Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us,   ISBN:9780674035218

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Measuring Up is an excellent book that provides a critical review of contemporary issues in educational measurement. The text is accessible and insightful, drawing on current research in the field. I am using it as a required text in my masters-level Classroom Assessment course and the chapters provide a spring-board for thoughtful discussion each week in class. Koretz brings to our attention assessment issues that we should all be thinking about.

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In 2008, several hundred public universities joined together in a "Voluntary System of Accountability" (www.voluntarysystem.org) and pledged to begin administering one of three learning outcomes test and posting the results in a common format. The VSA idea is that certainly this would prove that students actually learn things at our colleges and universities. I am involved in efforts to figure out how to get several hundred freshmen and seniors at my school to take standardized tests of their critical thinking and writing skills. My gut reaction to the VSA notion was "Gee, I don't know that standardized testing has worked so well for K-12, how are we going to make this work in public higher education?" After reading Koretz's book, I have even more profound questions about the wisdom of the VSA architects. There may be a time, in the future, that higher education will have the culture and skill base to pull this off, and we will all be wise enough to know how to draw valid conclusions from the results. But not right now. This is an excellent book, well written, and very timely for higher education as well as the more obvious K-12 audience.

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Professor Koretz teaches a course on standardized testing for non-statisticians at Harvard. This book is based on that course. There is no complicated math, but lots of clear explanations and easily understood examples. What I found most interesting was that much of the information about the limits of these tests came not from their critics, but from their developers. This should be required reading for all who work with the results of these tests. I only wish that more of Professor Koretz's examples had come from the California Standards Tests that I have to give each year.

Customer Rating: 

While not always a page-turner, this book is an eye-opener for both proponents and opponents of high stakes testing in America's schools. The author describes what inferences we can make based on test data and explains why so many of the inferences currently being made can not be adequately supported by the data. A "must read" book for parents, administrators, superintendents, and education policy makers.

Customer Rating: 

The book provides some statistics as applied to testing but nothing much new, and I doubt the average college teacher would have an easy time understanding it. There is a hundred years of research on essay testing beginning with Prof. Edgeworth in 1888, and none of it is mention in the book. The research shows over and over that if two people grade an essay test they don't agree with each other, and the same person doesn't agree with himself two weeks later.The author just doesn't want to face this.