The Test: Why our schools are obsessed with standardized testing: but you don't have to be, by Anya Kamenentz [book review]

Perhaps it is because I avoid most tabloid journalism that I found journalist Anya Kamenetz's loose cannon Introduction to The Test: Why our schools are obsessed with standardized testing: but you don't have to be so jarring. In the space of seven pages, she employs the pejoratives "test obsession", "test score obsession", "testing obsession", "insidious ... test creep", "testing mania", "endless measurement", "testing arms race", "high-stakes madness", "obsession with metrics", and "test-obsessed culture". Those un-measured words fit tightly alongside assertions that education, or standardized, or high-stakes testing is responsible for numerous harms ranging from stomachaches, stunted spirits, family stress, "undermined" schools, demoralized teachers, and paralyzed public debate, to the Great Recession (pp. 1, 6, 7), which was initially sparked by problems with mortgage-backed financial securities (and parents choose home locations in part based on school average test scores). Oh, and tests are "gutting our country's future competitiveness," too (p. 1).