Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry

by Todd Farley

In this alternately amusing and appalling exposé of the standardized test industry, fifteen-year veteran Todd Farley describes 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. Although there are absurd moments--as when Farley and coworkers had to grade students based on how they described the taste of their favorite food-- the enormous importance of standardized tests in the post “No Child Left Behind” era make this no laughing matter.

“This book is dynamite! The nice personal voice makes it utterly accessible and enticing, wholly apart from the terribly important ammunition it provides to those of us in the `testing wars’ at national and local levels.”—Jonathan Kozol, author of Savage Inequities

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Memoir

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Drew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Farley's book purports to explore the seamy underbelly of the US standardized testing industry--to expose the lies, corruption, and just general scandalous behavior that pervades and supports it, and that apparently nobody has known about before now. But as Lynch proved in Blue Velvet, and as DFW further proved in "Authority and American Usage," everything has a seamy underbelly, and therein lies one of my many issues with the book: its assumption that your average book-reading American thinks there's nothing already seriously wrong with the standardized testing industry. For instance, did anyone outside the industry ever really believe that adding a subjective "writing" portion to the SAT was a particularly good idea? I was in high school at the time, and was a capable writer, but even then, I was apprehensive at the thought of a stranger grading my extemporaneous essay.

Second thing: the book's scope is way narrower than you'd expect, given the title and the extremely misleading cover image (on the copy I got from the library, it has some unbubbled multiple choice questions overlaid with squiggly lines). Farley hardly ever mentions multiple choice tests, aside from giving them a little lip service (and tacit endorsement) in his epilogue. Nor does he ever mention the ACT, the SAT, the GRE, or any number of other post-secondary tests. He's exclusively ranting about K-12 tests, and specifically the open-ended questions on each. Which, again, is anyone surprised that that particular aspect isn't a good metric for students' general intelligence? Maybe I'm just hyper-sensitive to the fact that he doesn't address multiple choice questions and the corruption that almost certainly goes along with them, because I work for a test prep company, but it still seems very misleading.

Farley's not a great writer, either, for someone whose life goal (as he says over and over) was/is to be a "real" writer. The blurbs on the back are startling to me, mainly because I agree with none of them: "shocking," "hilarious," "fiercely urgent," "smooth and amiable," etc. Certainly nothing in the book is shocking to me, as I've said. I did find the book occasionally funny, and this Farley guy seems like the type I'd enjoy drinking with, but I wouldn't go so far as to use any of those adjectives above. My guess is that most of the blurb-writers were either phoning it in (as they so often seem to) or were just pleased to read a non-fiction book that was accessible (another adjective often applied to it). The lazy, slangy prose is easy on the brain but doesn't have much else going for it, and Farley's got some weird grammatical quirks that probably should have been edited out, mostly having to do with adding commas where none are needed.

You know, I was going to say way more about this, but I'll just boil it down to this point. Farley's thesis is basically that he feels uneasy about entrusting the decisions regarding student promotion and graduation, increased federal funding for schools, and continued employment for teachers to a bunch of surly, underpaid, overworked, alcoholic temps. More broadly, he's trying to tell us that our lives are quite often in the hands of people who may well be incompetent, or at least unqualified. But when has that ever not been true?

[Julia Shay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am giving this entertaining, autobiographical work a solid 5. Perhaps it's because I read this book just as I was found out that half of my salary was about to be based on standardized test scores. Perhaps it's that I found the writing both droll and eye-opening. Either way, I am hoping that a high score encourages more readers to take an interest in this topic. After years in the industry, the author rightly warns us that in using standardized test scores to decide what to pay teachers and make decisions about the course of students' lives, we are saying that we value the opinions of a "mob of temporary employees who only dabble in assessment while ignoring the opinions of the men and women who dedicate themselves daily to the world of teaching and learning." Highly recommended.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was fascinating! A tell-all book about the author's time in the standardized testing industry. He started as a scorer, grading student responses to open-ended prompts and questions. Despite a hapless start, he moved up the ranks and ultimately ended up writing testing passages and questions, helping to create the scoring rubrics, training other scoring teams, and as an industry consultant. He worked institutions we've all heard of such as Pearson and ETS and turns on them in this biting and direct book.

Farley details the ways standardized testing is anything but at all levels starting with the scorers who are often folks who have trouble finding employment elsewhere. We hear about the woman who speaks almost no English, the alcoholic who sneaks out to his car every break, the one who only enters a score of 2, the one who may or may not be able to read, etc. I always thought teachers and educators scored these things, but I was very wrong. And left wondering who exactly read my AP essays and ACT writing component. It could have been Farley or one of his minimum-wage groups sitting in a moldy basement numbly counting down the hours until quitting time. Farley details how the much-vaunted rubrics that ARE formed with the help of teachers and educators, often are pushed aside during actual scoring in favor or more concrete scoring guidelines. For example, one test included the fable of the fox and the mouse only the test used a lion and a rabbit instead. One of the questions the students had to answer was "Who was the main character in the story?" Simple enough, right? The only answer is the lion or the rabbit, right? That's what the grading rubric said. Except that some kids knew the original fable and wrote mouse. Or fox. So you have 4 potentially right answers. Or some kids wrote rat or tiger. Are those right? What about 'mous'? or 'lyon'? These are 2nd graders we're talking about. Can you see how quickly a well-meaning rubric can fall short on such a simple question? Now think about more complicated questions like why does it get dark on earth each night or questions about ecosystems or well, anything really. And think about how many exams these for-profit companies are scoring - well in excess of the tens of thousands and in the case of SATs and ACTs which number in the millions.

And then there was the time that after creating a grading rubric and being advised it was going to result in low scores - which would be used to decide how well teachers were doing in a certain state - that the customer, some state educational administrator, flipped out over when the scores starting coming in really low. She instructed the scorers to change the rubric midway through the project to create more favorable scores. However, the roughly 50% of exams that were already graded were left as-is. Or the times that in the name of creating valid reliabilities (between the scorers and to prior tests related to No Child Left Behind), that scores that disagreed would be thrown out so the project could be declared a success. Or how the Farley's teams were advised not too be "too good" because it would be difficult for subsequent teams to meet their reliability numbers. Also, the rubrics - which Farley shared in his book - are so flimsy. A 5 is "strong grasp, strong use of correct grammar, etc." a 4 is sufficient, 3 is adequate, etc. It sounds good in theory and they use anchor papers to help the scorers orient themselves, but at the end of the day, it's not that neat.

I really enjoyed this one - it's not an issue I've given much thought to before and I found it very interesting!

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Misadventures" is a spot-on descriptor for this book. I'm infinitely sorry that I wasted the little time it took me to read this. I'm not unfamiliar with the testing industry, but this is more a rant about Todd Farley's work for his former employer (and he makes it quite clear which company he worked for) than anything else. Apparently others who read this book found it to be some kind of revelation of the shady goings-on within the industry and as evidence that standardized testing is, well, bs. To that I'd counter that the only evidence of this is based on his personal experiences scoring the constructed responses of grade school students, which he happily and excruciatingly (the whole book oozes his superiority complex in its tone) recounts throughout this book. So, apparently we're supposed to take Mr. Farley's disgruntled anecdotes from his days working at a for-profit testing company in the '90s as a substitute for real evidence? I don't think so. Furthermore, Mr. Farley has parlayed this into a career for himself as some kind of authority on the general subject matter based on his singular experiences. All of this based on his hearsay "evidence" from 10-15 years ago? I wonder how many non-disclosure agreements he flirted with violating by writing this...I'm also curious as to the reactions of the company that he targets most as well as the others that he suggests are all in collusion with one another in this vitriolic "exposé" and indictment of the entire industry based on (again) his personal and obviously unbiased account of his work there. (He makes it pretty clear that there's no love lost between him and his former employer. Hmmm. I wonder why that is?)

I actually saw an article very recently that Mr. Farley wrote for The Huffington Post in which he...wait for it...lambasts standardized testing. He establishes his credibility (I'm using that term loosely) as some kind of authority on the subject of education in general on being the author of this book. Given his oft repeated refrain of wanting to be "a real writer" (he makes it quite clear that he has no interest in testing and is just biding his time on the island of misfits that populate the company he collects his paycheck from until he makes the aforementioned transition to "real writer"), I wouldn't be especially quick to take ownership of Making the Grades both because the evidence is so weak and because I didn't even find the writing itself to be nearly as impressive as his ego seems to have been telling him that it is.

Maybe I'd have given this a better rating if I didn't find both the content of the book and its author as odious as I do (and that's just based on his tone since I'm thrilled to say that I've never met him). I really can't recall a book I've disliked as much as this particular one. Hopefully I never will.

[Em · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author details how and why he is a lazy, unmotivated, and cheating employee. The book is filled with his ego about how he's "above" working in standardised testing because he's a genius and everyone else is an incompetent idiot.

Sure, some of the anecdotes are entertaining, but I expected this book would supplement anecdotes with research. I didn't expect a chronological tale of the author receiving high pay for little effort, and in the end, showing no remorse or shame.

The author was quoted in a segment on 'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver' about standardised testing, so I expected him to be an expert on the subject. I found the book disappointing.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye-opening. This book is an entertaining, anecdotal look at the scoring and writing of "open ended" questions used in tests administrated at schools throughout the country. I enjoyed the writing style quite a lot...biting sarcasm. In the end the author convinced me (confirmation bias perhaps) that standardized testing is not the panacea that some believe and furthermore that they are being used in ways that they were never meant to be used.

If you have children in public schools and are at all concerned about high stakes testing this book is worth a look.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having worked as a temporary standardized test scorer in exactly the sort of facilities Todd Farley discusses in this book, I was not exactly shocked or surprised by most of the revelations. Nevertheless, this was an entertaining read from start to finish. If you've ever taken a standardized test and wondered who's on the other end, or if you have children in schools that seem to be placing far too much emphasis on test scores, this is a must-read.

[Christa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shocking.

[Am · Rating 4 out of 5]

I consider it a must-read for teachers, administrators, and POLITICIANS.

[Shasta Matova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Todd Farley wrote about his experiences in the standardized testing industry. The story is meant to be extreme to get as many reads and sales as possible. He tells about the outlying examples while not discussing what normally happens. His ego will not let him see it is possible that low agreement may be due to his poor training ability and not the skills of the scorers. He also was willing to doctor the statistics and assumes that everyone else routinely does the same.

It is true that a number on a standardized test will not tell you the complete and accurate understanding of a child's abilities. The number will give you a ballpark, due to many factors, including how the student feels the day(s) of testing, how the student interprets the question, how the rangefinding committee interprets the rubric, and the score the scorers give the response based on their understanding of the rubric and the training material.

Standardized tests help us evaluate students overall to help avoid bias by the teachers and the schools, so students, classes, schools, school districts can be compared to each other. The scores should be used as a basis of understanding, but should not be used as the only measure to evaluate the students, the teachers or the schools.

[Paulo · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a view of the US for-profit standardized testing industry, how tests had been scored in practise, not a book about the theoretical efectivity of testing. Farley worked 15 years in that and he tells us here his experiencies about it. To be clear, he just talks about this, and for example he says nothing about multiple choice questions.

What I liked the least in this book is the style of the author, full of ego, presenting himself as someone superior to the rest of the testing industry, but at the same time recognizing his disinterest an unfitting skills (like supervising a science item with literally any previous scientific knowledge).

Finally, I especially liked the quote

standardized testing is less a precise tool to assess students' exact abilities than just a lucrative means to make indefinite and indistinct generalizations about them.

[Chelsea Courtois · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're ever curious to know why we shouldn't use the results of standardized tests to assess the success of teachers, students,schools and the like, read this book. As a teacher who has experienced grading student responses for "standardized assessments", Farley's presentations of countless discussions about validity of students' responses takes me back to endless conversations I've had with my colleagues. Farley has great voice, conviction, and humor. Despite the fact that this book should concern us all, it also leaves us with some much needed comic relief.

[Fran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based (apparently) on more than a decade of direct personal experience, and therefore more anecdotal than analytical, this sometimes humorous and sometimes cringe-worthy narrative should be enough to toss "standardized" testing as a mechanism for making any kind of serious education decisions. The patterns of absurd should give pause even those that think standardized testing is a good idea; the actual process of actual testing and grading shows that the results are anything but what the adherents claim.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're only ever going to read one book about standardized testing, it should be Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us which talks about how even the best of standardized testing has limited applications: what it can and cannot do, and how to make it do those things. Particularly in countries like Canada where tests are still graded by real teachers.

This book, on the other hand, is a scathing review of the for-profit standardized testing industry (in the US; though applicable to other countries where private enterprise has taken over the task) based on the author's personal experiences of some horrendously awful practices. Relevant to those whose children are stuck being evaluated by Pearson? Definitely. Interesting and amusing? Certainly? Quite disturbing? Absolutely.

To be fair, I already knew a lot about the use of not-particularly-well-trained temporary workers by the for-profit testing industry and that it cares more about making the numbers look good than doing a quality job. So I may not have been the target audience since, sadly, nothing in this book came as a massive surprise to me. It ought to be shocking though, and more people should realize how many of the US tax dollars earmarked for education actually get siphoned out by the for-profit testing industry.

[Cov · Rating 1 out of 5]

I made it halfway before giving up for a number of reasons both stylistic and substantive. There is a case to be made against the testing industry and of our reliance on its results in educational policy and decision-making, but this is not the book to make that case nor is Todd Farley the person to make it. I say this as a self-described progressive educator aligned generally with the supposed thesis of this book: don't waste your time on this one.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5* Well-written and very interesting look into the "educational" system. A friend of a friend has confirmed that the experiences are truthful and the many examples of rubric-bending responses sound absolutely accurate.

[Kelly Junno]

How ironic would it be to give this book a rating? Or if goodreads had a rating rubric that we could follow to give this book a holistic score? Should I weight tone and narrative flow equally with pertinent information and scholarly research? What if my score is too far off from the average rating? Haha, I could go on, but it would really only be meaningful to those who have read the book. So onto my own opinion (although that seems to be all those scores are anyway).

So I have to admit that I did think that this book was going to be more scholarly, more based on facts and research with which I could build my arsenal of weapons against proponents of the standardized testing industry (not that I really know too many). But the book is definitely a narrative, perhaps even a personal reflection. Not that that's not a valuable contribution to the standardized testing debate. In fact, I think that with the standardized testing industry anecdotal evidence is particularly relevant because if one person, especially a person who worked in the industry for 15 years, had an experience contrary to what we've come to consider "standardized," it refutes the the word's very definition. Farley's story is evidence of just how broken our educational system is, and I think that exposing the inherent ineffectiveness of the system that determines the fate of so many children is the best argument against it. Whether you believe that children should be assessed based on their unique skills and strengths or you think that there is indeed one standardized skill set that every child needs in order to be successful, the fact is that the assessment process is just too random to be reliable. It's like the death penalty, whether you're for it or against it, the system is so broken that simply cannot dole out the justice it is supposed to.

My main criticism of this book is that Farley spend too much time regaling us with his trips and travails as a limb of the testing industry and not enough time assessing and synthesizing his experiences. His experiences are certainly relevant and important to his point, but he waits until long after the natural point-making-juncture is past to make his point. He does finally make it in the epilogue, but I wish it had been worked into the book earlier. He also could have really hit home with more information about how tests are actually functioning in the lives of children and teachers in the US, like what they determine, how much time they take out of classroom learning, how they are affecting actual lives. He could have illuminated No Child Left Behind, which I'm sure no one reading the book fully understands, and could perhaps have talked about the racial and socio-economic implications of the test. I guess we are just supposed to read another book if we want to learn about those.

But despite the lazy research, I certainly did enjoy this book and feel like I better understand how the gears turn in the standardized testing industry now. If you read it, you just have to accept it for what it is and take it as one piece of evidence against an industry that is at the crux of far too many crucial decisions.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amusingly written narrative of a maddening issue. Even if only 50% of this is true (and I have no reason to believe it isn't), it still completely changes how I view standardized testing. No wonder we get some of the crazy scores we see reported!

[Ilib4kids · Rating 3 out of 5]

371.262 FAR

My summary: It is author's 15 years career (Oct 1994 - March 2008) in standardized test industry in NCS (national Computer System). It shows what truly happened in scoring of test. It questions the validity, accuracy, usefulnesses of test score and rubrics to assess them. Yes, multiple choices would escape falseness, guarantee 100% objectiveness, not like open-ended questions, either reading or writing. But both still suffer emphasis on bias and sensitivity, which means studying examples of those tests, such as SAT, and all of these "Reading programs" designed to facilitate reading comprehensive skills are dangerous because the articles are not genuine, all informations are doctored. That is one reason why teaching for test is so dangerous because students do not learn true knowledge and information. As story goes, the rubrics become more absurd, not pursuing truly writing, as shown in p78, Anchor paper #7. This book did mention some statistics issue, but bell-curve distribution which is man-made arbitrary statistic figure, contrary to true meaning of tests, to judge students' skills level.

Why standardized test is so bad to assess student skills
1. Professional scorers are most temporal workers, lacking the skills for scoring open-ended questions, short-answer/essay questions.
2. Deadline to meet. A scoring job that might have begun thoughtful and conscientiously eventually devolved into a race to make the deadline and complete tasks. Scores look for keywords and slap down a quick score.
3. It is for-profit business, more concerned with getting scores down than getting meaningful scores for students' response.

After I read this book, there is no wonder why Chinese students could game TOEFL, SAT. Because the low quality of scores have to make scoring not genuinely access students' skill, but only to find a certain type of signals, whether or not these signals make sense or not in students' writing.

All these remain me my own writing class in BCC, where the teacher did not really care about your meaning of the writing, but instead what you wrote follow her teaching. I think the good teacher should focus on what students really want to express, from there, figure out writing methods she need to teach.

How to achieve high scores in essay writing
1. Use 5 paragraph format, with introductory body, body, conclusion.
2. Use sophisticated words, like use audacity instead brave
3. Use complex sentence structures, like Although, ...
4. On-task meet essay requirement (what essay want you to write), meet essay words requirement.
Essay overall (holistic) fluency, combination of development, organization, sentence structure, grammar, usage, and mechanics.

像填词。填的不好，基本分保证。填好，高分。格式要保证。议论文有议论文的格式。想得高分，不能是创造力的文章。同样，如果练习写作如果按照考试的范文写，这样的文章只会是平庸的。但是如果改考卷的人不是NATIVE SPEAKER, 用词复杂回答���题OPEN－ENDED QUESTIONS或写作反而低分

[kf · Rating 3 out of 5]

If nothing else, it's a page-turner.

Here's the basic premise: A guy, short on cash and too unmotivated (lazy?) to find a proper job decides to work as a temporary scorer for a standardized testing company. He complains for 272 pages about how the other scorers are dim, unfit to score high-stakes state exams, blah, blah, blah, while also assuming that he is somehow different than the rest of the scorers--above it all. He says, "Look! That woman doesn't speak English! She's unfit to score an English exam!"--a valid point--yet, just pages earlier, he himself was SUPERVISING the scoring of a state science exam, despite having barely mastered the concept of ORBITAL PATHS (even while scoring those exams, he'd yet to master the concept of "rotation" vs. "revolution").

For the entire length of the book, the narrator talks about how he continuously performs a job for which he is unfit, purposefully assigning inaccurate scores for exams that determine the graduation of high school students and the salaries of teachers. He says how horrible the testing industry is, all the while supporting that very industry just to make some easy money.

Does the narrator/author present some valid points? Absolutely. However, through the course of it all, I couldn't help but think, "Gosh, this guy's seriously lacking moral scruples. If he's saying that the REST of the testing industry is bad, it must be a million times worse than he's presenting it!"

Proceed at your own risk.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I don't believe the results of standardized testing because most of the major players in the industry are for-profit enterprises that -- even if they do have the word EDUCATION in their names -- are pretty clearly in the business as much to make big bucks as to make good tests." I liked a lot of Farley's book because I have such a connection to the setting -- Iowa City! I passed the big standardized testing center several times a week, and never really thought much about what went on inside the complex. Well! What went on is scoring student responses for state testing...He shows us with humor and with venom how easy it is to manipulate data, reliability, even scores. He shows how human error and stupidity (not the tested students, but the scorers!!) can affect students' scores and teachers' evaluations.

If you have any earthly thoughts that those essays and open-ended test questions, scored by rubrics, are fair...read on! Farley skewers the industry to the bone. His characterizations of his fellow scorers made me laugh, and want to cry. One woman couldn't read English, but she was scoring student responses. One man came to work hungover every day, but he scored student responses.

Farley's last line? "Do what you want, American, but at least you have been warned."

[Jim Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not a "professional scorer", I used an entirely subjective scoring rubric to give this book 4 stars. I wanted to give it 5 stars but the psychometricians have pointed out that I have given out too many 5 star reviews recently.

Saw the author interviewed by John Oliver for his segment on standardized testing.

When I heard about the SAT's essay section, I wondered how they scored them. I find the idea of temporary employees working for a minimum wage while reading and scoring thousands upon thousands of essays deeply concerning. Ditto for how we grade scientific abstracts or review grants. Far, far too subjective. I have watched grant review committees move all over the map with their reviews. In most cases, it is easy to agree on the best and the worst but far too easy to see considerable variation in the middle.

I would rather trust algorithms. Clinical vs Actuarial Judgement, Dawes et al Science 1969 still rings true to me. Am curious to learn more about the algorithms that are now being used to grade essays.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've ever wondered about the validity of national standardized test scores of open-ended questions, the author will give you the benefit of his years in the field. His behind-the-scenes experiences, from beginning scorer to trainer, question-writer, and moderator for groups developing scoring rubrics, give a depressing picture of scores assigned more for consistency with norms than accuracy, overworked and undertrained scorers trying to follow ambiguous rubrics, and the occasional fiddling to make results fit expectations. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any good solution to the situation, though publicizing this book may be a first step in questioning excessive reliance on standardized test scores and either improving scoring systems or finding other methods of determining student competence (or both).

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Granted, anecdotes are not always the best evidence, but Farley's experiences in the standardized testing business are a sobering reminder that mass grading of tests has its pitfalls. For instance, if an evaluator doesn't understand the difference between our planet rotating on its axis and Earth rotating around the sun, he or she might have a problem judging whether a fourth grader knows the difference.

Great fodder for those who don't believe standardized testing is the best measure of the educational system and teacher effectiveness.

[Alexis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very eye opening. I worked the day shift in the Tucson, AZ scoring center he describes, and it was every bit as strange as he says. There were some really odd people there. Also it seemed like they kept changing the grading rules on us. I remember thinking I was making great money at the time--like $10 an hour, geez. I also met my worst boyfriend ever at that job! (He later told me that he was going to the bathroom and doing speed to keep his scoring stats up.) So yeah, weirdos and losers (like I was then) are the ones who grade your kids "standardized" tests!

[Robin Tzucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was incredibly depressing. Well written, funny anecdotes, but depressing all the same. This book should be required reading for every superintendent of public instruction, every legislator, every parent, and anyone who is involved in making decisions about testing our kids. Teachers already know all this.....there wasn't anything in the book that was horribly surprising but more that it confirmed what we all suspect.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A real eye-opener for those of us who didn't have to be students at the mercy of the American standardized testing industry. The book was a little repetitive - lots of anecdotes about the author's experiences within the industry - but not countered quite enough by information about the for-profit industry and the issues surrounding it's increasing power on the lives of American school children.

[Andy Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very troubling book about how standardized testing is, not to put too fine a point on it, a fraud. The author worked in the industry for 10 years and saw how the scores were manipulated on a consistent basis. In spite of the deep seriousness of the subject, the author had an amazing comic style. I mean fall of bed laughing. One of the funniest books I have ever read.

[Domenique · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read!!! I learned so much about standardized testing and the educational industry. As he tells the story of his ascent in corporate testing he shows you how completely screwed up the system is.