The word ‘dialogue’ cops 2,380,000 hits on Google all by itself, which indicates to me that people mean a lot of different things when they use the word… Dialogue. One of the purposes of the blog Testing: a Personal History was to attempt to establish a dialogue about testing. My meaning of dialogue, however, tracks […]
Yesterday’s post continued the theme of the lack of understanding of validity in both the design of tests at all levels and interpretation of their scores. In service of that argument, I quoted from a chapter by Emily Shaw in the book Measuring Success edited by Jack Buckley, Lynn Letukas, and Ben Wildavsky: “Decades of […]
Double digits now! This is the tenth post of the thirty-one promised January Jolts for Testing: A Personal History. For new readers — and if LinkedIn stats are valid — we have many of those — here is an explanation for why this blog exists: Having been thrust accidentally into the world of testing 20 […]
My gratitude swells for the generosity of Marianne Talbot who has commented on each of the January jolt posts thus far. But in an echo of my last post, it’s not just the quantity of her comments but the quality that matters as she offers insights and resources. In a recent comment, Marianne offered this […]
Over the Christmas week as is our custom, my wife, Marjorie, and I watched several favorite movies. The winner for most viewed film during our more than four decades together has to be The Philadelphia Story even though the story itself contains elements that make us just a little bit more uncomfortable as each year […]
Stories Day 2 is made much easier because two friends shared stories from their own personal histories of testing that allow me to riff off of them. First, my dear friend and former colleague, Vasu Murti related this example: Sharing my testing story while pursuing Bachelors in India vs. Masters in the US. Bachelors: 5-years Naval Architecure B.Tech program (Focus: ship design, construction […]
In the first days of this blog, Testing: A Personal History, a reader who is also a friend wrote me this reaction: “ I’ve really enjoyed your writing on testing. I’ve always hated tests, but I think its’s more an issue of what is done with those test results that informed my experience than the […]
Did you realize that the Associated Press, which most of us know as AP, called 7000 races on election night in 2020? And that they have a remarkable even extraordinary record for getting every one of them right since the 1930s? NPR, which uses the AP for its own election calls says this is because […]
Twelve days. Has it really been that long since my last installment in Testing: a Personal History where we talked about constructs? This busy season in the playwrighting dimension of my life got in the way. Genealogy, written with my co-playwright Joe Queenan, opens at that gem of an independent playhouse, Broom Street Theater in […]
Testing, I can’t quit you As the Tom Hanks character in You’ve Got Mail suggests the Godfather movies provide a plethora of metaphors for the dynamics of our careers. In my case, I welcomed the absence of actual physical ‘hits’ even though corporate board room often did resemble a meeting of the Five Families. The […]