Next Generation Assessment - by Linda Darling-Hammond (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Next Generation Assessment: Moving Beyond the Bubble Test to Support 21^st Century Learning provides needed answers to the nation's growing concerns about educational testing in America. Drawing on research and the experiences of leading states and countries, this new book examines how performance assessments can offer a feasible alternative to current high stakes tests. As parents, educators, and policymakers have increasingly criticized the effects of the teaching to the test mandate from the No Child Left Behind Act, the need for this resource has never been more critical.

This summary volume to Beyond the Bubble Test speaks to the nationwide unease about current tests' focus on low-level skills, like recalling and restating facts, rather than higher-order skills such as problem-solving, analyzing, and synthesizing information. It illustrates how schools can use authentic assessments to improve teaching and learning as they involve students in conducting research, designing investigations, developing products and solutions, using technology, and communicating their ideas in many forms. This important book:

• Serves as a must-have resource for those interested in the most current research about how to create valid and reliable performance assessments
• Explains how educators can improve practice by developing, using, and scoring performance assessments
• Helps policymakers and educators accurately assess the benefits and possibilities of adopting performance assessments nationally

If you're an educator, researcher, graduate student, district administrator, or education policy specialist, Next Generation Assessment is an indispensable resource you'll turn to again and again.

From the Back Cover

NEXT GENERATION ASSESSMENT

Next Generation Assessment examines performance assessment as an alternative to the current high-stakes standardized testing system. This important resource provides a thorough analysis of the prospects and challenges of sustaining performance assessments on a large scale. Linda Darling-Hammond, with a team of leading scholars, describes the history and current uses of performance assessments in the United States and abroad and summarizes the latest findings in the field.

The experts determine that large-scale testing in the United States may be dramatically improved by the thoughtful incorporation of well-constructed performance assessments that can represent higher-order, cognitively demanding standards. This summary volume to Beyond the Bubble Test is designed for the busy practitioner--and all who are interested in how schools can successfully supplement traditional tests with something that works better. Next Generation Assessment offers an accurate evaluation of the benefits and possibilities for adopting better performance assessments nationally.

PRAISE FOR NEXT GENERATION ASSESSMENT

"Pointing to current policies and practice, this book is an excellent guide directing educators on how to transition to an assessment system that genuinely shapes, informs, and improves learning for all students and teachers."
--Governor Bob Wise, president, Alliance for Excellent Education; author of Raising the Grade

"This book helps us to think strategically about accountability and assessment in our public schools and to understand how performance-based approaches--instead of rote memorization--can allow schools to support both deeper learning and higher standards."
--Randi Weingarten, president, American Federation of Teachers

About the Author

LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University and former sponsor of Stanford's Teacher Education Program. She is also founder and co-director of the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute and the School Redesign Network.