Teaching without Testing: Assessing the Complexity of Children's Literacy Learning

by Denny Taylor, Bobbie Kabuto (Editor)

Teaching without Testing is a timely book that challenges the scientific assumptions of standardized testing in developing effective instruction to meet the literate lives of all students. Through detailed observations of student learning, Taylor encourages readers to consider alternate ways of assessing children's reading and writing based on observable literacy behaviors. Supporting a humanistic perspective to the education of children, Taylor argues that standardized and diagnostic methods of assessment and teaching, based on test-driven, corporate-led accountability practices, have detrimental effects on children and result in the de-professionalization of teachers.

Published as a chapter in the book From the Child's Point of View. Heinemann. 1993.

165 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2017

About the author

Denny Taylor is a researcher and novelist who regards art, literature, and science inseparable. She is a lifelong activist and scholar committed to nurturing the imagination and human spirit. She has received both national and international awards for her research and scholarship.

She has published thirteen books, is the recipient of the Modern Language of Association of America Mina P. Shaughnessy Award, and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2004 she was inducted in the International Reading Association's Reading Hall of Fame.

She is Professor Emeritus of Literacy Studies at Hofstra University, and the founder of Garn Press.