What Educational Testing Can and Cannot Do

Contemporary school reform, from the No Child Left Behind Act to proposals for higher education accountability, places enormous weight on the value of educational testing. Accountability proponents on the left and the right have devoted little time to addressing the shortcomings of testing. Meanwhile, critics have tended to denounce testing as a whole rather than highlight specific problems. The result, as Harvard professor Daniel Koretz argues in his new book, Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us (Harvard University Press, 2008), is policy crafted with little appreciation for how tests might be better deployed to improve academic standards. Please join Koretz, one of the nation’s foremost experts on educational testing; Roberto Rodriguez, senior education adviser to Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; and Bella Rosenberg, an education policy consultant and former special adviser to the president of the American Federation of Teachers for a conversation about what tests can and cannot do and what steps policymakers and educators can take to ensure that tests are used appropriately and effectively. AEI director of education policy studies Frederick M. Hess will moderate.

About the Author

 

Frederick M.
Hess



  • An educator, political scientist and author, Frederick M. Hess studies a range of K-12 and higher education issues. He is the author of influential books on education including “The Same Thing Over and Over,” “Education Unbound,” “ Common Sense School Reform,” “ Revolution at the Margins” and “Spinning Wheels,” and he pens the Education Week blog, Rick Hess Straight Up. His work has appeared in scholarly and popular outlets such as Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, Social Science Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, American Politics Quarterly, Chronicle of Higher Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Educational Leadership, U.S. News & World Report, National Affairs, The Washington Post, New York Times, The Atlantic and National Review. He has edited widely cited volumes on education philanthropy, stretching the school dollar, the impact of education research and No Child Left Behind.  He serves as executive editor of Education Next, as lead faculty member for the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program, on the review boards for the Broad Prize in Urban Education and the Broad Prize for Public School Charters as well as on the boards of directors of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, 4.0 SCHOOLS and the American Board for the Certification of Teaching Excellence. A former high school social studies teacher, he has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Rice University and Harvard University. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University as well as an M.Ed. in Teaching and Curriculum.


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  • Email: rhess@aei.org
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    Name: Lauren Aronson
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