Grant P. Wiggins is the president and director of programs for the Center on Learning, Assessment, and School
Structure (CLASS), a nonprofit educational research and consulting organization in Pennington, New Jersey.
Review
"The most comprehensive and exhaustive treatise available on the imperative to change the ways we test
and assess student performance...it will become a major reference work for supporters of student-centered assessment."
--Educational Leadership
"A 'must' book for the on-going debate on American school reform."
--Theodore R. Sizer, chairman, Coalition of Essential Schools
"In the current torrent of talk about testing, Grant Wiggins' book constitutes an essential contribution.
Rooted in historical knowledge, punctuated by acute philosophical analyses, and mindful of policy issues, Wiggins
lays out the rationale for authentic forms of assessment."
--Howard Gardner, professor of education and co-director of Project Zero, Harvard University
Submitted by Publisher, March, 2001
Summary
What is assessment and how does testing differ from it? Why are performance tests, by themselves, not an adequate
system of student assessment? How might we better "test our tests" beyond current technical standards?
And why won't increased national testing offer the accountability of schools we so sorely need? In Assessing Student
Performance, Grant P. Wiggins explores these questions and clarifies the limits of testing in an assessment system.
He analyzes problematic practices in test design and formats that prevent students from explaining their answers.
By showing us that assessment is more than testing and intellectual performance is more than right answers, Wiggins
leads us to new systems of assessment that more closely examine students' habits of mind and provide teachers and
policy makers with more useful and credible feedback.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Assessment and the Morality of Testing
