Charlie DePascale Life is full of three-word phrases. Some tend to have profound and lasting consequences that extend far beyond what may have been intended when they were uttered. Phrases such as I Love You, That Looks Safe, and for those among us wavering on new year’s resolutions, Just One Bite might fall into thisContinue reading “Three Little Words”
Author Archives: Charlie DePascale
Look What You Made Me Do
A 2018 Blog Year in Review Charlie DePascale We have reached the end of 2018 and another year of posts on Embrace the Absurd. When I look back at the ten essays posted this year, I think that the phrase that best sums up this year of posts is look what you made me doContinue reading “Look What You Made Me Do”
A Letter to Santa
Dear Santa, I am the next generation of large-scale assessment and I am 4 1/2 years old. I have been very good this year. At least I have tried very hard to be good. I have been reliable and fair. I think that I have been valid, but Uncle Steve says that’s not forContinue reading “A Letter to Santa”
How Arne Works
Charlie DePascale During my August trip to Minnesota I was able to check two books off of my summer reading list: Relativity – The Special and the General Theory by Albert Einstein and How Schools Work by Arne Duncan. As the old joke goes, one was a book that asked me to rethink basic conceptsContinue reading “How Arne Works”
My Miss Brooks
Charlie DePascale Our Miss Brooks was a highly successful comedy series on radio and early television that followed the life and career of a fictional high school English teacher, Connie Brooks. My Miss Brooks, Ann Brooks, was a highly successful teacher of the fifth and sixth grade Advanced Work Class at the Mather School inContinue reading “My Miss Brooks”
Ten Years of Taylor
Charlie DePascale Ten years ago, August 22, 2008, my daughter and I attended our first Taylor Swift concert in Hartford, Connecticut. The original plan was to attend the concert a few weeks later in Massachusetts – a bit closer to our home in Maine. About to start high school, however, she was a bit worriedContinue reading “Ten Years of Taylor”
Rebranding Educational Measurement
Charlie DePascale When I think about educational measurement the first thing that comes to mind is a high-fructose corn syrup commercial from about 10 years ago. On one side there is the man who holds, but cannot articulate, the widespread, but ill-defined, perception (misperception?) that high-fructose corn syrup is inherently bad. On theContinue reading “Rebranding Educational Measurement”
Give Me A Lever
Charlie DePascale I realized very early in my career that the law of the lever, as explained by Archimedes in some variation of the quote above, was critical to my success. In short, there was little that I could do on my own as an assessment specialist, or psychometrician, to improve education; but working inContinue reading “Give Me A Lever”
If I Did It
Confessions of a Psychometrician By OJ Simpsons Paradox with Charlie DePascale Charlie – As we waited six long months for the release of the 2017 NAEP results, some wondered whether we would ever know the whole story; what really happened that February when NAEP reading and math went digital. Now that those results have beenContinue reading “If I Did It”
It’s about time
Charlie DePascale We have all asked the question, “Where did the time go?” As troubling as that question can be, more recently, I find myself pondering an even more vexing question, Where did time go? Every day, it seems as though time has been removed as a dimension or component of some part of our livesContinue reading “It’s about time”
