This post began with literal pipe dreams, fond reflections and reminiscences on my days as a pipe smoker, sparked by accepting that it was finally time to part with the small collection of pipes I accumulated during college. Class notes and papers last month, pipes this month.
My brief foray into pipe smoking was part of the college experience of trying to find myself, establish an identity, and you know, just fit it. Pipes followed the even more brief ethnically-inspired dalliance with Parodi cigars (usually unlit) senior year in high school –lots of stuff was legal at 18 in those days. As far as I can recall, my pipe dreams began sophomore year of college and were over by commencement.
With the exception of a corn cob pipe which gave a completely different vibe, the rest of my small collection of pipes came from Leavitt and Peirce, a stately tobacco store in Harvard Square established in 1883. With lots of polished wood and brass and finely crafted chess and backgammon sets complementing displays of tobacco products, it was one of the handful of shops along that quieter stretch of Mass Ave that basically cried out Harvard Man as you walked by them.
In typical New England fashion, unlike the carefully laid out grids in newer cities, Mass Ave curved around two sides of Harvard Yard. In the 1970s, one side opened wide into the frenzied bustle of Harvard Square. The other side had more of a college town Main St. feel to it as you crossed from the Yard to the River Houses. It was along that stretch that I would purchase my pads of music notation paper at Briggs & Briggs, hole up for hours among the used books in the basement of Harvard Book Store, get my black-and-white contact sheets developed, buy an ice cream, and pick out my pipes and tobacco at Leavitt and Peirce.
My go to pipe was made in England with a mahogany or cherry bowl and a stem that could be twisted back over the bowl so that the compact pipe could snapped into a little pouch that fit easily into a jacket pocket. My tobacco of choice was a cherry-flavored blend.
In the end, however, smoking a pipe and enjoying pints of Guiness were parts of my identity that faded away, as did the Bic Macro sandwiches and licorice root sticks (real sticks) at the Golden Temple after Master’s Tea on Friday evenings.
It didn’t take me long to realize that a pipe didn’t make the man and that my ideas on fitting in were not only a pipe dream, but not even the right dream. Fitting in actually means finding your own place in the world even if you stick out like a sore thumb, or as they say making your own kind of music even if nobody else sings along.
Functional Pipe Dreams
From the literal, my thoughts turned to the figurative and metaphorical use of the term pipe dream:
A “pipe dream” is an idea, plan, or hope that is unrealistic, impractical, or nearly impossible to achieve. It describes an attractive fantasy that is unlikely to ever become reality.
As it turns out, educational measurement and assessment is chock-full of them.
We can begin at the very beginning with the term Educational Measurement. A recent1600+ page volume notwithstanding, many have argued that strictly speaking, achieving true measurement in anything related to education is itself a pipe dream. (Simple counts and elapsed time might be the rare exceptions, which is perhaps why we default to them so often.)
Nevertheless, we persist in practicing and promulgating our own brand of social sciences quasi-measurement with its established rules, procedures, and Standards. Calling what we’re doing measurement might not be veritas, but it does give our enterprise much needed gravitas.
Within educational measurement, of course, we rely on a slew of pipe dreams in order to function on a daily basis. Unidimensionality, vertical scales, comparability, Holland and Doran’s five requirements for equating are just a few of the attractive fantasies, nearly impossible to achieve that are essential tools in our measurement toolbelt. Did we ever really believe that it was a matter of indifference what form was administered to a student? Of course not.
For decades, however, when our focus was on cross-sectional, norm-referenced group scores at a single point in time with low stakes attached, our approximations were, as they say, close enough for psychometric work.
Criterion-referenced scores linked to specific content. Students tested every year to produce not only status scores, but also growth scores for individual students. Adaptive testing, forms on the fly, accommodations, personalization, and actionable information.
All of these tossed a monkey wrench into our carefully laid out network of pipe dreams.
For you see, the key to the effective use of pipe dreams is maintaining a clear grasp on what is real and what is merely an attractive fantasy; and knowing your limits.
Figuratively and literally, if you continue to pump too much air into your pipe dream, you risk a catastrophic failure as your pipes and dreams burst.
From The Sublime to the Ridiculous
No Child Left Behind (itself a pipe dream?), of course, gave us what many regarded as the quintessential educational pipe dream:
100% of students will be Proficient on state tests in reading and mathematics by 2014
In reality, however, the NCLB target failed to meet the definition of a pipe dream. Yes, it was unrealistic and impractical. But no, a 100% proficiency on state tests was neither an attractive fantasy nor something merely nearly impossible to achieve. Attractiveness and the faint hope of achievement being essential components of a pipe dream. From the outset, the consensus was that there was not even the faintest of hopes of hitting the target and nothing the least bit attractive about the assessments and accountability requirements included in the proficiency package.
Further, attaching requirements and deadlines, apparently, can have the effect of converting a mantra or goal from a pipe dream to a leaking gas pipe ready to explode with the smallest spark – never mind the blow torch which Arne and Barack applied with educator evaluation.
One can argue (or at least I will argue) that like test scores, large-scale testing and educational measurement never recovered from the pipe dreams that burst between 2013 and 2015.
Patching, replacing, or reinforcing the pipes that burst will not be sufficient if we going to continue to expect more from the existing plumbing system than it can possibly provide.
What we need is …
A New Set of Pipe Dreams
For years (decades now actually), several of us have equated the divide between the psychometrics needed to produce norm-referenced, cross-sectional group scores and what is needed to support criterion-referenced, longitudinal measurement of individual students to the difference between classical Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics. To paraphrase a scene from the film Oppenheimer, the greatest minds of their generation gave us the psychometric principles which, although limited, flawed, and incomplete, served us so well for so long. But most of those ideas are from more than 40 years ago. It’s time to let go of our old ways of thinking and our old collection of pipe dreams.
What’s needed now, however, are not simply extensions and adaptations of those old ideas; not simply trying to force the new to fit into the old. What’s needed are new ideas and new dreams for a new generation and a new psychometrics.
Dare to dream. Dare to stick out like a sore thumb.
Header image from pixabay.com
Embrace the Absurd 