Chapter 6, Keeping Track Summary and Analysis

Chapter six concerns how to keep track of student progress. Ayers has been a life-long critic of standardized testing because it is biased in many ways. He has had to resist letting outcomes from these tests that please him bias him in their favor.

Ayers has taken standardized tests many times himself; the last time he took one, he wondered what the relationship was between what they were testing for and what he thought teaching involved. He also became cynical, wondering if the whole point of the test was to figure out his background and exclude or include him on that basis. The tests often presuppose backgrounds that not all students have, and the test design methods used are often mysterious.

Many students react to standardized testing by identifying the test with intelligence and then ceasing to...