Assessment – Embrace the Absurd

Tell Me Something I Already Know

Gather round kids. We need to talk. Come on, there’s room for everybody. You three lurking in the back, join us. There are plenty of seats up front. (Sheesh, professors, y’know what I mean). Ahem, the gentleman with the pink tie and jeans in the front row, you can stop looking around the room andContinue reading “Tell Me Something I Already Know”

If Only It Were As Simple As Rocket Science

Mark Schneider and Kumar Garg’s recent call for a SpaceX for assessment and the responses to it by Chester Finn and Anne Wicks, prominent among others, highlight the complexities of large-scale testing and the challenges associated with trying to improve K-12 assessment. Sadly, even if our fractured field were somehow able to address the manyContinue reading “If Only It Were As Simple As Rocket Science”

Bored on the Fourth of July

Large-scale state testing is boring. tedious, dull, monotonous, repetitious, repetitive, unimaginative, characterless, colorless, soulless, passionless, spiritless, uninteresting, unexciting, uninspiring, unstimulating, unoriginal, derivative, jejune, nondescript, anemic, sterile, bland, vanilla, wishy-washy, banal, lame, plodding, ponderous, pedestrian, stodgy, dreary, mechanical, stiff, leaden, wooden, mind-numbing, soul-destroying, wearisome, tired, tiring, tiresome, irksome, trying, frustrating, mundane, commonplace, workaday, unremarkable, routine, run-of-the-millContinue reading “Bored on the Fourth of July”

Do It Anyway

I have discussed re-imagining assessment and offered cautions to the assessment/educational measurement community as we enter the next once-in-a-generation period of re-imagining and reinventing assessment, particularly large-scale testing. In this post, I synthesize those thoughts into a straightforward recommendation to the field: When we truly re-imagine assessment, in virtually all cases, we are doing soContinue reading “Do It Anyway”

Mind The Gap

In my previous post, I waded cautiously into the topic of group differences on state tests, just dipping my toes into the murky waters of achievement gaps. In this post I will just keep on blogging until I am at least waist deep in the big muddy. I discussed the changes in the handling ofContinue reading “Mind The Gap”

Making Meaning from Mean Differences

There are few constants in this quickly- and ever-changing world. One of those, however, has been that there will be group differences on state tests, and those differences will be quite predictable. So, we find group differences in mean scores on the state test. Differences that we knew that we would find, the very sameContinue reading “Making Meaning from Mean Differences”

Re-Imagining Assessment at NCSA

This month, we celebrate golden anniversary of the CCSSO National Conference on Student Assessment (NCSA) and with it, 50 years of innovation in assessment. The theme for the 2021 virtual conference is Re-Imagining Assessment. That theme is particularly well-suited for the annual assessment conference that I remember fondly as large-scale (short for the National Conference onContinue reading “Re-Imagining Assessment at NCSA”

Something is Rotten in the State of Testing

To be, or not to be, that is the question: To be, or not to be. To test, or not to test, that is the question. Make no mistake, the current debate about state testing may be framed in terms of the pandemic and the specific context of spring 2021, but it is a much largerContinue reading “Something is Rotten in the State of Testing”

20 Questions – Student Proficiency Edition

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of the times spent on family road trips. The time in the car between destinations could have seemed interminable (much like the debate about spring 2021 state testing), but instead was filled with sing-a-longs and games. The sing-a-longs featured an eclectic mix of George M Cohan (Give MyContinue reading “20 Questions – Student Proficiency Edition”

Are You There Data? It’s Me, Charlie

It’s pretty much impossible to engage with any media platform on any topic without someone telling you, “The data speak for themselves!” or perhaps the less pedantic, “The data speaks for itself!” Often, that message is being delivered by a trusted authority like rock star Dr. Fauci (lately, very often). Other times, it may beContinue reading “Are You There Data? It’s Me, Charlie”