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From the President: 2020 Vision

By Megan Welsh posted 09-30-2019 04:33 AM

  
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When most people think of “20/20 vision” clear eyesight comes to mind.  The specific definition from the American Optometric Association is “normal visual acuity (the clarity or sharpness of vision) measured at a distance of 20 feet.[1]” Their description goes on to explain, “If you have 20/20 vision, you can see clearly at 20 feet what should normally be seen at that distance."

However, over the past year, 2020 vision has meant something very different for the NCME Board.  To us, “2020 Vision” refers to updating the NCME Mission and Vision statements so that we can clearly see a path to a larger, stronger, more effective NCME by 2025 and beyond.  You may remember wesent a survey to the NCME membership last October, asking for comments on the current NCME Mission, Vision, and Goals. We received 290 responses to the survey, and we have discussed the results at and between three subsequent Board meetings. Our discussion over this past year has led to a new NCME Mission and Vision statement that we believe combines the best of the existing NCME mission and vision statements and responds to your feedback. The new NCME Mission Statement is,

                           "NCME Mission: The National Councile on Measurement in Education is a community of measurement scientists                                                         and practitioners who work together to advance theory and applications of educational measurement to benefit society."


We believe this is a Mission Statement of which all NCME members can be proud, and we look forward to discussing it with you further. We are also in the process of evaluating and discussing the seven NCME goals that are on our web site and date back to at least 2012 (see https://www.ncme.org/about/mission).  We have drafted a revision of these goals that we believe is more succinct and can help us identify actions to (a) better engage the NCME membership, (b) grow the membership, and (c) make NCME more helpful and effective with respect to educational assessment policy and practice.  It is at this juncture we will need your help.  Later this year, we will send out these draft goals and ask for your feedback.  We need your input to make sure our goals will help us accomplish our mission.   You are NCME and so your input into this process is critical.


2020 Conference Vision


What has “2020 Vision” meant for 2020 NCME Annual Meeting in San Francisco?  For our esteemed Annual Meeting Program Co-Chairs, Thanos Patelis, Drew Wiley, and Ada Woo; and for our Training and Professional Development Committee Co-Chairs Kim Colvin and Anita Rawls; it means putting together the best conference program and series of workshops ever experienced by NCME members.  Thanks to you, we received 760 conference proposals and 47 workshop proposals!  I have peeked behind the scenes, and am very excited about the program.  Be prepared for the most fun and intellectually stimulating NCME conference of all time.  As a teaser, I can tell you Dr. Edmund Gordon is putting together a session on “Using Educational Assessments to Educate,” there will be a “Battle of the Presidents” session in which 18 Past-Presidents of NCME will respond to questions from the NCME membership, and we have invited AERA Past-President Dr. Amy Stuart Wells to participate on a panel with several other prominent researchers on the values in educational testing.  Thanks to Dr. Cindy Walker, we are also co-sponsoring the AERA Presidential session on Assessment Literacy.  In addition, the State and Local Assessment Directors Special Interest Group, led by Andrew Middlestead, Vince Verges, and Joyce Zurkowski, is sponsoring a session on “Testing Time: The Push and Pull in High-Stakes State Accountability Assessments.” Also, the Classroom Assessment Task Force, in partnership with WestEd, is sponsoring a pre-conference workshop that will involve 40 teachers from the San Francisco area.  Clearly, our vision of “Putting the ‘E’ back in NCME” is coming to fruition.


Presidential Vision
 

As President, I think it is important for me to also articulate my personal vision for our organization.  I will first give my view of NCME, and then my view of the educational measurement field.  My view of the state of NCME is primarily positive.  Although our membership of 1,600 or so members is far short of our goal of 2,500 members by 2025, we have exceptional quality to compensate for this temporary shortage in quantity.  Specifically, we have an incredibly talented and diligent Board, we have an engaged membership, and we have enacted important initiatives to improve measurement research and practices around the world.  As just one example, through the leadership of Li Cai, Tao Xin, and Randy Bennett, the Chinese/English Journal of Educational Measurement and Evaluation (CEJEME) is set to launch its first issue in early 2020 (see https://www.ce-jeme.org/journal/editorialboard.html). Another example is the Classroom Assessment Task Force has held three incredibly successful conferences over the past three years; the most recent of which was at the University of Colorado Boulder.  In my opinion, NCME is beginning to better respond to the needs of educators, and to the international network of educational measurement scholars and practitioners.


With respect to the educational measurement field, my view is not so rosy. Over the past few years, we have seen more attention to the criticisms, shortcomings, and misuses of educational tests.  With respect to criticisms, the opt-out movement is one example, and Dr. Stuart Wells’ AERA Presidential Address where she describes educational tests as “the new Jim Crow of Education,” is another.  Thus, the public perception of the fairness and utility of educational tests is lower than I have seen in my lifetime.  Although many criticisms of tests are unfounded, some are valid.  I believe we have made two mistakes over the past 18 years since No Child Left Behind became the Psychometricians Full Employment Act.  First, we have not done enough to educate the public about the misunderstandings of educational tests, and the misnomers associated with some of the criticisms.  Second, we have stood idly by as test scores, and their derivatives (e.g., student growth percentiles) were used for un-validated purposes such as evaluating teachers, and refocusing the curriculum.  I think we are making progress on better educating the public about testing misnomers (e.g., the NCME Position Statements; see https://www.ncme.org/publications/statements; the NCME ITEMS modules, see https://ncme.elevate.commpartners.com), but clearly more needs to be done.


However, with respect to protecting against test misuse, we are only just beginning to address these issues.  Over the past two decades, while statewide tests were resulting in serious negative consequences for schools, teachers, and students, the measurement field was debating whether evaluating testing consequences was our responsibility.  Thirty years ago Messick[2] forewarned us about the need to study what he called “the consequential basis of test use” (p. 20).  Sadly, the lack of real discussions about negative testing consequences has led to a distrust of statewide testing programs. It is sad because it is obvious to the general public that there are negative consequences with educational tests.  Two that are particularly conspicuous are (a) good teachers leaving the profession due to stress or micromanagement caused by statewide tests, and (b) overly simplistic improvement plans that focus on teaching to the test.  Both of these negative consequences hit traditionally marginalized students, such as high-poverty students and English learners, the hardest.  Thus, in my view, the measurement field, and hence NCME, needs to do more to work within the educational system to better capitalize on the utility of tests, while protecting against test misuse. The 2020 Annual Meeting in San Francisco will certainly be one forum to advance this discussion.


A Vision
 for the Future

In this article, I briefly discussed the NCME Board’s work on the vision of our organization, provided a brief description of the vision for the 2020 conference, and gave my personal opinions regarding NCME’s effectiveness and the views of educational testing by the public.  Although these views contain both exciting and discouraging snapshots, it is important to note that even the American Optometric Association does not equate 20/20 vision with “perfect” vision.  As they put it, “Having 20/20 vision does not necessarily mean you have perfect vision. 20/20 vision only indicates the sharpness or clarity of vision at a distance. Other important vision skills, including peripheral awareness or side vision, eye coordination, depth perception, focusing ability and color vision, contribute to your overall visual ability.”  This description is a useful metaphor for NCME.  For NCME to have 20/20 vision, we need to consider the utility and limitations of educational testing from all peripheries, angles and depths.  Varying perspectives is at the heart of scientific progress.  Thus, my vision for the future of NCME is that we expand our outreach into educational communities such as schools, credentialing associations, and international educational research agencies, to focus on improving test development and validation efforts to benefit all aspects of society.  Why have a more limited view when we have the largest and most talented group of measurement specialists in the world? 


Your President, Stephen G. Sireci


References

[1] https://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/eye-and-vision-problems/glossary-of-eye-and-vision-conditions/visual-acuity.

[2] Messick, S. (1989b).  Validity.  In R. Linn (Ed.), Educational measurement, (3rd ed., pp. 13-100).  Washington, D.C.:   American Council on Education.

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