Renowned researcher: ‘Why I am no longer comfortable’ in the field of educational measurement
Gene V. Glass is a renowned statistician and researcher who has worked for decades in educational psychology and the social sciences. He created the term “meta-analysis” — a statistical process for combining the findings from individual studies in a search for patterns and other data — and described its use in a 1976 speech when he was president of the American Educational Research Association. He has won numerous awards during his career. He is now a Regents’ Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University, a senior researcher at the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, and an elected member of the National Academy of Education.
Considering that Glass has spent a career in psychometrics, it becomes news when he decides that he is “no longer comfortable being associated with the discipline of educational measurement.” In this post, which appeared on his blog, Education in Two Worlds, he explains why he has reached this point, a decision that explains the state of “accountability” in public education today. I am republishing it with permission.
By Gene Glass
I was introduced to psychometrics in 1959. I thought it was really neat. By 1960, I was programming a computer on a psychometrics research project funded by the Office of Naval Research. In 1962, I entered graduate school to study educational measurement under the top scholars in the field.My mentors – both those I spoke with daily and those whose works I read – had served in WWII. Many did research on human factors — measuring aptitudes and talents and matching them to jobs. Assessments showed who were the best candidates to be pilots or navigators or marksmen. We were told that psychometrics had won the war; and of course, we believed it.
The next wars that psychometrics promised it could win were the wars on poverty and ignorance. The man who led the Army Air Corps effort in psychometrics started a private research center. (It exists today, and is a beneficiary of the millions of dollars spent on Common Core testing.) My dissertation won the 1966 prize in Psychometrics awarded by that man’s organization. And I was hired to fill the slot recently vacated by the world’s Renowned researcher: ‘Why I am no longer comfortable’ in the field of educational measurement - The Washington Post: