ABSTRACT
During the last two decades school professionals throughout the USA have participated in hundreds of ‘bully’ reform efforts. Many efforts, such as Clinton’s Goals 2000 Program, are viewed by professional experts as external or lay efforts at school reform. Professionals often downplay the value and legitimacy of these reforms and see public attempts at school reform as naive, unrealistic, or inspired by the base moral instincts of political self-interest. Emerging from a complex mixture of school reform platforms, the energetic arguments over authentic and alternative assessment began between professionals whom we identify as ‘assessment revolutionaries’ and those representing the ‘testing establishment.’ However, since then, with assessment initiatives now implemented in many states, the public is awakening both to the problems and the promises of new forms of student assessment. At this point, considerable distance exists between what the public sector wants and what professional revolutionaries advocate concerning assessment reforms.
