High-Stakes Schooling
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A01=Christopher Bjork
academic achievement
accountability
administration
Author_Christopher Bjork
Category=JNK
college
conformity
creativity
curiosity
curriculum
diversity
education
elementary
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
innovation
japan
junior high
learning outcomes
nonfiction
opportunity
overtesting
pedagogy
reference
reform
school
secondary
standardized tests
student teacher relationships
students
success
testing
united states
Product details
- ISBN 9780226309385
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 08 Dec 2015
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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If there is one thing that describes the trajectory of American education, it is this: more high-stakes testing. In the United States, the debates surrounding this trajectory can be so fierce that it feels like we are in uncharted waters. As Christopher Bjork reminds us in this study, however, we are not the first to make testing so central to education: Japan has been doing it for decades. Drawing on Japan's experiences with testing, overtesting, and recent reforms to relax educational pressures, he sheds light on the best path forward for US schools. Bjork asks a variety of important questions related to testing and reform: Does testing overburden students? Does it impede innovation and encourage conformity? Can a system anchored by examination be reshaped to nurture creativity and curiosity? How should any reforms be implemented by teachers? Each chapter explores questions like these with careful attention to the actual effects policies have had on schools in Japan and other Asian settings, and each draws direct parallels to issues that US schools currently face.
Offering a wake-up call for American education, Bjork ultimately cautions that the accountability-driven practice of standardized testing might very well exacerbate the precise problems it is trying to solve.
Christopher Bjork is professor and the Dexter M. Ferry Chair of Education at Vassar College. He is the author of Indonesian Education and editor or coeditor of many other books, including Education and Training in Japan, Educational Decentralization, Taking Teaching Seriously, and Japanese Education in an Era of Globalization.
