My dear friend Zeineb Mahzouz sent me an article that drills into a subject that surfaces again and again in my stew of concerns: meritocracy.
Tag: educational measurement
Not The Greatest
What makes a thing or person ‘the greatest’? How did we judge it to be “having the “most significant effects, importance, distinction” over all other similar items? With Muhammad Ali saying he was the greatest the proof was in all those other boxers stretched out on the canvas, but even then my uncles would say […]
Claims Will Always Matter, But Sadly Bob Mislevy Is Gone
Recently, my attention in these writings focused on rebutting the prevalent notion among the punditocracy of the left (center, far, handed) that the problem with the corruption, unconstitutionality, and general havoc of the current federal government our electorate chose came about because a certain large segment of our citizenry were bedeviled and bewitched by misinformation. That […]
A Christmas Dog’s Dinner
Yes, sit down (or stand up) for a special holiday canine repast of links about testing and its adjacent domains or what is known as a dog’s dinner this time. And why wouldn’t you be invited, anybody who is interested in measurement is part of a community. At least that seems to be the point […]
Is there another debt to deal with? Should colleges be put to the test?
The Internet is atwitter and abuzz and in some cases aghast at the decision by President Biden to cancel student loan debt. My brother Gene Bouie squarely raised the unsaid elements of at least some of that resistance in writing to a swath of engaging people this morning about the cancelling of student debt by […]
If the ‘learner is at the center’ then shouldn’t all tests already be for learning?
Former ETS colleague Kate MIllet published an intriguing article recently here that pointed me towards the Big Education report where I read this sentence: “When the learner is at the centre, it is their strengths and needs, passions and interests that become the focus for transformation, wherever that learner comes from and whatever system they […]
Do the SATs signal success?
Two questions Success at what exactly? Will my answer change the mind of anyone already biased for or against the test? As stated in yesterday’s entry in this marathon of blog posts on various aspects of testing and how they’ve intersected with my own personal history, I do NOT think the SAT matters as much […]
What Do the SATs Measure?
Twenty years ago today, I became something of a marked man. It was a Friday and I received a phone call anxiously awaited telling me that ETS was offering me its newly created position of Chief Learning Officer. I had gone over to the dark side of the people who made the SAT. Of course, […]
MailBox Monday # 2
Our mailbox is bustling this week and even better many of the comments come from dear friends whom I have known for over half a century. In fact, the photo above is from where Mark attended school — the Abigail Adams Schoolhouse — while growing up in Weymouth Massachusetts. We met at Manhattan College in […]
The Way To Bet or Predictive Validity Is Imperfect Too!
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 […]