Contemporary school reform, from the No Child Left Behind Act to proposals for higher education accountability, places enormous weight on the value of educational testing. Accountability proponents on the left and the right have devoted little time to addressing the shortcomings of testing. Meanwhile, critics have tended to denounce testing as a whole rather than highlight specific problems. The result, as Harvard professor Daniel Koretz argues in his new book, Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us (Harvard University Press, 2008), is policy crafted with little appreciation for how tests might be better deployed to improve academic standards. Please join Koretz, one of the nation’s foremost experts on educational testing; Roberto Rodriguez, senior education adviser to Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; and Bella Rosenberg, an education policy consultant and former special adviser to the president of the American Federation of Teachers for a conversation about what tests can and cannot do and what steps policymakers and educators can take to ensure that tests are used appropriately and effectively. AEI director of education policy studies Frederick M. Hess will moderate.
