Fred Smith on David Abrams' resignation: No Mas!
Fred Smith is a former senior analyst for the NYC Board of Education and an expert on testing. Here he comments on the sudden resignation of David Abrams, who led the NY State Education Dept. testing office into one preposterous blunder after another over many years, the most serious of which was test score inflation -- but my favorite was the ridiculous 4th grade reading test of 2006 which featured Brownie the Cow. (You have to see this to believe it; here is the story and questions archived.) This article in the Daily News was probably the final straw: about a prematurely released state plan to lengthen 3rd grade standardized exams to four hours. Susan Crawford asks whether the SED might actually hire a trained psychometrician in Abrams’