All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia – WC Fields (1925)*
All in all, I’d rather be in Philadelphia – Ronald Reagan (1981)
I’m not sure that I’d rather be in Philadelphia this weekend than say in Cleveland last weekend or traveling to someplace warm and sunny next weekend to celebrate turning 65, but it seems that fate had other plans. For the third time at a pivotal moment in my career, I find myself at a professional crossroads and that crossroads finds me at a conference right in the middle of downtown Philadelphia.
Three very different organizations. Three very different points in my career. Three very different types of decisions. The one constant is that they all took place in Philadelphia.
Perhaps it is fitting. As I wander by the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, I reflect on other critical decisions that were made in Philadelphia. Or perhaps it’s in my blood. It’s a part of DePascale family folklore that the long lost portion of our clan that didn’t head north to Boston from Ellis Island, made their way to Philadelphia. Perhaps like Randall, I need to come to Philadelphia to find myself. Or perhaps I just think better after a good cheesesteak and apple fritter (but not at the same time).
In any event, here I am. To paraphrase William Daniels as John Adams in 1776, at a stage in life when other men prosper have prospered, I’m reduced to attending a conference in Philadelphia.
But let’s start at the beginning – as always, a very good place to start.
NESUG 1994
In the fall of 1994, I was attending the Northeast SAS Users’ Group conference. It was my third annual trip to NESUG after stopping in at the 1992 conference in Greenwich, CT on my way to my first TAC meeting, an observer at a meeting of the New Jersey TAC in Princeton, NJ.
At that point in my career, I would estimate that 90% of my time was spent on data analysis. And the other 10% was split between waiting for those analyses to run and explaining errors that I made to those at Advanced Systems who then had to explain them to clients. Just a few years later, I was the client, and just a few years after that, I was the one explaining the errors of others to clients, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Myself?
In late 1994, with a daughter about to turn 1 and a wife in the midst of treatments for Hodgkin’s Disease, I sat alone in my room at the Best Western, a “short” walk from the conference hotel. I began to think that it might be time to move on. Sure, this large-scale testing gig came along at just the right time after my central office position was eliminated in the Portland, Maine Public Schools, but this wasn’t what I planned to do for the rest of my life. After interacting with the other consultants at NESUG, I was sure that I could make a go of it as a consultant offering a mix of data analysis, education policy, assessment literacy, and program evaluation.
On May 5, 1995 I submitted resignations letters for my position as Supervisor of Data Analysis & Scoring at Advanced Systems in Measurement and Evaluation as well as for my position on the ASME Board.
A couple of months later, Data Analysis & Testing Associates, Inc. was born and became the professional home for me and two of my ASME data analysis colleagues for the next several years.
As I look back at the NESUG papers co-authored with my colleagues, I see my professional journey that began with the initial papers where we were both at ASME. Then came the papers where one of us was at D.A.T.A., Inc. and the other was still at ASME; followed by both of us at D.A.T.A., Inc.; and then a couple of papers in the early 2000s when I was with the Center for Assessment and they were still keeping D.A.T.A., Inc. afloat. Things came full circle, I guess, with my NESUG paper, co-authored with my colleague Jenn Dunn when I was with the Center and she had left the Center to join Measured Progress (formerly ASME).
NCSA 2016
On Father’s Day weekend in June 2016, I was attending the CCSSO National Conference on Large-Scale Assessment. It was my first real trip to NCSA since 2010. I didn’t really take well to the change from the Large-Scale Assessment Conference.
Technically, I attended the 2012 conference, but that was just to visit friends in Minneapolis. And even this time, a partial motive for attending NCSA is that my now much older daughter was consider graduate programs at Temple and the University of Delaware.
But I was also in search of something new. NECAP which had occupied 50% of my billable time and much more of my mental time and energy for the past 13 years had come to an end. By design, I was only peripherally involved in PARCC and Smarter Balanced. That weekend in Philadelphia, I was in search of my next big project – thinking that in my mid-50s I had one good 10-year project left in me.
After a surprisingly good vegan Philly Cheesesteak (my daughter is vegetarian), I returned home from Philadelphia that weekend, convinced that my next big thing would be assessment literacy. My colleague Damian Betebenner and I set out to make that happen.
A couple of summers with interns later, we had a pretty nice paper, and NCME presentation, the beginnings of a nifty open source website for dynamic data visualizations related to assessment literacy, and a project plan.
That endeavor did eventually result in one more paper, Teaching Literacy, but assessment literacy was not the next big thing I hoped it would be that weekend in Philadelphia – at least not for me.
But that excursion into assessment literacy did lead to me reconnecting with Sue Brookhart when she agreed to serve as discussant for our NCME session. Which eventually led to her inviting me to be her co-author on the chapter on assessment to inform teaching and learning for the still/soon-to-be-published 5th edition of Educational Measurement. My first post-Center activity. Over the years, I have also been fortunate to co-author book chapters with Suzanne Lane and Brian Gong – each experience a professional highlight.
And the short trip into assessment literacy, open source this and that, data visualizations, etc. led me to the decision that it was time for this one to go home. Time to step away from the Center and full-time involvement in large-scale testing.
NCME 2024
And now here I am back in Philadelphia for the NCME conference – my first trip back to the conference in-person since serving as program co-chair with April Zenisky in 2018. This weekend, I’m presenting with Damian Betebenner on years of learning, doing a little consulting, visiting an old friend, and looking for the answer to the question, Is this where I want to be?
Is there still a spark?
Does this stuff still excite me?
Or is it time to really walk away?
Everyone has to answer that question at one point or another. Sometimes you’re asked to walk away from a position before you are ready to leave, but that’s different from the spark being gone, the pilot light being extinguished.
I think that I know the answer, but I need this weekend to be sure.
Day 1 is in the books.
Haven’t had that cheesesteak or apple fritter yet.
Stay tuned.
Image by WikiImages from Pixabay
Embrace the Absurd 