Testing Education: A Teacher's Memoir

by Kathy Greeley

Overview

Since the 2002 implementation of No Child Left Behind, the American public education system has been fundamentally changed. Excessive testing, standardized curriculums, destructive demands on children, corporate-­style evaluations, and top-­down mandates have become the norm. In response, record numbers of demoralized educators have quit, and millions of students have been left educationally impoverished. This troubling transformation has been exhaustively critiqued by scholars and commentators. Yet one crucial voice has been missing, until now.

In Testing Education, Kathy Greeley recounts the impact of education reform from a teacher’s point of view. Based on a teaching career spanning nearly forty years, Greeley details how schools went from learning communities infused with excitement, intellectual stimulation, and joy to sterile spaces of stress, intimidation, and fear. In this ultimately hopeful memoir, Greeley asks us to learn from the past to reimagine the future of public education.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625347831
Publisher:	University of Massachusetts Press
Publication date:	04/22/2024
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

KATHY GREELEY is a retired educator from Cambridge and Boston public schools.

Editorial Reviews

Kathy Greeley tells the story of how politicians inflicted grievous damage on America’s schools, teachers, and students with their mandates and ill-considered laws. Because of her long experience in the classroom, she vividly remembers what it was like to teach in the days before high-stakes standardized testing, No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top. She remembers the freedom she had to engage her students in projects that called forth their creativity and imagination. To revive the spirited learning in our classrooms, we need her book to remind us what real teaching and learning looks like.”—Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

“Finally, we learn directly from a teacher what happens when joy and creativity are drained out of education by misguided and harmful education policies. Kathy Greeley shows us in her memoir not only the inspiring and life-changing possibilities inherent in creative, student-centered education, but the crushing effects education policies can have when they are imposed by outsiders looking for gains in all the wrong places.”—Nancy Carlsson-Paige, author of Taking Back Childhood: A Proven Roadmap for Raising Confident, Creative, Compassionate Kids

“Greeley gives a rare insider’s look at the devastation wrought by corporate ed reform. Spanning a nearly forty-year career in urban schools, Testing Education is a searing exposé on the damage these policies continue to inflict. This is a must-read for people interested in understanding what public schools have consequently lost—and how to rebuild them into vibrant democratic institutions.”—Deborah Meier, coauthor of Beyond Testing: Seven Assessments of Students and Schools More Effective Than Standardized Tests

“What is so often missing in our debates about public schools are, paradoxically, the voices of the true experts—our public school educators. Everyone who says they care about public schools in Massachusetts should listen to what retired Cambridge teacher Kathy Greeley has to say about the devastating impacts of a high-stakes testing culture on our students, our educators, and the educational experience in our public schools. Reflecting on her own long and varied career in our public schools, she bluntly catalogues, through the stories of her students and colleagues, what has been lost, and what harm has been inflicted on a generation of students and educators. We should all heed her call to create what our communities deserve and high-stakes testing has denied: “strong, rigorous, engaging, loving, inclusive, democratic schools.”—Max Page, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association
 
“THIS is the book I’ve been waiting for! As a veteran teacher, I know the joy and magic that’s possible in a classroom, and I know that the current context in public schools has made it all but impossible to make that magic. Kathy’s warm, insightful writing reminds us all of what’s possible, and provides clear analysis of how testing mania has caused public schools to veer wildly off course. Every parent, education administrator, policy maker, and ed reformer should read this book. Every one of Kathy’s humble, vulnerable, wise words will resonate with teachers—but we should read this heartening book to remind ourselves that we are not alone!”—Karen Engels, 4th-grade Cambridge Public Schools teacher

“Kathy Greeley recounts her career as an educator dedicated to student-centered learning classrooms, where assessment was vibrant, performance-based, and authentic—environments for all students to thrive. A powerful read that provides a firsthand account of ‘what we had, what we have lost—and what we must regain’ as we reclaim our best practices from the policies and mandates of a corporate-driven agenda.”—Deb McCarthy, vice president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association

“I loved this book. Greeley is an excellent storyteller with a compelling tale about the marvelous possibilities of teacher-led schools. It will interest educators, parents, policymakers, and anyone concerned about the health of our education system.”—James Nehring, author of The Practice of School Reform: Lessons from Two Centuries and professor of leadership in schooling at the University of Massachusetts Lowell

“A unique and powerful perspective on recent education reforms. Everyone who likes Diane Ravitch’s books will find Testing Education a compelling read.”—Derek Gottlieb, author of A Democratic Theory of Educational Accountability: From Test-Based Assessment to Interpersonal Responsibility

“There is no better way to understand high-stakes testing, and education policy broadly, than from the perspective of those on the frontlines. Kathy Greeley’s autoethnographic contribution is deeply compelling. In the spirit of Mikhail Bakhtin and Kathleen Casey, she shows that calls for change, particularly transformative ones, do not come from policymakers. Change comes from those most impacted, subjects who refuse to be objects to be worked on, who refuse to be silent and resist. Her story is not self-indulgent. It is not romanticized. It opens the sociological imagination in profound and complex ways. More importantly, in ‘answering with her life,’ she provides a powerful example of what must be done.”—Ricardo D. Rosa, coauthor of Capitalism’s Educational Catastrophe: And the Advancing Endgame Revolt!

From the Publisher