Growth seemed to be a hot topic this month, so I set out to write a blog post about student growth and how it should be (and shouldn’t be) used in school accountability systems. Then I read the Senate HELP committee’s RFI. When my blood pressure returned close to normal, my topic had changed. I had expected and can even accept the “school choice” vibes that ran through the RFI. What I cannot stomach, however, is the return to misplaced blame and outright meanness that helped derail the last 25 years of Education Reform.
Author Archives: Charlie DePascale
What Might Have Been
We are now a quarter of the way through the 21st century and about the same length of time into the current era of test-based school accountability. Like most Education Reform initiatives, with NCLB we jumped right in with testing and accountability – proudly flying the plane while we were building it. Except that we never actually get around to rebuilding it. Sure, we update the snacks, swap out seats, and add wi-fi, but the basic public education plane remains the same. What if we tried a different approach. What might have been?
Book ‘Em, Danno!
One way I that check the “pulse of the nation” on education is though the topics that family members raise with me around the table at holiday gatherings. Last year it was Massachusetts ending the MCAS graduation requirement, before MCAS it was chronic absenteeism and NAEP scores, and before that colleges dropping the SAT and ACT. This year, the topic was books and kids not reading very many of them. So, let’s turn the page on the 2026 blog year by considering books.
Embracing Absurdity In 2025
Thanks to all who joined me in embracing the absurdity of 2025 through my blog, Embrace The Absurd. In this final post of 2025, I recap the most popular posts and issues we discussed in 2025 and offer some words of wisdom (not mine) to guide us into the new year ahead.
Wishing you and yours happiness, health, proficiency, competency, relevance, validity, reliability, fairness, engagement, and purpose in 2026.
A Point of Inflection and Reflection
We are about to close the curtain on 2025 and begin a new year. We like to think of this time brief period of time at the end of the year as an opportunity to slow down, to reflect on the year past and the year ahead. As we do so, let’s take a moment to reflect on all that many of us will be celebrating these next two weeks, what it means to move from one year to the next, and what lessons we can apply to ourselves and our field. Then let’s sit down and carefully plan out our Spring Resolutions for 2026.
From Homer to Ho: Let’s Talk TACs
Two recent posts by Andrew Ho spurred my thinking about Technical Advisory Committees (TACs); specifically, the role that the committees and their members play in our field. Perhaps even more important than their role as advisors, problem solvers, sounding boards, psychometric therapists, and human guardrails, TAC members are storytellers, passing on through oral tradition the key tenets of our field.
Giving Thanks (Testing Version)
Over the weekend, I set out to make a list of the test-related things that I was thankful for this Thanksgiving. That daunting task proved more difficult than I anticipated. The constant attacks on testing have become more subtle and a little more muted, but they persist. Everything about testing seems up in the air, changes in technology happening faster than our ability to process them. Then I remembered that the past 25 years focused on compliance. The chaos itself is something to be thankful for. But let’s dig a little deeper than that.
Putting Our Understanding of Assessment to the Test
Are the words test and assessment interchangeable, comparable, synonyms? Seems like a rather innocuous question. My take on it last week, however, hit that blogging sweet spot between striking a chord and striking a nerve. When that happens there’s only one thing for a self-respecting blogger to do, double down, add a bit of meat to the bone, and tackle the topic again.
Strengthening Our Links
I have little doubt that the future of standards-based assessment is going to be much more complex, multi-dimensional, and well, messy than the testing situations with which we are familiar and comfortable. That likely means we are going to have to lean more heavily on those other forms of linking educational assessments that don’t fit under that category of equating. As we are revising the Standards, now might be a good time to consider what linking might look like as we shift our attention from testing to student assessment.
It’s Time To Remember and To Repeat
This morning, I had the privilege of speaking (via Zoom) at the 8th International Association for Innovations In Educational Assessment conference in Nigeria. The theme of this conference as Assessment in the Era of Artificial Intelligence. While many hear AI and picture a brave new world of an assessment future heretofore unimagined, I find myself dreaming of the envisioned assessment past that was never fully realized and wondering with the support of AI, why not. Why not now? Why not us? Why not state-supported, school-based assessment as the norm?
Embrace the Absurd 