The public schools of America are in the throes of a reform movement that has established accountability for educational outcomes as the driving force behind school improvement. High Stakes Testing and School Reform explores the effectiveness of standardized testing and accountability as the primary methods for improving America's public schools. The results of this study suggest that high stakes testing is overemphasized as a school reform policy.

The wandering figure was ever present in Robert Penn Warren's work. Randy Hendricks here explores the centrality of the theme of exile as a way of understanding Warren's artistry, showing that the exile figure is both a key to Warren's relation to much of twentieth-century Southern literature and an index to his growth as an artist.

Understanding the exile theme, as Hendricks reveals, is crucial to understanding Warren's regionalism, his thinking on race, and his complex theories of language. This insightful work makes clearer Warren's place in American literature and his importance to the definition of "Southern" and is a valuable resource for anyone seeking to better understand the interplay between regional consciousness, modernity, and the literary imagination.

For four decades, Knoxville, Tennessee, native David Madden has been writing compelling bestsellers, such as Bijou and The Suicide's Wife, as well as highly respected literary novels, such as Sharpshooter. David Madden: A Writer for All Genres is the first full-length critical work devoted to the whole of Madden's oeuvre, and collectively the essays make the case that the attention paid to Madden's novels has overshadowed his innovative work as a critic, poet, short-story writer, and dramatist. Madden is indeed a writer for all genres--poetry, fiction, drama, and criticism. Having compiled the volume to "help all readers understand Madden better," co-editors Randy Hendricks and James A. Perkins have assembled eight essays by various authors devoted to analyzing and understanding the legendary David Madden and how he spins his craft. The uniformly high caliber of the contributors is testimony to the interest Madden's work has generated. These include poet and fiction writer George Garrett on Madden's poetry; critic James H. Justus on Madden as a playwright; critic Jeffrey J. Folks on Madden's complex relationships with his home town and James Agee; Randy Hendricks on Madden's criticism; fiction writer Allen Wier on Madden's Civil War fiction; critic William Schafer on Madden's early novels; critic Aimee Berger on The Suicide's Wife; and poet and critic James Perkins on his short fiction. Their essays on Madden's work are augmented by a long interview with Madden and by an extensive selected bibliography. David Madden: A Writer for all Genres will introduce a new generation of readers to an important and multitalented writer and begin a well-deserved, serious discussion of his place in the American literary tradition.