Kill the Messenger: The War on Standardized Testing

by Richard Phelps

Overview

In response to public demand, federal legislation now requires testing of most students in the United States in reading and mathematics in grades three through eight. Many educators, parents, and policymakers who have paid little attention to testing policy issues in the past need to have better information on the topic than has generally been available. Kill the Messenger, now in paperback, fills this gap.This is perhaps the most thorough and authoritative work in defense of educational testing ever written. Phelps points out that much research conducted by education insiders on the topic is based on ideological preference or profound self-interest. It is not surprising that they arrive at emphatically anti-testing conclusions. Much, if not most, of this hostile research is passed on to the public by journalists as if it were neutral, objective, and independent. Kill the Messenger explains and refutes many of the common criticisms of testing; describes testing opponents' strategies, through case studies of Texas and the SAT; illustrates the profound media bias against testing; acknowledges testing's limitations, and suggests how it can be improved; and finally, outlines the consequences of losing the ""war on standardized testing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781351510189
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/04/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	331
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Richard Phelps

Table of Contents

1: The Life of Giovanni Gentile; 2: The Background of the Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile; 3: The Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile; 4: Gentile’s Political Philosophy; 5: Gentile and Marxism; 6: Gentile and Fascism; 7: Fascism and Gentile; 8: Gentile and Fascist Racism; 9: Conclusions

What People are Saying About This

Joanne Jacobs

Fighting for objectivity -- Improving education is hard. It's a lot easier to attack tests that show improvement is needed. In Kill the Messenger, Phelps explains and defends testing, and attacks ideologically motivated scholars and gullible journalists. —journalist and author

Charlene K. Haar

Kill the Messenger is as much about censorship and professional arrogance as it is about testing. And Richard Phelps makes compelling cases against the perpetrators: scholars and journalists who deliberately distort and ignore the facts so that schools and teachers avoid any standardized measurement of educational achievement.... With standardized testing prominently featured in the No Child Left Behind Act, Kill the Messenger should be required reading. Our children deserve it!
—author of The Politics of the PTA and president of The Education Policy Institute: “By the author’s own admission

Nicholas Stix

Written largely in a conversational style, notwithstanding its staggering scholarship, Kill the Messenger casts much needed light on a public policy issue that affects us all, but which those holding the public's trust have kept shrouded in darkness. As Phelps argues, "the debate on testing... is part of a war for the control of our country's schools...The booty is our children's futures. The stakes are enormous.""
— author of, The General Patton of the Testing Wars

Wayne J. Camara

Kill the Messenger demolishes criticisms and myths associated with standardized testing that have been promulgated by many of the most ardent critiques and documents the half-truths, selective reporting of research, and unsophisticated manipulations of statistical data often used to demonize assessments. In so doing, Phelps provides documentation for the utility and validity of assessments in education today.
—Vice President of Research and Development for The College Board

Kimberly Swygert

An acquaintance of mine who was very supportive when I began this blog, has finally brought his book, Kill the Messenger: The War on Standardized Testing, to fruition. It's been in the works for a few years, and I'm very happy to see that it's now out there for the general public. Go forth and purchase. I've already ordered my copy.
—, Number 2 Pencil, "Doing his part in the defense of tests">

Editorial Reviews

This is an embattled book. Incensed by the partisan tactics of anti-testing groups, Phelps deliberately goes to great lengths to expound and analyse the differing points of view, helped by scrupulous and scholarly documentation and a robustly empirical approach. Fairness and impartiality, he reasons, will redound to his benefit, while the tactics of suppression, smear and distortion will do his enemies no good at all. I was particularly impressed by his own researches (Chapter 6) into media bias, exposing the capture of the liberal (illiberal) media yet again, with whose anti-IQ mindset we are already drearily familiar.

Perhaps Phelps need not worry. "About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right," wrote Samuel Johnson (1779-1781). The guardians of democracy may have proved supine, but commonsense continues to fortify the apparently unquenchable preference of the general public for the information that tests give.

—Intelligence, v.32 (2004) pp.539-540

Martin Turner

While this education researcher clearly draws the battle lines over required standardized testing of US public school students in selected grades and subjects and acknowledges its limitations, he defends testing over other alternatives and chides media bias. Includes a foreword and preface by like-minded academics, anti- testing vocabulary used by opponents, and a general glossary.

Book News, Inc.

...a thoroughly researched and highly readable book.
—The Age (Melbourne, Australia)

Pat Naughtin

The best documented and most readable classification and refutation of test-bashing myths I know of.
—A Different Drummer

Nicholas Stix

Standardized tests, this book makes clear, are essential for accountability. They may not be perfect, but they’re all we’ve got. That is why they are feared and hated by incompetent teachers... Kill the Messenger is essential reading for everyone with an interest in educational policy or state education generally.
—No.51, Winter 2003

Campaign for Real Education Newsletter

If you're interested in how standardized testing affects education - and since we're doing quite a lot of it, you should be interested - you ought to read [it].
—Rocky Mountain News

Linda Seebach

Despite the importance of testing, there is an increasing tendency to blame the test if you don’t like the results. In other words, it is often easier to kill the messenger than fix the underlying problem revealed by the test. However, if our nation is truly going to close the achievement gap as required by the No Child Left Behind Act, we need to hear – not kill – the messenger.

Kill the Messenger reminds us that testing is primarily about information. Without the data provided by fair, reliable, and valid tests we – students, parents, teachers, policy makers, and researchers – would lack the ability to determine whether our schools and children are making the grade.

Phelps argues that standardized tests are the best measures we have of student performance. Usually, they do it more reliably, more accurately, more objectively, and less expensively than the alternatives. Why be opposed to information? The reason is usually this: because one does not want the results known.
—Executive Director, Assn. of American Publishers - School Division

Steve Driesler