De-Testing and De-Grading Schools

Contents: Alfie Kohn: Introduction: The Roots of Grades-and-Tests - Lisa Guisbond/Monty Neill/Bob Schaeffer: NCLB's Lost Decade for Educational Progress: What Can We Learn from This Policy Failure? - Fernando F. Padró: High-Stakes Testing Assessment: The Deus ex Machina of Quality in Education - Anthony Cody: Technocratic Groupthink Inflates the Testing Bubble - Lawrence Baines/Rhonda Goolsby: Mean Scores in a Mean World - Julie A. Gorlewski/David A. Gorlewski: De-grading Literacy: How New York State Tests Knowledge, Culture, and Critical Thinking - Morna McDermott: The Corporate Model of Schooling: How High Stakes Testing Dehumanizes Education - Richard Mora: Standardized Testing and Boredom at an Urban Middle School - Brian R. Beabout and Andre M. Perry: Reconciling Student Outcomes and Community Self-Reliance in Modern School Reform Contexts - David L. Bolton/John M. Elmore: The Role of Assessment in Empowering/Disempowering Students in the Critical Pedagogy Classroom - Alfie Kohn: The Case Against Grades - Joe Bower: Reduced to Numbers: From Concealing to Revealing Learning - John Hoben: Outside the Wounding Machine: Grading and the Motive for Metaphor - Peter DeWitt: No Testing Week: Focusing on Creativity in the Classroom - Hadley J. Ferguson: Journey into Ungrading - Jim Webber/Maja Wilson: Moving Beyond «Parents Just Want to Know the Grade!» - P. L. Thomas: De-grading Writing Instruction in a Time of High-Stakes Testing: The Power of Feedback in Workshop - Brian Rhode: One Week, Many Thoughts - Lisa William-White: Conclusion: Striving toward Authentic Teaching for Social Justice.

Joe Bower is a teacher in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. He spent 10 years teaching grade eight language arts and science in a middle school, and is now a special education teacher in a children?s psychiatric assessment unit. Follow his work at www.joebower.org and @joe_bower.
P. L. Thomas, Associate Professor of Education (Furman University, Greenville SC), taught high school English in rural South Carolina before moving to teacher education. He is currently a column editor for English Journal (National Council of Teachers of English) and series editor for Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres (Sense Publishers). Follow his work at http://wrestlingwithwriting.blogspot.com/ and @plthomasEdD.