"In many public schools, students are spending up to 28 percent of instructional time on testing and test prep. Starting this year, the introduction of the Common Core State Standards Initiative in 45 states will bring an unprecedented level of new, more difficult, and longer mandatory tests to nearly every classroom in the nation up to five times a year--forcing our national testing obsession to a crisis point. Taxpayers are spending extravagant money on these tests--up to $1.4 billion per year--and excessive tests are stunting children's spirits, adding stress to family life, and slowly killing our country's future competitiveness. Yet even so, we still want our kids to score off the charts on every test they take, in elementary school and beyond. And there will be a lot of them. This book is an exploration of that dilemma, and a strategy for how to solve it"--