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, […]
Tag: tests
Mailbox Monday: Our Faithful Correspondents Communicate
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 […]
Validation Is Not Just for Parking Tickets
Is it overkill to devote the daily January jolt of this blog to validity yet again? No! Why do we take a test in the first place? So that we can make a claim about ourselves or others feel comfortable making a claim about us whether it is that we have learned something, can perform […]
Two Stories of Failed Testing — And Teaching
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 […]
Claims matter the most for those deemed different
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 […]
If Only the Associated Press Could Call All Our Races: Claims Part II
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 […]
The Adjustment of Claims Is Not Always About GEICO
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 […]