English Journal - Volume 91, Issue 1, 2001

Stephen Adkison and Stephen Tchudi discuss how teachers “can become more skilled at reading and explaining an increasing range of assessment information.” The authors use logician Stephen Toulmin’s model of argument and his belief in “the relevance of higher learning to the problems of human life” to outline a method for assessing and making sense of the wide variety of data daily confronting teachers.

Judith Langer writes about her research study to discover what makes some reading programs successful and others not so

The Advanced Placement Program (APP) presents a number of compelling assessment issues. Providing a history and critique of the program,Jones notes that the implications of the practices in the APP reveal much about English education and assessment in the last half-century.Reconfiguring the APP English exam to include portfolios, he continues, has the potential to improve writing instruction in all high school English classrooms.

Students need and deserve more than just to pass a test, says Nelson. They deserve writing classes that go beyond teaching skills and correctness. They need classes that show them the power of the Word. Demonstrating the power of the Word as a tool of creation, she relates the experiences of students participating in the Young Adult Writing Project, an offshoot of the Greater Phoenix Area Writing Project and the National Writing Project. Students were allowed to write from their own experiences and feelings, without the pressure of testing or assessment. In just three weeks, the group became a community of strong writers.

Though well-intentioned, the current standards and testing movement has had a serious negative impact on the teaching of reading and writing and we have seen the return to isolated instruction and inauthentic purposes for both reading and writing in classrooms at all grade levels.Thomas says that the English classroom is the central place to take a stand against these inauthentic and reductionist assessment approaches.

Dean presents a fictionalized dialogue demonstrating the impact that state writing assessments with high stakes can have on classroom content.

Zorn organizes a confusing array of arguments and negotiates between two camps: those who favor standards reform and high stakes tests and those who argue against them. Concludes that neither holds the key to school reform and present a third camp - one that favors intellectual growth above all else.

Massachusetts English Teachers talk about the impact of the new Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) and how they are dealing with this test in their classrooms and schools, expressing concerns about how it has changed the way they teach, how they are teaching to the test, and how the test has resulted in loss of creativity and thought.

Crist explains how she and her school help students cope with the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) exam. Shafer describes her end-of-the-year literacy research project.

McClaskey emphasizes the importance of how we react to standardized tests. Teachers should self-educate themselves to the test, she says, and mold the curriculum creatively around the content by focusing teaching on making meaning rather than memorization. She provides examples from her own classroom detailing how she ensures that her students pass the test while still including creative and interesting opportunities for learning.

For this themed issue, “Assessing Ourselves to Death,” the editor adds her “two cents” to the discussion. She goes on to list several variables that teachers cannot control, yet they are powerful enough to render testing outcomes inaccurate and unreliable. Student absenteeism, weak parenting and student apathy, and text anxiety are all contributors to lowered test scores. However, politicians continue to ignore these factors and instead target teachers as being responsible.

In a humorous, yet revealing, short essay, Pribyl reduces a semester’s worth of teaching opportunities from 93 days to just one. His response to the title question is, “I’ll be darned if I am going to administer your test!”

The number of students taking the College Board’s AP exams has nearly doubled in the last ten years, and many English departments now seem to equate the success of their curriculum with the number of students taking the AP. While these tests receive seemingly universal support, Markham says, there are a few reasons to be wary. By identifying some of the reasons here, Markham questions the validity of these tests.

Jago explains why Charles Dickens' words aptly describe the state of assessment in public education today.

Bruner, a beginning teacher, questions how to teach mandated curriculum without losing her own beliefs and sense of integrity. O-Donnell-Allen replies with some helpful advice.

Walton and Bork report on their experiences in the Romantic Circles High School Project, an online educational network built by and for a national community of teachers and students and dedicated to the humanities, particularly the study of nineteenth-century British literature and culture. They describe in detail the use of a MOO (Multi-User Object Oriented System), which allows students to participate in online activities with teachers and scholars.

Poems by Alessandra Lynch, Julia Kasdorf, and Gary Metras.

Reviews of Alfie Kohn’s The Case against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools (Heinemann, 2000) and Failing our Kids: Why the Testing Graze Won't Fix Our Schools (Rethinking Schools, Ltd., 2000) by Kathy Swope and Barbara Miner. Includes related websites.

Reviews of Edith Bruck’s Who Loves You Like This (Paul Dry Books, 2001); Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker (David Remnick, ed.; Random House, 2000); and Portraits of the Presidents: Power and Personality in the Oval Office (Time Books, 2000) by Hugh Sidey.