Excerpts from Lonnie Palmer's solutions-based book Available on Amazon
      The Truth about Testing 

I learned the truth about testing when I was assistant superintendent in the New Rochelle City School District, a diverse school district 15 miles north of New York City. Ellin Rossberg was the chairperson for the English Department for New Rochelle High School and two middle schools in the city of New Rochelle, NY.

Ellin knew more about children’s literature and effective English instruction than anyone I ever met. She was also capable of withering imperiousness when she felt I stepped over the line with my many disruptions and changes for the academic program.

Like most school districts at the time, when students arrived at New Rochelle’s two middle schools from six different elementary schools they were grouped into three skill level groups. The problem is the six elementary schools defined the three categories differently, and we needed a quick, simple, easy-to-grade test to measure student performance.

I expected to see another fill-in-the-bubble test, but Ellin had a different, time-tested, reliable method I had never seen before. Read more.

"Teachers, staff, administrators, school board members - new or experienced - should read Palmer's book, and parents, interested residents and politicians that are drawn into the current dialogue on K-12 education could learn a lot from this." - Mark Kellet, NYS School Business Official
The answer to the test score piece
               A Decent Proposal
A more sophisticated measure of performance?

In 2013, I was approached about serving as interim school superintendent in the suburban Candle Central School District. I reviewed the district’s student test performance data on the New York State Education Department website, but it wasn't sophisticated enough to make true comparisons, as it compares apples to oranges, high poverty school districts to low poverty school districts.

So I used a sophisticated measurement of school performance developed by New York State School Business Official Charles (Charlie) Winters. Read more.

"Failure is success if we learn from it." - Malcolm Forbes