Seeking Balance

Last week, I dropped in on the Center for Assessment’s RILS conference – What It Takes to Implement Balanced Assessment Systems. It was my first time attending RILS in person since leaving the Center at the end of 2019 and the theme of balance felt quite appropriate.

For the better part of two decades attending the Reidy Interactive Lecture Series (RILS) was an annual rite of fall that I looked forward to as much apple picking, picking out a pumpkin, and picking up an iced PSL (just one for the season).  Like the return of the post tourist season calm in Maine, those two days at RILS each year helped to restore my own sense of balance.

Along with NESUG (Northeast SAS Users Group) and NERA (Northeastern Educational Research Association), RILS was part of my fall triumvirate – the trio of conferences that helped me bring one year to an end and begin mentally and physically to prepare for the next. Regional, modestly priced, intimate (or at least much smaller than their counterparts: SUGI, NCME, and NCSA), these conferences were also challenging, stimulating, and focused in a way that kept me grounded, centered, balanced.  

Early in my career, NESUG and its cadre of SAS programmers was at the heart of my work. As I shifted from hands-on work with data toward project management and policy, NESUG remained a connection to my roots, to that world and to those data-happy people. In the latter part of my career, RILS, practical and practice-oriented, tackling issues in large-scale testing, state assessment, and accountability was front and center – offering the opportunity to review and reflect on the state of the field and interact with leaders sharing their thoughts on the most pressing issues to address in the coming year and years ahead. And in the background, there was always NERA serving as my link to more hard-core educational measurement, assessment theory, and academia.

And all within a pleasant fall drive from my home in southern Maine.

As we all learned long ago, however, the only constant in life is change and nothing stays the same forever.

NESUG disbanded in 2013 as SAS turned its attention and resources toward the internet, integrated business solutions, and a different type of SAS user. As I write this, it occurs to me that the term integrated business solutions has the same rhythm and feel to it as balanced assessment systems. Hmmm.

As the landscape expanded, national (and international) conferences began reaching into that precious fall block of time. I enjoyed those conferences, including my trips to the much hillier than anticipated Lawrence, Kansas, with a visit to Mass Street Soda providing the inspiration for offering a credit card bottle opener as swag at a conference the following spring. All those bottles of soda to choose from and no way to open them. Oh, the humanity! First world problems.

But filling the fall with conferences and other meetings made real the concept that less is more. Or even more importantly, more is less. A reality that likely applies to testing as much as it does to other aspects of life.  It seems however, that we cannot help ourselves. Sure, some may call for a reduction in testing or advocate strongly (even obsessively) for not administering one particular test or type of test, but it seems that there will never be a shortage of people creating and marketing new tests.   As Ruby Tandoh wrote in her wonderful new book, All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now, “the paradox is that we’ve decided that the answer to having too many recipes to choose from is writing more.”

Even my love of RILS fell victim to the increased noise and clutter. I can recall in vivid detail questions and debates from RILS in the 2000s and early 2010s. But from RILS 2018, my only memory is my opening address, Call Me Pellegrino. [iyKWSK] The rest of the two days, sadly, is a blur. And it was during a planning meeting for RILS 2019 that I decided that finding balance in my life meant walking away from full-time consulting sooner rather than later. [iykyk]

Ah, balance.

Returning to RILS it was nice to reconnect with old friends and colleagues from the Center and states and even older friends and colleagues from my days with the Massachusetts DOE. To meet new people, including meeting some people in person with whom I’ve only worked virtually and a couple for whom I’ve worked but had never met at all.

And as for what it takes to implement balanced systems…

As I drove from RILS to teach my class at Boston College, I pondered the Center’s dogged pursuit of balanced assessment systems, while the oft-evoked images of white whales and unicorns swirled through my head. Nearing campus, it occurred to me that balanced assessment systems may, in fact, be more illusive than elusive. More tied to the traditional definition of unicorn (i.e., mythical) than the modern (i.e., something unusual, rare, or unique).

There are no balanced assessment systems because there are no assessment systems of any kind – not in the sense that the term system is being used in this context. There is (or should be) the balanced use of assessment and the various tools of assessment to support curriculum and instruction and to promote learning. But system implies an interrelationship and sense of interconnectedness that simply does not (and should not) exist. All components contributing in their own way to the overall goal, by all means. Alignment, sure. A Theory of Action, if you must. But a system, sorry that’s a bridge too far and I fear that the pursuit of balanced assessment systems is a bridge to nowhere.

Pursue balance in the use of tests and testing for accountability and other critical purposes.

Continue to strive to better understand the key differences between testing and assessment, positioning the former in service of the latter.

Step back from the clutter. Reduce the noise.

Balance.

 

Image by Stefan Prutsch from Pixabay