Joan, Katy Abbott and I had a very stimulating interview with Daniel Hornberger who is doing a documentary film tentatively titled STANDARDIZED.  He is planning to tell the story of how the standardized testing movement is destroying public education.  He has a number of very significant individuals who have been taking part in this project.  Be looking for more information toward the end of July about when this very important documentary will be released.

While we were in the Philadelphia area Joan and I did a workshop at the Abington Public Library which was attended by 20 individuals.  We tried something very different at the workshop and it was a success.  We did a National Cookie Tasters Testing and compared the results of the cookie tasting with the national norms we had gathered.  It gave us an opportunity to really talk about the Myths of Standardized Tests, with some first hand experience.  It made it much easier to talk about sampling issues and the other myths we discuss in our book.  The audience was really engaged and the questions were really pointed and direct.  We expect to continue to tweak the activity to make sure we get the focus were it needs to be which is on the harm the current testing practice is having on our nations educational system.  I found the group very responsive to the idea that the current testing going on is the civil rights issue of this century.  We also discussed what can be done at the local level to get the conversation underway to put a stop to this comparison to nowhere!

We thank the librarian Mimi Satterthwaite for making the presentation possible.

Phillip and Joan Harris