Why Gene Glass is No Longer a Measurement Specialist
One of my mentors – Dr. Gene Glass (formerly at ASU and now at Boulder) wrote a letter earlier this week on his blog, titled “Why I Am No Longer a Measurement Specialist.” This is a must read for all of you following the current policy trends not only surrounding teacher-level accountability, but also high-stakes testing in general.
Gene – one of the most well-established and well-known measurement specialists in and outside of the field of education, world renowned for developing “meta-analysis,” writes:
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 leading psychometrician at the University of Illinois. Psychometrics was flying high, and so was I.
Psychologists of the 1960s & 1970s were saying that just measuring talent wasn’t enough. Talents had to be matched with the demands of tasks to optimize performance. Measure a learning style, say, and match it to the way a child is taught. If Jimmy is a visual learner, then teach Jimmy in a visual way. Psychometrics promised to help build a better world. But twenty years later, the promises were still unfulfilled. Both talent and tasks were too complex to yield to this simple plan. Instead, psychometricians grew enthralled with mathematical niceties. Testing in schools became a ritual without any real purpose other than picking a few children for special attention.
Around 1980, I served for a time on the committee that made most of the important Why Gene Glass is No Longer a Measurement Specialist | VAMboozled!: