Robert Lyons

Forthcoming Fall 2025

Standardized testing in the United States has been increasing at a rapid pace in the last twenty-five years. The market for tests has not only been expanding rapidly, but has also been changing sharply in structure into a fractured marketplace. Indeed, one of the main features of this book is that the market for standardized testing is highly fractured - with segments of the market facing monopoly conditions, others facing oligopoly conditions and still others where near free-market conditions exist. One of the main premises of the book is that the structures of markets have strong implications for how those markets perform. While this notion is widely accepted among economists, it is not widely appreciated in educational research. A second motivation for the book is that very little scholarly attention has been focused on the standardized testing industry. This topic - the structure of the testing industry and implications for the quality of tests and test use - affects how we evaluate the learning of students, the effectiveness of teaching, the quality of schools and the educational health of the nation. Of particular concern to the authors is one vital aspect of test quality: test validity. This book is the most current and authoritative review and analysis of the market for standardized testing.

The first biography ever written about the man who some considered the greatest commissioner in the history of professional sports

Testimony and photographs from the Rwandan genocide, providing a rare look at both perpetrators and survivors. In 1994, an interim government in Rwanda orchestrated one of the world's worst mass crimes: a 100-day extermination campaign that took half a million lives. At the time, Rwanda's genocide went largely unnoticed by the outside world. Today there is growing interest in the Rwandan experience as many discover the horror that took place and seek to understand how and why violence of this character and magnitude could have happened in our time. Intimate Enemy is a rare entree into the logic, language, and imagery of Rwanda's violence. The book presents perpetrator testimony along with photographs of Rwandans, both perpetrators and survivors. The images and words are raw and unanalyzed; the reader is left to make sense of the killers and their would-be victims. Intimate Enemy challenges our assumptions about the genocide and about those who perpetrated it. It also prods us to consider how to represent and imagine violence on the scale of Rwanda.

The most famous basketball tournament in the history of college basketball is the Big Five. And the Big Five was played in the most hallowed halls of college play: the Palestra. Now, for the first time, a complete story of this Philadelphia rivalry is revealed. Robert Lyons offers the story of the Big Five from its very beginnings in 1955. At that time, many of the Big Five schools -- La Salle University, University of Pennsylvania, St. Joseph's University, Temple University, and Villanova University -- weren't even talking to each other, and everyone predicted the tournament would end before it began. Conducting interviews with coaches and players -- including famed Temple coach Harry Litwack's last interview before his death -- Lyons offers the play-by-play on how the Big Five became an institution, and how it was ultimately undone by college basketball's own success. Lavishly illustrated with photographs of players, teams, coaches, and the Palestra itself, Palestra Pandemonium is an immediate classic, offering a chronicle of the most monumental college basketball tournament. Anywhere.

Standardized testing in the United States has been increasing at a rapid pace in the last twenty-five years. The market for tests has not only been expanding rapidly, but has also been changing sharply in structure into a fractured marketplace. Indeed, one of the main features of this book is that the market for standardized testing is highly fractured - with segments of the market facing monopoly conditions, others facing oligopoly conditions and still others where near free-market conditions exist. One of the main premises of the book is that the structures of markets have strong implications for how those markets perform. While this notion is widely accepted among economists, it is not widely appreciated in educational research. A second motivation for the book is that very little scholarly attention has been focused on the standardized testing industry. This topic - the structure of the testing industry and implications for the quality of tests and test use - affects how we evaluate the learning of students, the effectiveness of teaching, the quality of schools and the educational health of the nation. Of particular concern to the authors is one vital aspect of test quality: test validity. This book is the most current and authoritative review and analysis of the market for standardized testing.