Everything in Mike McAteer’s class begins with the end in mind. But instead of focusing on the endpoint of a summative assessment, he asks the question: What do I want to read in my students’ reflections?

As schools reconvened on Thursday, January 7, many teachers faced two tasks: helping students make sense of yet another traumatizing “day after”—and getting them prepared for end-of-semester tests.

Education professor Paul Thomas shares why grades, tests, and rubrics detract significantly from effective teaching and actually create the problems many teachers seem to be inordinately worried about.

Seemingly overnight, K-12 education shifted from a system of compliance and conformity to an online enterprise, one that has the potential for authentic academic enrichment.

The purpose of schools is to provide students with an opportunity to explore and experience new opportunities. When we choose to equate quality with test scores, families, teachers, and administrators lose sight of what truly is important—the child.

Alfie Kohn has suggested learning should be something teachers do WITH students rather than TO them. Strict deadlines and an expectation to complete our assignments is a doing TO education.

The maxim “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” sums up the continued belief in the necessity and power of accountability. A lack of accountability is seen as a sure path to lawlessness...

More and more I’ve been asking myself: just what is “the game” in schools? Who are its winners and losers? And how does it affect our students, especially the most vulnerable and marginalized?

Recently, I’ve spent a lot of time deriding the ‘scoreboards’ of standardized summative tests in education. Regardless of how much we complain about the state of things, I wonder if we are the monsters at the end of this book.