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20 books match the query 'Evaluation & Assessment'

cover of "Destined to Fail": Carl Seashore’s World of Eugenics, Psychology, Education, and Music

"Destined to Fail"

Carl Seashore’s World of Eugenics, Psychology, Education, and Music

Julia Eklund Koza

University of Michigan Press, 2021

A little-known fact about the prominent US psychologist and educator Carl E. Seashore (1866–1949) is that he was deeply involved in the American eugenics movement. He was among the US academics to support eugenics long before German Nazis embraced it. A titan in a host of disciplines and a proponent of radical education reform, Seashore used his positional power to promote a constellation of education reforms consistent with central precepts of eugenics. Many of these reforms, including tracking, gifted and talented programs, and high-stakes standardized testing, were adopted and remain standard practice in the United States today. He promulgated the idea that musical talent is biologically inheritable, and he developed the first standardized tests of musical talent; these tests were used by early-twentieth-century researchers in their attempts to determine whether there are race differences in musical talent. Seashore’s ideas and work profoundly shaped music education’s research trajectory, as well as enduring “commonsense” beliefs about musical ability. An intersectional analysis, “Destined to Fail” focuses on the relationship between eugenics and Seashore’s views on ability, race, and gender. Koza concludes that Seashore promoted eugenics and its companion, euthenics, because he was a true believer. She also discusses the longstanding silences surrounding Seashore’s participation in eugenics. As a diagnosis and critique of the present, “Destined to Fail” identifies resemblances and connections between past and present that illustrate the continuing influence of eugenics—and the systems of reasoning that made early-twentieth-century eugenics imaginable and seem reasonable—on education discourse and practice today. It maps out discursive, citational, and funding connections between eugenicists of the early twentieth-century and contemporary White supremacists; this mapping leads to some of Donald Trump’s supporters and appointees.

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cover of American Indian Educators in Reservation Schools

American Indian Educators in Reservation Schools

Terry Huffman

University of Nevada Press, 2014

The role of Native American teachers and administrators working in reservation schools has received little attention from scholars. Utilizing numerous interviews and extensive fieldwork, Terry Huffman shows how they define their roles and judge their achievements. He examines the ways they address the complex issues of cultural identity that affect their students and themselves and how they cope with the pressures of teaching disadvantaged students while meeting the requirements for reservation schools. Personal accounts from the educators enrich the discussion. Their candid comments about their choice of profession; their position as teachers, role models, and social service agents; and the sometimes harsh realities of reservation life offer unique insight into the challenges and rewards of providing an education to Native American students. Huffman also considers the changing role of Native educators as reservation schools prepare their students for the increasing complexities of modern life and society while still transmitting traditional culture. He shows that Native American educators meet daunting challenges with enduring optimism and persistence. The insights these educators offer can serve those in other communities where students navigate a difficult path out of discrimination and poverty.
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cover of An Age of Accountability: How Standardized Testing Came to Dominate American Schools and Compromise Education

An Age of Accountability

How Standardized Testing Came to Dominate American Schools and Compromise Education

John L. Rury

Rutgers University Press, 2024

An Age of Accountability highlights the role of test-based accountability as a policy framework in American education from 1970 to 2020. For more than half a century, the quest to hold schools and educators accountable for academic achievement has relied almost exclusively on standardized assessment. The theory of change embedded in almost all test-based accountability programs held that assessment with stipulated consequences could lead to major improvements in schools. This was accomplished politically by proclaiming lofty goals of attaining universal proficiency and closing achievement gaps, which repeatedly failed to materialize. But even after very clear disappointments, no other policy framework has emerged to challenge its hegemony. The American public today has little confidence in institutions to improve the quality of goods and services they provide, especially in the public sector. As a consequence, many Americans continue to believe that accountability remains a vital necessity, even if educators and policy scholars disagree.
 
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cover of An Alternate Pragmatism for Going Public

An Alternate Pragmatism for Going Public

Jim Webber

Utah State University Press, 2017

An Alternate Pragmatism for Going Public interrogates composition’s most prominent responses to contemporary K–16 education reform. By “going public,” teachers, scholars, and administrators rightfully reassert their expertise against corporate-political standards and assessments like the Common Core, Complete College America, and the Collegiate Learning Assessment. However, author Jim Webber shows that composition’s professional imperative for self-defense only partly fulfils the broader aims of “going public,” which include fostering public participation that can assess and potentially affirm the public good of professional judgment.

Drawing on the pragmatic/democratic tradition, Webber envisions an alternate rhetoric of professionalism, one that not only reasserts compositionists’ expertise but also expands opportunities for publics to authorize this expertise. While this public inquiry and engagement may not safeguard professional standing against neoliberal reform, it reorients composition toward an equally important goal, enabling publics to gauge the adequacy of the educational standardization so often advocated by contemporary reform.

An Alternate Pragmatism for Going Public shows how public engagement can serve composition’s efforts related to “going public.”

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cover of Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education: A Guide for Teachers

Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education

A Guide for Teachers

Teresa McConlogue

University College London, 2020

 
Teachers spend much of their time on assessment, yet many higher education teachers have received minimal guidance on assessment design and marking. This means assessment can often be a source of stress and frustration. Offering a concise overview of assessment theory and practice, this guide provides teachers with the help they need. In education, theory and practice are often poorly linked. In this guide, Teresa McConlogue presents theoretical ideas and research findings and links them to practice. She considers recent theoretical work on feedback and suggests ways of developing evaluative judgment. Throughout the book, teachers are encouraged to examine their practice critically, and there are ideas for small-scale educational investigations, involving teachers, their colleagues, and students, such as using the Assessment Review Questionnaire to adapt assessments. This guide explores the concept of academic standards and proposes methods of co-constructing shared standards within a teaching team and with students through calibration activities.
 
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cover of Failing Sideways: Queer Possibilities for Writing Assessment

Failing Sideways

Queer Possibilities for Writing Assessment

Stephanie West-Puckett

Utah State University Press, 2023

Failing Sideways is an innovative and fresh approach to assessment that intersects writing studies, educational measurement, and queer rhetorics. While valuing and representing the research, theory, and practice of assessment, authors Stephanie West-Puckett, Nicole I. Caswell, and William P. Banks demonstrate the ways that students, teachers, and other interested parties can find joy and justice in the work of assessment.
 
A failure-oriented assessment model unsettles some of the most common practices, like rubrics and portfolios, and challenges many deeply held assumptions about validity and reliability in order to ask what could happen if assessment was oriented toward possibility and potential. Working to engage a more capacious writing construct, the authors propose queer validity inquiry (QVI) as a model for assessment that values failure, affect, identity, and materiality. These overlapping lenses help teachers honor parts of writing and learning that writing studies faculty have struggled to hold onto in a world overly focused on quickness and efficiency in schools.
 
Through programmatic and classroom examples, Failing Sideways privileges what is valued in the classroom but traditionally ignored in assessments. Reimagining what matters in the teaching and learning of writing and using assessment data differently, this book demonstrates what writing can be and could do in a more diverse and just world.
 
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cover of Hidden Inequities in Labor-Based Contract Grading

Hidden Inequities in Labor-Based Contract Grading

Ellen C. Carillo

Utah State University Press, 2021

Current Arguments in Composition Series

The Hidden Inequities in Labor-Based Contract Grading intervenes in the increasingly popular practice of labor-based grading by expanding the scope of this assessment practice to include students who are disabled and multiply marginalized. Through the lens of disability studies, the book critiques the assumption that labor is a neutral measure by which to assess students and explores how labor-based grading contracts put certain groups of students at a disadvantage. Ellen C. Carillo offers engagement-based grading contracts as an alternative that would provide a more equitable assessment model for students of color, those with disabilities, and students who are multiply marginalized.
 
This short book explores the history of labor-based grading contracts, reviews the scholarship on this assessment tool, highlights the ways in which it normalizes labor as an unbiased tool, and demonstrates how to extend the conversation in new and generative ways both in research and in classrooms. Carillo encourages instructors to reflect on their assessment practices by demonstrating how even assessment methods that are designed through a social-justice lens may unintentionally privilege some students over others.
 

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cover of How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow's Schools

How to Educate an American

The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow's Schools

Michael J. Petrilli

Templeton Press, 2020

In the years after A Nation at Risk, conservatives’ ideas to reform America’s lagging education system gained much traction. Key items like school choice and rigorous academic standards drew bipartisan support and were put into practice across the country.

Today, these gains are in retreat, ceding ground to progressive nostrums that do little to boost the skills and knowledge of young people. Far from being discouraged, however, conservatives should seize the moment to refresh their vision of quality K–12 education for today’s America. These essays by 20 leading conservative thinkers do just that.

Students, according to this vision, should complete high school with a thorough understanding of the country’s history, including gratitude for its sacrifices, respect for its achievements, and awareness of its shortcomings. They should also learn to be trustworthy stewards of a democratic republic, capable of exercising virtue and civic responsibility.

Beyond helping to form their character, schools ought to ready their pupils for careers that are productive, rewarding, and dignified. Excellent technical-training opportunities will await those not headed to a traditional college. Regardless of the paths and schools that they select, all students must come to understand that they can succeed in America if they are industrious, creative, and responsible.  

Anchored in tradition yet looking towards tomorrow, How to Educate an American should be read by anyone concerned with teaching future generations to preserve the country’s heritage, embody its universal ethic, and pursue its founding ideals.
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cover of Inside Jewish Day Schools: Leadership, Learning, and Community

Inside Jewish Day Schools

Leadership, Learning, and Community

Alex Pomson and Jack Wertheimer

Brandeis University Press, 2021

A perfect guide to those wishing to understand the contemporary Jewish day school.
 
This book takes readers inside Jewish day schools to observe what happens day to day, as well as what the schools mean to their students, families, and communities. Many different types of Jewish day schools exist, and the variations are not well understood, nor is much information available about how day schools function. Inside Jewish Day Schools proves a vital guide to understanding both these distinctions and the everyday operations of these contemporary schools.
 
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cover of Let's Talk About Critique: Reimagining Art and Design Education

Let's Talk About Critique

Reimagining Art and Design Education

Elissa Armstrong and Mariah Doren

Intellect Books, 2023

Practical and relevant approaches to giving more nuanced critiques.

Let’s Talk about Critique examines how critique in art education has evolved, how it falls short, and what else it could be. Elissa Armstrong and Mariah Doren contextualize current practices by discussing the history of critique, the field of education, and the characteristics of today’s students. Then they offer suggestions for ways to have more open, inclusive, and dynamic classroom conversations about art and design. The core of the book consists of critique format descriptions, written by experienced educators, that provide a wide variety of thoughtful approaches that can be readily adapted and used.
 
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cover of Outcomes Book: Debate and Consensus after the WPA Outcomes Statement

Outcomes Book

Debate and Consensus after the WPA Outcomes Statement

edited by Susanmarie Harrington, Keith Rhodes, Ruth Fischer, & Rita Malenczyk

Utah State University Press, 2005

The WPA Outcomes Statement is important because it represents a working consensus among composition scholars about what college students should learn and do in a composition program. But as a single-page document, the statement cannot convey the kind of reflective process that a writing program must undertake to address the learning outcomes described.

The Outcomes Book relates the fuller process by exploring the matrix of concerns that surrounded the developing Statement itself, and by presenting the experience of many who have since employed it in their own settings.

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cover of Psychological and Psychoeducational Assessment of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Adolescents

Psychological and Psychoeducational Assessment of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Adolescents

Margery S. Miller

Gallaudet University Press, 2015

The obstacles to valid and meaningful assessment of deaf and hard of hearing children and adolescents are great, yet professionals are regularly asked to conduct comprehensive evaluations to determine resource and program eligibility, test modifications in school, classroom and home recommendations, and referrals. In this important new text, the authors define the skills required of the examiners, explain the complex nature of these assessments, and describe ways to intelligently use existing tests.

Authors Margery S. Miller, Tania Thomas-Presswood, Kurt Metz, and Jennifer Lukomski bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to this in-depth treatment of topics essential to educators and school psychologists. They cover such critical areas as test construction and measurement; the diversity in American Deaf culture; the role of parents in the assessment process; neuropsychological assessments; nonverbal methods for assessing intelligence; and the need for sign language competency when testing cognitive and language skills.

The text concludes with recommendations for the development of valid and reliable tests for all students who are deaf and hard of hearing.
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cover of Reconstructing Response to Student Writing: A National Study from across the Curriculum

Reconstructing Response to Student Writing

A National Study from across the Curriculum

Dan Melzer

Utah State University Press, 2023

In Reconstructing Response to Student Writing Dan Melzer makes the argument that writing instructors should shift the construct so that peer response and student self-assessment are more central than teacher response.
 
Presenting the results of a national study of teacher and peer response and student self-assessment at institutions of higher education across the United States, Melzer analyzes teacher and peer response to over 1,000 pieces of student writing as well as 128 student portfolio reflection essays. He draws on his analysis and on a comprehensive review of the literature on response to introduce a constructivist heuristic for response aimed at both composition instructors and instructors across disciplines. Melzer argues that teachers and researchers should focus less on teacher response to individual pieces of student writing and more on engaging in dialogue with student self-assessment and peer response, focusing on growth and transfer rather than products and grades.
 
Reconstructing Response to Student Writing, especially when taken together with Melzer’s previous book Assignments across the Curriculum, provides a comprehensive and large-scale view of college writing and responding across the curriculum in the United States.
 
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cover of Reframing Writing Assessment to Improve Teaching and Learning

Reframing Writing Assessment to Improve Teaching and Learning

Linda Adler-Kassner

Utah State University Press, 2010

Adler-Kassner and O'Neill show writing faculty and administrators how to frame discussions of writing assessment so that they accurately represent research-based practices, and promote assessments that are valid, reliable, and discipline-appropriate.

Public discourse about writing instruction is currently driven by ideas of what instructors and programs “need to do,” “should do,” or “are not doing,” and is based on poorly informed concepts of correctness and unfounded claims about a broad decline in educational quality. This discussion needs to be reframed, say Adler-Kassner and O'Neill, to help policymakers understand that the purpose of writing instruction is to help students develop critical thinking, reading, and writing strategies that will form the foundation for their future educations, professional careers, and civic engagement.

            Reframing Writing Assessment to Improve Teaching and Learning is grounded in the best of writing assessment research, and focuses on how to communicate it effectively to publics beyond academe.

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cover of Requirements for Certification of Teachers, Counselors, Librarians, and Administrators for Elementary and Secondary Schools, 2001-2002

Requirements for Certification of Teachers, Counselors, Librarians, and Administrators for Elementary and Secondary Schools, 2001-2002

Edited by Elizabeth A. Kaye

University of Chicago Press, 2001

This annual volume, conveniently organized by state, offers the most complete and timely listings of the requirements for certification of a wide range of professionals at the elementary and secondary school levels.
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cover of Schooled and Sorted: How Educational Categories Create Inequality

Schooled and Sorted

How Educational Categories Create Inequality

Thurston Domina

Russell Sage Foundation, 2023

We tend to view education primarily as a way to teach students skills and knowledge that they will draw upon as they move into their adult lives. However, schools do more than educate students—they also place students into categories, such as kindergartner, English language learner, or honor roll student. In Schooled & Sorted, Thurston Domina, Andrew M. Penner, and Emily K. Penner, explore processes of educational categorization in order to explain the complex relationship between education and social inequality—and to identify strategies that can help build more just educational systems.
 
Some educational categories have broadly egalitarian consequences. Indeed, Domina, Penner, and Penner argue that when societies enroll young people in school, making them students, they mark them as individuals who are worthy of rights. But other educational categories reinforce powerful social categories—including race, gender, and class—and ultimately reproduce social and economic inequality in society. Elite colleges, tracked high schools, and elementary school gifted programs provide not only different educational experiences, but also create merit and inequality by sorting students into categories that are defined by the students who are excluded.
 
Schooled & Sorted highlights that many of the decisions that define educational categories occur in school-based committee meetings and other relatively local settings. The local nature of these decisions provides many opportunities to define educational categories differently, and for school communities to bring about change.
 
Schooled & Sorted is an illuminating investigation into the ways sorting within schools translates into inequality in the larger world. While some educational categorization may be unavoidable, the authors suggest ways to build a more equitable system—and thus a more equitable society.
 
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cover of The Education of Historians for Twenty-first Century

The Education of Historians for Twenty-first Century

Thomas Bender, Philip M. Katz, Colin Palmer, and the Committee on Graduate Education (AHA)

University of Illinois Press, 2004

An examination and analysis of history education in American colleges and universities

In 1958, the American Historical Association began a study to determine the status and condition of history education in U.S. colleges and universities. Published in 1962 and addressing such issues as the supply and demand for teachers, student recruitment, and training for advanced degrees, that report set a lasting benchmark against which to judge the study of history thereafter. Now, more than forty years later, the AHA has commissioned a new report. The Education of Historians for the Twenty-first Century documents this important new study's remarkable conclusions.

 

Both the American academy and the study of history have been dramatically transformed since the original study, but doctoral programs in history have barely changed. This report from the AHA explains why and offers concrete, practical recommendations for improving the state of graduate education. The Education of Historians for the

Twenty-first Century stands as the first investigation of graduate training for historians in more than four decades and the best available study of doctoral education in any major academic discipline.

Prepared for the AHA by the Committee on Graduate Education, the report represents the combined efforts of a cross-section of the entire historical profession. It draws upon a detailed review of the existing studies and data on graduate education and builds upon this foundation with an exhaustive survey of history doctoral programs. This included actual visits to history departments across the country and consultations with scores of individual historians, graduate students, deans, academic and non-academic employers of historians, as well as other stakeholders in graduate education.

As the ethnic and gender composition of both graduate students and faculty has changed, methodologies have been refined and the domains of historical inquiry expanded. By addressing these revolutionary intellectual and demographic changes in the historical profession, The Education of Historians for the Twenty-first Century breaks important new ground. Combining a detailed historical snapshot of the profession with a rigorous analysis of these intellectual changes, this volume is ideally positioned as the definitive guide to strategic planning for history departments. It includes practical recommendations for handling institutional challenges as well as advice for everyone involved in the advanced training of historians, from department chairs to their students, and from university administrators to the AHA itself.

Although focused on history, there are lessons here for any department. The Education of Historians for the Twenty-first Century is a model for in-depth analysis of doctoral education, with recommendations and analyses that have implications for the entire academy. This volume is required reading for historians, graduate students, university administrators, or anyone interested in the future of higher education.

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cover of The Impracticality of Practical Research: A History of Contemporary Sciences of Change That Conserve

The Impracticality of Practical Research

A History of Contemporary Sciences of Change That Conserve

Thomas S. Popkewitz

University of Michigan Press, 2020

There is an alluring desire that research should lead us to find the practical knowledge that enables people to live a good life in a just and equitable society. This desire haunted the 19th century emergence of the social sciences as a discipline, then became more pronounced in the postwar mobilizations of research. Today that desire lives on in the international assessments of national schools and in the structure of professional education, both of which influence government modernization of schools and also provide for people’s well-being. American policy thus reflects research in which reforms are verified by “scientific, empirical evidences” about “what works” in experiments, and “will work” therefore in society.

The book explores the idea that practical and useful knowledge changes over time, and shows how this knowledge has been (re)visioned in contemporary research on educational reform, instructional improvement, and professionalization. The study of science draws on a range of social and cultural theories and historical studies to understand the politics of science, as well as scientific knowledge that is concerned with social and educational change. Research hopes to change social conditions to create a better life, and to shape people whose conduct embodies these valued characteristics—the good citizen, parent, or worker. Yet this hope continually articulates the dangers that threaten this future. Thomas Popkewitz explores how the research to correct social wrongs is paradoxically entangled with the inscription of differences that ultimately hamper the efforts to include.

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cover of The Problem of Assessment in Art and Design

The Problem of Assessment in Art and Design

Edited by Trevor Rayment

Intellect Books, 2007

 Due to the inevitably subjective nature of art, the issue of evaluating the work of art students will always be controversial. In The Problem of Assessment in Art and Design, a distinguished group of art educators and experts examine this divisive topic across the educational spectrum, from elementary schools to university campuses.
This volume analyzes the present state of art and design assessment from both historical and philosophical perspectives, pointing the way toward possible directions for reform and reconciling the conflict between objective evaluation and individual creativity.
 
“The chapters provide an historical and philosophical analysis of the present state of assessment in art and design in England where assessment in art and design is considered to be essential, but where the assessment procedures are controversial and vehemently contested. Without providing any practical, definitive answers the authors map out some possible directions for reform.”—Teresa Eça, Apecv, Portugal
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cover of Towards Coherence Between Classroom Assessment and Accountability

Towards Coherence Between Classroom Assessment and Accountability

Edited by Mark Wilson

University of Chicago Press, 2004

In analyses of the role of national educational assessment, insufficient attention has been paid to the central place of the classroom. Rather than encouraging a two-way flow of information, today's "standards-based" frameworks tend to direct the flow of accountability from the outside into the classroom.

The authors of this volume emphasize that assessment, as it exists in schools today, consists mainly of the measurements that teachers themselves design, evaluate, and act upon every day. Improving the usefulness of assessment in schools primarily requires assisting and harnessing this flood of assessment information, both as a means of learning within the classroom and as the source of crucial information flowing out of classrooms.

This volume aims to encourage debate and reflection among educational researchers, professionals, and policymakers. Five source chapters describe successful classroom assessment models developed in partnership with teachers, while additional commentaries give a range of perspectives on the issues of classroom assessment, standardized testing, and accountability.
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