (again sometimes overly so). For example, she paints a rosy picture of the pre-NCLB "whole language" reading program at the school and bashes the current phonics program while glossing over the fact that the failure rate went from a whopping 80% down to 10% in 2 years after the switch. The pendulum may have swung a bit too far, but that doesn't mean it was the wrong direction.

Another example of how Ms. Perlstein lets her political agenda bias her writing is in her treatment of the children who show up to kindergarten unprepared. Instead of placing the blame where it should be (on the parents who aren't teaching their kids what they need to know), she goes off on this big propaganda for universal government-run preschool. Most of the people my age & older never attended preschool, and many in my parents' generation did not even attend kindergarten, and somehow we all did just fine. Not to mention that the existing government-run preschool programs have yet to show any lasting positive benefits.

"Tested" would've been a better book had it been written from more of an objective journalist point-of-view and less of an activist one. Still, I found it a fascinating account from the trenches of the tremendous pressures NCLB has placed on teachers.

If you want a book that has a great story and tells the success story and the struggles of implementing NCLB then this is the book for you. It is very detailed like a nonfiction story but gives an indepth analysis on how it does and doesnt work.

I ordered this book for an education class but it was very interesting and I would read it again. Definitely one to keep on the shelf, especially for teachers!

This book came in great condition. It was exactly how the seller desribed it and it came just in time! Great product, unbeatable price and fast shipping!!