Author Archives: Charlie DePascale

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?

Seeing The Forest and The Trees

In this week’s edition of How Charlie’s Mind Works we see how attending a conference on balanced assessment systems, discussing a blog post reflecting on said conference, listening to an episode of Freakonomics on air traffic control, attending a TAC meeting, preparing presentations for two upcoming conferences, falling asleep while watching a campy vintage horror film, and listening to the acoustic version of The Life Of A Showgirl on repeat coalesced into a blog post on balanced assessment and the future of state-supported student assessment.

A Tale of Two Icons

October baseball!  The MLB postseason begins tonight and includes my Red Sox for the first time since 2021. It’s still the most selective and compact postseason of all the major men’s professional sports leagues – following a 162-game season that separated the wheat from the chaff. It extends the summer, and win or lose, it’s special. It’s baseball.

The Life Of A Show-and-Tell Girl

As Executive Director of the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), Lesley Muldoon has many responsibilities that most of us will never see nor understand. But the public-facing aspect of her job is to serve as front person and ringmaster for the release of NAEP results. This week, she was put in an unenviable position because of that enigma known as 12th grade NAEP. Let’s not make her go through that again.

Entertain, Engage, Educate, Enlighten

My post this week was already going to be about engagement, even before Taylor and Travis shared their exciting news. But not that type of engagement. Stepping back into the classroom, I’ve been more focused “student engagement” the latest in the long line of widely known but recently discovered solutions to cure all that ails public education.

Accountability: Where Do I Begin?

If we’re serious about school accountability then it’s time to wipe the slate clean and begin again. There simply is no way to get from the current system, a glorified. Title 1 evaluation, to a working whole school accountability model. Here’s the first of an “Accountability Week” worth of posts to make that point.