High-Stakes Schooling: What We Can Learn from Japan's Experiences with Testing, Accountability, and Education Reform

✍ Scribed by Christopher Bjork

Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Year: 2015
Tongue: English
Leaves: 259
Category: Library

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

✦ Synopsis

If there is one thing that describes the trajectory of American education, it is this: more high-stakes testing. In the United States, the debates surrounding this trajectory can be so fierce that it feels like we are in uncharted waters. As Christopher Bjork reminds us in this study, however, we are not the first to make testing so central to education: Japan has been doing it for decades. Drawing on Japan’s experiences with testing, overtesting, and recent reforms to relax educational pressures, he sheds light on the best path forward for US schools.

Bjork asks a variety of important questions related to testing and reform: Does testing overburden students? Does it impede innovation and encourage conformity? Can a system anchored by examination be reshaped to nurture creativity and curiosity? How should any reforms be implemented by teachers? Each chapter explores questions like these with careful attention to the actual effects policies have had on schools in Japan and other Asian settings, and each draws direct parallels to issues that US schools currently face. Offering a wake-up call for American education, Bjork ultimately cautions that the accountability-driven practice of standardized testing might very well exacerbate the precise problems it is trying to solve.

📜 SIMILAR VOLUMES

The New Accountability: High Schools and

📁 The New Accountability: High Schools and High-Stakes Testing

✍ Martin Carnoy 📂 Library 📅 2003 🌐 English

Education to Build Back Better: What Can

📁 Education to Build Back Better: What Can We Learn from Education Reform for a Post-pandemic World

✍ Fernando M. Reimers (editor), Uche Amaechi (editor), Alysha Banerji (editor), Ma 📂 Library 📅 2022 🏛 Springer 🌐 English

This open access book examines the implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic for education systems and argues that major education reforms will be necessary, particularly in the Global South, to address the learning loss caused by the pandemic. To inform those reforms, knowledge about the imple

Lessons from the Light: What We Can Lear

📁 Lessons from the Light: What We Can Learn from the Near-Death Experience

✍ Kenneth Ring;Valarino, Evelyn Elsaesser 📂 Library 📅 2006 🏛 Red Wheel Weiser 🌐 English

While providing many accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs) from men, women, and children of all ages and backgrounds, Lessons from the Light is much more than just an inspiring collection of NDEs. In Lessons near-death expert Kenneth Ring extracts the pure gold of the NDE and with a beautiful ba

Lessons from the Light: What We Can Lear

📁 Lessons from the Light: What We Can Learn from the Near-Death Experience

✍ Kenneth Ring ; Evelyn Elsaesser Valarino 📂 Library 📅 2006 🏛 Red Wheel Weiser 🌐 English

Pension Reform in Six Countries: What Ca

📁 Pension Reform in Six Countries: What Can We Learn From Each Other?

✍ Axel Börsch-Supan (auth.), Prof. Axel H. Börsch-Supan, Meinhard Miegel (eds.) 📂 Library 📅 2001 🏛 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 🌐 English

AxeI Borsch-Supan and Meinhard Miegel The provision of retirement income is a dynamic system that needs to be adapted constantly to the ever changing economic and societal environment. Sometimes, incremental adaptations suffice; sometimes, however, larger reform steps are necessary. We see this e

Japanization: What the World Can Learn f

📁 Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan's Lost Decades

✍ William Pesek 📂 Library 📅 2014 🏛 Wiley 🌐 English

An in-depth look at Japan's economic malaise and the steps it must take to compete globallyIn Japanization, Bloomberg columnist William Pesek—based in Tokyo—presents a detailed look at Japan's continuing twenty-year economic slow-down, the political and economic reasons behind it, a