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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.

Crucial to the current public debate about schools, curriculum, testing, academic standards, and teacher training are the voices of successful teachers, like Kathy Greeley who speak to the dangers of an overemphasis on standardized testing and a punitive, back to basics approach. In this captivating and lively chronicle of a year in the life of a public school classroom, Greeley provides an alternative model of education and shows how a strong and supportive community is essential in helping students reach their highest potential. Included in her account are:Specific projects that explain in detail critical practices in the classroomClass discussions that show efforts to interweave academic study with personal awarenessExcerpts from student journals An honest and full description of daily failures and frustrations as well as successes and victories“While individuals remote from classrooms continue to dictate educational policy for the nation, gritty brigades of teachers across America continue their heroic efforts day by day. Kathy Greeley, one of the best teachers of young adolescents, tells a dramatic story of curriculum and community—a story that is never told by policymakers but which must be heard and retold if we are to have quality education for all children.”—Howard Gardner, Harvard Graduate School of Education“With humility, insight, and humor, Kathy Greeley tells us the story of a year in class with her lively kids and thereby shows us a way of learning and a kind of schooling that all American children deserve.”—Theodore R. Sizer, Coalition of Essential Schools