Politics, Persuasion, and Educational Testing. By Lorraine M. McDonnell. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. 264p. $45.00.

People who are experts in policy areas, but attempt to write for a broader audience in their home discipline, often write primarily a policy tract, then add a little something from their home field. Although Lorraine McDonnell is one of the top experts in the country on education policy, especially large-scale educational reform, she has written this book truly from the perspective of political science. In her career, she has written many other articles and books concentrating on policy issues and evaluations, but Politics, Persuasion, and Educational Testing is set within the discourse of policy theory and focuses on the politics of educational standards, assessment, and testing.