ABSTRACT
Research into the eects of our NCLB-directed culture reveals a complicated situation (Rex & Nelson, 2004). Language Arts teachers typically nd “the legislation confusing, the implementations baing, and the eect on the practicing and pre-service teachers disheartening” (Fleischer & Fox, 2004, p. 99), oen creating a feeling of being “lost at sea” (Kaufman et al., 2002; Zancanella & Noll, 2004). e temptation for us is to divide our time between a curriculum we see as the real stu of reading and writing-the very reason we became Language Arts teachers-and a specically test preparation curriculum that we do because we simply have to. Not only do we see test preparation as an intrusion into the authentic curriculum we feel we should be doing, most of us nd the test preparation activities we actually do relatively ineective. To new teachers in particular, things oen seem dire, as they do more and more test preparation and see diminishing returns. e teachers I talk to feel their job is becoming unrewarding
and unwieldy, and their students become more disaected as the inuence of testing increases. e essential theme of this book is that it doesn’t have to be this way.
