Lorraine McDonnell is a professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to joining the UCSB faculty, Lorraine was a senior political scientist at RAND where her research focused on the design and implementation of federal and state education policies and their effects on school practices. In her book, Persuasion, Politics, and Educational Testing (Harvard University Press, 2004), she examined the politics of student testing, particularly the curricular and political values underlying state assessm