Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade

TESTED is an excellent book about the meaning of the test-and-punish philosophy embedded in our federal education law, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). TESTED resounts the choices that the principal and teachers in one Maryland elementary school believe NCLB forces upon them. Perlstein tells the story of the entire 2005-2006 school year she spent at Tyler Heights Elementary, a school that serves very poor children and teeters on the brink of making or losing the Adequate Yearly Progress rating NCLB awards to a 'successful' school. "Bombard, bombard, bombard those children with the kinds of questions they'll have on the test," the principal rationalizes. "You want the students at a level of automaticity with reading those test-like questions." The reader spends days stretching into months with the third-grade teaching team. We watch them collaboratively plan each day to the minute, and we listen as the children yearn for more at school---to do some science, read for fun, perform a play. Will the school raise its scores enough? Suspense mounts until the last chapter. Then the reader must weigh the benefits and costs.

After I finished reading Perlstein's "Tested" I was digusted- at the system, government and school boards. As a psychologist and former teacher, it's no wonder our teachers are leaving in droves! My daughter who teaches autistic kindergarteners says she is lucky if she gets in one lesson a day. We don't take into account children who don't speak English, have never been out of their town or who come from impoversed homes. Perlstein did an excellent job on writing this book. It was easy to read and understand. All school districts, parents should be made to read this. No one really understands NO Child Left Behind- if they read this they would. The author's interview with children, teachers, and principal were very informative, I felt like I was sitting in the room with her. This is a must read for all parents.

"Tested" by Linda Perlstein should be required reading for anyone going into teaching and also every politician who thinks they are an expert of what is happening in our schools as a result of No Child Left Behind. I recently finished reading this book and then wrote a letter to Senator Clinton and inserted it into my copy of the book and gave it to one of her campaign coordinators. This book portrays the reduction of curriculum to teaching to the test especially for Title I schools who can suffer greatly if they do not hit the mark of making adequate yearly progress. As a middle school counselor involved in testing over 1100 students the annual testing required in our building has resulted in students experiencing test anxiety and loosing valuable learning time devoted to the test itself. Linda Perlstein's accounting of one elementary school's exoerience is on the mark when it comes to the loss of creativity and risk taking by seasoned professionals who in spite of knowing what is best for kids have to constrain their efforts to mandated curriculum, schedules and more. Buy this book and then share it with everyone you know so they can understand what public schools that are underfunded face each day.

Linda Perlstein's TESTED should be required reading for all politicians, bureaucrats, and administrators who propose or implement education policy. As a 4th grade teacher in a county adjacent to the one highlighted in the book, I can attest to the accuracy of Perlstein's account of the impact testing mania has had on teaching over the past few years. The book is very readable--not weighed down by education jargon--and gives the reader a clear, real-world sense of the good, the bad, and the ugly of No Child Left Behind.