If LinkedIn had asked me to write about women who have influenced my life, that would have been easy. My wife and daughter are at the top of the list, of course. But that story begins with my Mom, moves on to some very special teachers from elementary school through high school, and continues with two women at Harvard. The first, Abigail Thernstrom, at the time a young PhD serving as a TA for her husband’s intro course in American history, who tactfully told this struggling freshman that after reading my papers they were pleasantly surprised by my performance on the final exam and recommended that I consider retaking the mandatory writing course. The second, was Luise Vosgerchian, chair of the Music Department. This gifted musician and consummate teacher who could claim famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma among her students worked with me one-on-one my senior year to ensure that I finally was able to meet the piano requirement, the initial speed bump that most music majors clear sophomore year.
Identifying women who influenced my career, however, is a more daunting task, due in no small part to the fact that I drifted into large-scale assessment and state testing somewhat accidentally, didn’t realize that it would, in fact, be my career until about a decade or so into it, and didn’t come to peace with that realization for another five years or so.
The other factor that makes it difficult to identify women who influenced my career in state assessment is the sheer number of them. I haven’t sat down to do the math, but I have no question that the majority of my clients, colleagues, collaborators, contractors, contemporaries, etc. with whom I have interacted over the course of my career have been women, so many of them influential. That is not to suggest in any way that inequities such as those identified by Women in Measurement (co-founded by two of my colleagues) are not present in the measurement adjacent field of state testing.
I cannot possibly do justice to all of the women who had a profound and lasting influence on me and my career in the space allotted for this post, but I will offer a few examples to illustrate the point.
Clients
From my first major state client, Liz Badger in Massachusetts, to my last, Jessica Baghian in Louisiana, I worked directly with women serving as directors of assessment, accountability, deputy commissioners, and in a couple of cases commissioners. It’s a reflection of the length of my career, I guess, that I began by interacting with Lizes and Marys and ended up with Jennifers and Jessicas, oh so many Jessicas. And the list of those with whom I worked most closely doesn’t include the women in the departments’ legal, public relations, special education, and curriculum offices who connected with the assessment in significant ways.
Among all of those clients, two whom I must single out are Mary Ann Snider from Rhode Island and Kit Viator from Massachusetts.
Mary Ann was the force that kept the New England Common Assessment Program consortium ship afloat when so many normal and extraordinary circumstances threatened to run it aground. Before she assumed the role of deputy commissioner, we spent nearly a decade working on issues related to state assessment, accountability, secondary school standards, and educator evaluation.
From the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s Kit went from the villain in my narrative (the Burr to my Hamilton or vice versa) to trusted colleague to friend. As her assessment contractor, there was never a sterner, more painstaking taskmaster, as her colleague, never a stronger defender of the integrity of her state’s assessment program.
Colleagues
At Advanced Systems, we were young, perhaps idealistic, definitely naïve, and didn’t know what we didn’t know about reforming education and turning the state assessment world upside down. Rich Hill and Stuart Kahl led the company, but the lead test developers and the directors of finance, human relations, publications, shipping, and operations were all women as were the members of my data analysis team, Suzanne Vietas, Patty Cole, and Dr. Margaret Rost (herself a student of Brenda Loyd, who influenced the careers of so many in our field, taken from us far too soon).
Following my stint with the Massachusetts Department of Education, I joined Rich Hill and Brian Gong at the Center for Assessment. At that time, professional staff consisted of Marge Petit, and Karin Hess – critical friends in every positive sense of the term. Over nearly two decades, most of my colleagues who passed through the Center were women, several of whom were already or later became and remain influential leaders in our field.
Collaborators
Although publishing was never a major focus while working in state assessment, over the years I did have the honor to co-author book chapters or articles with Suzanne Lane, Christina Schneider, Susan Lyons, and most recently Susan Brookhart. Editors included Cheryl Wild, Hong Jiao, and most recently Linda Cook and Mary Pitoniak.
I also worked with Jenn Dunn to develop and co-teach a graduate seminar in psychometrics at Boston College, the format which ultimately, served as the inspiration for my forthcoming book.
Committees, Councils, and Colleges
A career in state assessment includes interactions with a plethora a committees, councils, and various academics while working directly on the operations of the assessment and on grants supporting the assessments through Technical Advisory Committees, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and other organizations.
It was through such groups that I came to work with people such as Martha Thurlow, Rachel Quenemoen, Jacqui Kearns, Ellen Forte, and of course, Phoebe Winter. Phoebe’s coordination of an EAG Grant on Comparability award to North Carolina and CCSSO in the mid-2000s provided me the opportunity to work with Mildred Bazemore, Tammy Howard, Sue Lottridge, Rebecca Korpriva, and Karen Barton,
At the top of that illustrious list, however, would have to be Barbara Plake, with whom I worked throughout almost my entire career as she served as member of technical advisory committees in Massachusetts and then also in Rhode Island. At one level, working with Barbara afforded me access to another leading thought leader or authority on standard setting along with colleagues Marianne Perie, Karla Egan, and Christina Schneider. Observing Barbara at TAC meetings, I learned when to sit back and listen, when to ask probing questions, and if necessary, when and how to drop the hammer. And over breakfasts in the Sheraton Commander lounge in Cambridge or dinners at Legal Sea Foods (always the Legal’s crab cakes for Barbara), I learned so much more.
Contemporaries
I wasn’t sure what to call this final category, but the post wouldn’t be complete without it; so, to remain alliterative with the previous categories I went with Contemporaries. There are three women in this category.
First is Karen Barton. Aside from the comparability project mentioned above we never had the opportunity to work together, but from the first time I heard her discuss validity (and quote the Pirates of the Caribbean) at a conference, she has always made me think, often differently and more deeply, about topics than I had before. And that is about the most significant influence that a person can have on one’s career.
Second, is April Zenisky, Director of the Center for Educational Assessment at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Like several other people in the field (and in this post), I first encountered April when she was a graduate student at UMASS. Over the years, April and her colleagues presented workshops for me at the New England Educational Research Organization. I made presentations at UMASS. Later we served together on the Board and Executive Committee of the Northeastern Educational Research Association, where April was a year ahead of me as President and Past President. Finally, we persevered as program co-chairs of 2018 National Council on Measurement in Education Conference in New York City, a bond that cannot be broken and an experience that cannot be forgotten (no matter how hard you try).
Last, but certainly not least, there is Laura Slover. For the past two decades, Laura has been pushing the leading edge of policy and practice in state assessment. First, at Achieve with alignment studies of state tests. Then with the concept of college-and-career readiness and consortium-based assessment through the American Diploma Project. After facilitating the development of the frameworks that led to the Common Core State Standards came the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) – in many respects the culmination of custom state assessment. Then it was on to CenterPoint and high-quality assessment embedded within and aligned with high-quality curriculum and instruction in the hands of educators with the capacity to use it effectively. Now serving as managing director of Skills for the Future – offering a new vision of skills-based assessment that includes broader array of essential competencies. I’m still not clear on what a competency is or how to assess it, but I’m certain that such curriculum-embedded, performance-based assessments are the future of assessment.
Conclusion
In the limited space available, I was unable to mention the many contractors who influenced my career like the project managers at Harcourt working on MCAS or the psychometricians at Pearson as we figured out how to apply the briefing book standard setting method to the ADP Algebra 2 exam. I didn’t mention Marylin Rindfuss or innovative leaders like Margie Jorgensen. I couldn’t get to the constant, calming presence of Sue Rigney at USED who worked side-by-side with us as we worked to figure out and implement the requirements for alternate assessments and other aspects of NCLB. Those stories will have to wait for the memoir. And I didn’t mention people like Pamela Oberg, with whom I interacted for just a short time near the end of the NECAP program, but who continues to influence me through her regular writings on LinkedIn.
But this month, as we celebrate International Women’s Day and National Women’s History Month it has been a fulfilling exercise to take a few moments and reflect the women who have influenced and played a large part in my career. And of course, such reflection inevitably leads to the most important question: In what ways have we influenced the careers of those who will follow us?
Image by Michaela, at home in Germany • Thank you very much for a like from Pixabay
Embrace the Absurd 