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An Illusion of Equity
The Legacy of Eugenics in Today's Education
Drawing on decades of experience as an educator, author Wendy Zagray Warren unpacks the origins of this practice, inviting us to probe the ideologies underlying testing procedures and score interpretation and to evaluate the rationale for using test scores as the sole markers for academic achievement. From the beginning, large-scale tests have produced scores divided by race and class. Initially, these results aligned with the eugenic ideology of its creators. Warren shows that while the rhetoric used to justify test-based policy has changed, the model used to produce test scores remains much the same. Therefore, so do the outcomes of test-based policies, which continue to reproduce and reinforce the existing social hierarchy of the United States.
The hope of equity lies in educators charting new paths and scholars around the world who are dreaming new educational paradigms into being. Ultimately, Warren invites policymakers, educators, and parents to explore the richness of possibility when education is designed around the belief that every child is worthy of the opportunity to thrive.
About the Author
Reviews
"Written in an accessible and engaging style, this book asks us to face, as its author did, the atrocities humans have committed under the auspices of objectivity and righteousness. Refusing systematic racism disguised as scientific process and progress, Warren challenges us to recognize the ostensibly objective practice of standardized testing as violent and deadly, to reject the testing premises and practices that destroy human lives, and to work instead toward justice in education."—Alison Cook-Sather, author of Co-Creating Equitable Teaching and Learning: Structuring Student Voice into Higher Education
"Wendy Warren has written a compelling account highlighting the harm cause by our test-based educational policies, which, whether intended or unintended, support a false linear hierarchy of intelligence, merit, ability and/or worth. Starting from testing's modern roots in eugenics, Warren illuminates the through line to the present, from little-known historical facts to testing's impacts upon real people. Readers will better understand why the multi-billion-dollar testing industry's house of cards is slowly beginning to, and should, collapse."—Jay Rosner, Executive Director of The Princeton Review Foundation
"Warren's book provides a weapon to confront the meritocracy myths, such as standardized tests, which continue to hinder improvement. While Eugenics' mismeasurements of human intelligence were deemed invalid in the last century, their resurgence is alarming. With meticulously researched facts, she describes the origins of educators' over-reliance on standardized testing. Relevant research shows that the learning styles, emotional intelligence, and mental development of all students are not assessed justly. Warren calls to action anyone who believes public schools are community institutions worth investment."—Jacqueline G. Burnside, Professor of Sociology at Berea College
"As educators struggle with the disconnect between standardized test results and student learning and potential, An Illusion of Equity is the book we have been waiting for. Warren explores the historical roots of conditions that encourage us to expect and accept unequal results by exposing the ideas upon which the testing model was constructed. By revealing threads we can pull to unbind our education system from the smoke and mirrors of testing, Warren envisions a future where schools are relationship-centered ecosystems of mutual thriving. There is hope."—Jacqueline Battalora, author of Birth of A White Nation: The invention of white people and its relevance today
"Wendy Zagray Warren's carefully researched, enlightening book is an important contribution to this country's debate over systemic inequities. No doubt her thesis that the American system of educational testing has historical roots in eugenics, Nazi ideology, and white supremacy, will unnerve and disturb. But it is precisely the kind of challenging, heartfelt analysis that demands our attention and, hopefully, action. From decades of experience as a classroom teacher, Warren's love of students shines through and should motivate all of us to reimagine and strive for a system that values, respects and nourishes each child."—Deborah Lauter, executive director of The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights
"Our nation's system of required standardized academic tests was built on a mountain of good intentions designed to cure inequities, raise academic performance, and improve our nation's economic competitiveness. In An Illusion of Equity: The Legacy of Eugenics in Today's Education, Zagray Warren takes both the origins of these intentions and their real impact to task, exposing deeply systemic flaws in their logic and consequences—which are serving to reinforce (rather than cure) the problems they set out to solve. This work is deeply provocative and the arguments and concepts it raises need to be brought to the table as we consider the future of standardized testing, and of public education itself."—Jason E. Glass, commissioner and chief learner of the Kentucky Department of Education
University Press of Kentucky | |
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Hardback | |
August 1, 2023 | |
9780813197661 | |
English | |
272 | |
9.00 Inches (US) | |
6.00 Inches (US) | |
$40.00 USD, £29.00 GBP | |
v2.1 Reference | |
Electronic book text | |
August 1, 2023 | |
9780813197678 | |
9780813197661 | |
English | |
272 | |
9.00 Inches (US) | |
6.00 Inches (US) | |
$40.00 USD, £29.00 GBP | |
v2.1 Reference | |
Electronic book text | |
August 1, 2023 | |
9780813197685 | |
9780813197661 | |
English | |
272 | |
9.00 Inches (US) | |
6.00 Inches (US) | |
$40.00 USD, £29.00 GBP | |
v2.1 Reference | |
Other Titles in EDUCATION / Evaluation & Assessment
Shortchanged
Online World Language Instruction Training and Assessment
Grading the College