Friday, April 23rd, 7pm

Standardized testing insider TODD FARLEY will speak about and sign his new book, Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry.

When Todd Farley, 27 years old and struggling for cash as a part-time grad student in Iowa City, accepted a job at a standardized test scoring company, after a mere four hours his first day on the job, he realized what a joke standardized testing really is.

In his new memoir, Farley documents his experiences in K-12 testing, and concentrates on the people who have the greatest effect on it—most importantly scorers, those temporary employees who toil away reading student responses for low hourly wages and no benefits, and who hold a disproportionate amount of power over a student’s future. Farley also rebukes psychometricians, the omnipotent statisticians who make decisions about students without even looking at their test answers; state education officials willing to change the way tests are scored whenever they don’t like the results; and massive, multi-national, for-profit testing companies who regularly opt for expediency and profit over the altruistic educational goals of teaching and learning.

Beneath the humor of Farley’s story lies the serious and sobering questions about the validity of large-scale assessments, the irony of the fact that the “No Child Left Behind” Act uses the phrase “scientifically-based research” more than one hundred times when discussing standardized testing, and the discovery about how the players in the industry ultimately decide the fate of students, teachers, and schools.

Todd Farley earned a Bachelor’s degree in English and then spent fifteen years in the standardized testing industry. He worked for the biggest companies (including ETS and Pearson Education) on the biggest K-12 tests (including the National Assessment of Educational Progress). Today Farley is a freelance writer; Making the Grades is his first book.

 

 

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