Your Obedient Servant, C. DePascale roughly to the beat of Alexander Hamilton – (with sincere apologies to Lin-Manuel Miranda and the entire rap community) How could three simple, questions, multiple-choice And some False-True, dropped in the middle of the Hamilton app On my iPhone, by all accounts just trivia Invalid, reveal to me the futureContinue reading “Hamilton & The Future of Assessment”
Category Archives: Assessment
Something is Not Quite Write
Nagging Issues That Can Affect the Utility of Assessments Charlie DePascale Starting with the direct assessment of writing, the inclusion of items requiring students to produce written responses may be the most significant development in large-scale assessment in the past three decades. We now stand on the cusp of a new wave of advancesContinue reading “Something is Not Quite Write”
State Assessment and High School
A Square Peg for a Round Hole Charlie DePascale We have reached a stalemate. It has been nearly five years since ESSA and the assessment flexibility it offered to states, particularly at the high school level, became law. Next week, we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the release and almost immediate and universal adoption ofContinue reading “State Assessment and High School”
The All-Decade Team – State Assessment Version
As we begin the 2020s, let’s take a moment to look back at some of the state assessment moments that defined the 2010s Last week, the New England Patriots announced their all-decade team for the 2010s. The Patriots release was quickly followed by local media offering their own selections of all-decade teams for the Celtics,Continue reading “The All-Decade Team – State Assessment Version”
Why is this time different?
The K-12 testing industry survived, even flourished, during past economic downturns. There are signs, however, that this time might be different. There have been two major economic downturns in the past twenty years: the bursting of the Dot-Com bubble in the early 2000s and the Great Recession of 2008. Much like the proverbial cockroach inContinue reading “Why is this time different?”
A good day ruined
Charlie DePascale After a wonderful late summer day spent enjoying a rare weekday afternoon baseball game in Boston, I sat down last night and looked at my Twitter feed. There among the trending items was this headline The University of Texas’s Secret Strategy to Keep Out Black Students Without even clicking to look at theContinue reading “A good day ruined”
Is NAEP the Gold Standard?
By any metric, 2017 was, and continues to be, a very bad year for NAEP. Troubles began in April 2018 with the utter fiasco that was the long-delayed release of the 2017 Reading and Mathematics results. Seldom in the course of human history have so many good statistics been sacrificed in the name of preservingContinue reading “Is NAEP the Gold Standard?”
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 for meContinue reading “A Letter to Santa”
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”
Implausible Values
Equating in the early part of the 21st century Charlie DePascale Our field is facing a crisis brought on by implausible values. The values which threaten us, however, are not the assessment results questioned above. Those are only the byproduct of the values which our field and society have adopted with regard to K-12 large-scaleContinue reading “Implausible Values”
Embrace the Absurd 
You must be logged in to post a comment.