ABSTRACT
The other day, a friend of ours, in contemplating the political state of our nation, observed that “the age of reason is now officially dead.” He now sees a country run by a federal administration that rules by the “gut”—by a feeling of what is right or wrong-and that seems to ignore any evidence that contradicts its participants’ belief systems or desires. Commensurately, policy mandates “evidence based research,” but only when that research appears to support a narrow political agenda. Our friend’s remarks struck home even more pointedly given our Chapter One discussion of the current educational era as the “age of assessment.” The question we pose is this: if the age of reason has experienced its demise and the age of assessment is upon us, has the federal government shaded the definition of the latter to such an extent that it can now be recognized as diametric to the former? Instead of seeing assessment as a natural and reasonable way to collect evidence in order to learn and then act upon what we learn, promoting new learning and growth, we now use it as a way to test whether or not a certain school, teaching method, or child supports a narrow, preconceived agenda. We may use unfavorable data to punish and deprive, an eminently unreasonable endeavor, especially when those who are most punished are children, who are just as often as not held to account when a school is
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The authors of this volume have endeavored to bring reason back into assessment: to create and describe systems within interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary frameworks by which children and their work are valued and to expand the definition of what counts in schools so that they align with what counts in productive lives. In reading their chapters, rich in their diversity of viewpoint and voice, we nevertheless recognize common threads that tie them together into a consistent challenge to the status quo that currently pauperizes our nation’s larger educational agenda.
