"Public comment by Gerald M. Eads II, Ph.D.
Race to the Top Assessment Meeting
Gerald Eads currently conducts research for the Professional Standards Commission, Georgia’s teacher certification agency. He has served as head of testing for the Virginia Department of Education, research faculty for the State Data & Research Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and assistant for policy research to the director at the Georgia Office of Educational Accountability. His doctoral training was in experimental and educational psychology and measurement. The opinions offered herein are entirely those of the author and do not represent the position of any agency."
Gerald Eads currently conducts research for the Professional Standards Commission, Georgia’s teacher certification agency. He has served as head of testing for the Virginia Department of Education, research faculty for the State Data & Research Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and assistant for policy research to the director at the Georgia Office of Educational Accountability. His doctoral training was in experimental and educational psychology and measurement. The opinions offered herein are entirely those of the author and do not represent the position of any agency."
1. Validity
The RT3 assessment executive summary notes that “the framework would focus on the design and quality of assessment systems and not accountability policies” yet it is the accountability policies which drive validity – and validity is at the very core of the issue of quality. The testing system you are considering must be validated for each of your purposes: instructional improvement, measuring school, principal, and teacher effectiveness, and predicting college “readiness.” It would behoove us, for example, to require state consortia to demonstrate that the testing system differentiates among teachers on meaningful dimensions. Just because “scores go up” does not mean in and of itself that anything of value changes – higher graduation rates, increased college success, lower unemployment rates, employment persistence, etc. Unless we can demonstrate externally referenced value, a testing system is nothing more than the proverbial boat _ _ that is to say, a hole in the water into which we pour money. Developing an assessment system without considering policy intent and implication is little different from building the atom bomb and refusing to address the consequences. Your Framework begins with policy validity issues, not the least of which is “Individual student achievement as measured against standards that build toward college and career readiness by the time of high school completion” – we cannot know that the tests
The RT3 assessment executive summary notes that “the framework would focus on the design and quality of assessment systems and not accountability policies” yet it is the accountability policies which drive validity – and validity is at the very core of the issue of quality. The testing system you are considering must be validated for each of your purposes: instructional improvement, measuring school, principal, and teacher effectiveness, and predicting college “readiness.” It would behoove us, for example, to require state consortia to demonstrate that the testing system differentiates among teachers on meaningful dimensions. Just because “scores go up” does not mean in and of itself that anything of value changes – higher graduation rates, increased college success, lower unemployment rates, employment persistence, etc. Unless we can demonstrate externally referenced value, a testing system is nothing more than the proverbial boat _ _ that is to say, a hole in the water into which we pour money. Developing an assessment system without considering policy intent and implication is little different from building the atom bomb and refusing to address the consequences. Your Framework begins with policy validity issues, not the least of which is “Individual student achievement as measured against standards that build toward college and career readiness by the time of high school completion” – we cannot know that the tests