Pearson Tests v. UT Austin’s Associate Professor Stroup
Last week Jason Stanford of the Texas Observer wrote an article, titled “Mute the Messenger,” about University of Texas – Austin’s Associate Professor Walter Stroup, who publicly and quite visibly claimed that Texas’ standardized tests as supported by Pearson were flawed, as per their purposes to measure teachers’ instructional effects. The article is also about how “the testing company [has since] struck back,” purportedly in a very serious way. This article (linked again here) is well worth a full read for many reasons I will leave you all to infer. This article was also covered recently on Diane Ravitch’s blog here, although readers should also see Pearson’s Senior Vice President’s prior response to, and critique of Stroup’s assertions and claims (from August 2, 2014) here.
The main issue? Whether Pearson’s tests are “instructionally sensitive.” That is, whether (as per testing and measurement expert – Professor Emeritus W. James Popham) a test is able to differentiate between well taught and poorly taught students, versus able to differentiate between high and low achievers regardless of how students were taught (i.e., as per that which happens outside of school that students bring with them to the schoolhouse door).
Testing developers like Pearson seem to focus on the prior, that their tests are indeed sensitive to instruction. While testing/measurement academics and especially practitioners seem to focus on the latter, that tests are sensitive to instruction, but such tests are not nearly as “instructionally sensitive” as testing companies might claim. Rather, tests are (as per testing and measurement expert – Regents Professor David Berliner) sensitive to instruction but more importantly sensitive to everything else students bring with them to school from their homes, parents, siblings, and families, all of which are situated in their neighborhoods and communities and related to their social Pearson Tests v. UT Austin’s Associate Professor Stroup |: