Harvard University Press
Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (But Don't Have To)
Key Metrics
- Jack Schneider
- Harvard University Press
- Hardcover
- 9780674248410
- -
- -
- Education > Evaluation & Assessment
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Amid widespread concern that our approach to testing and grading undermines education, two experts explain how schools can use assessment to support, rather than compromise, learning.
Anyone who has ever crammed for a test, capitulated to a grade-grubbing student, or fretted over a child's report card knows that the way we assess student learning in American schools is freighted with unintended consequences. But that's not all. As experts agree, our primary assessment technologies--grading, rating, and ranking--don't actually provide an accurate picture of how students are doing in school. Worse, they distort student and educator behavior in ways that undermine learning and exacerbate inequality. Yet despite widespread dissatisfaction, grades, test scores, and transcripts remain the currency of the realm.
In Off the Mark, Jack Schneider and Ethan Hutt explain how we got into this predicament, why we remain beholden to our outmoded forms of assessment, and what we can do to change course. As they make clear, most current attempts to reform grading won't solve the complex problems we face. Instead, Schneider and Hutt offer a range of practical reforms, like embracing multiple measures of performance and making the so-called permanent record overwritable. As they explain, we can remake our approach in ways that better advance the three different purposes that assessment currently serves: motivating students to learn, communicating meaningful information about what young people know and can do, and synchronizing an otherwise fragmented educational system. Written in an accessible style for a broad audience, Off the Mark is a guide for everyone who wants to ensure that assessment serves the fundamental goal of education--helping students learn.
Author Bio
Jack Schneider, Ph.D., is a historian and policy analyst who studies the influence of politics, rhetoric, culture, and information in shaping attitudes and behaviors. His research examines how educators, policymakers, and the public develop particular views about what is true, what is effective, and what is important. Drawing on a diverse mix of methodological approaches, he has written about measurement and accountability, segregation and school choice, teacher preparation and pedagogy, and the relationship between research and practice.
His current work, on how school quality is conceptualized and quantified, has been supported by the Spencer Foundation and the Massachusetts State Legislature. The author of four books, Schneider is a regular contributor to outlets like the Washington Post and the Atlantic, and co-hosts the education policy podcast Have You Heard. He is also the co-founder and Director of Research for the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment.
Education
- Ph.D.: History of Education, (2010), Stanford University - Stanford CA
MA: American History, (2007), Stanford University - Stanford CA
BA: Political Science, (2002), Haverford College - Haverford, PA
Source: University of Massachusetts Lowell
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