NCME Presidential Address 2020: Valuing Educational Measurement

Abstract

The community of educational measurement researchers and practitioners has made many positive contributions to education, but has also become complacent and lost the public trust. In this article, reasons for the lack of public trust in educational testing are described, and core values for educational measurement are proposed. Reasons for distrust of educational measurement include hypocritical practices that conflict with our professional standards, a biased and selected presentation of the history of testing, and inattention to social problems associated with educational measurement. The five core values proposed to help educational measurement serve education are: (a) everyone is capable of learning; (b) there are no differences in the capacity to learn across groups defined by race, ethnicity, or sex; (c) all educational tests are fallible to some degree; (d) educational tests can provide valuable information to improve student learning and certify competence; and (e) all uses of educational test scores must be sufficiently justified by validity evidence. The importance of these core values for improving the science and practice of educational measurement to benefit society is discussed.

Commentary: Social Responsibility in College Admissions Requires a Reimagining of Standardized Testing

“…In their focus article, Koljatic et al (2021) briefly review the recent controversy surrounding standardized testing, with reference to the UC and national exams in Chile, and then they outline how the testing industry must accept more social responsibility with respect to the impact of commercial tests. I agree with the general message of the focus article and of other recent extensions of consequential validity (e.g., Sireci, 2021). The validity of the testing industry itself, and the measurement community more broadly, with respect to achieving our own intended purposes, requires that we be more proactive in test design and implementation in order to contribute to the reduction of educational inequities.…”

College Admission Tests and Social Responsibility

“…However, the testing industry has become complacent and entrenched in its own culture without attending to legitimate criticism from relevant stakeholders. By doing so, it has failed to address pressing and pervasive problems in assessments (Sireci, 2020). This omission is particularly serious in the case of equity issues of high‐stakes tests.…”

“…(2014) Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing operate as a self‐regulatory mechanism for testing professionals and are often invoked in courts to substantiate cases related to testing practices (Buckendahl & Hunt, 2005; Sireci & Parker, 2006). However, the Standards represent minimum requirements to be met, have no formal enforcement mechanism, and often psychometricians simply ignore them (Sireci, 2020).…”

“…This decision by the University of California system to eliminate ACT and SAT score requirements for admission or for scholarship consideration was made even though a blue‐ribbon University Committee advised against abandoning use of these test scores in the admissions process (Systemwide Academic Senate, University of California, 2020). In Chile, riots in 2020 against the national university admission test (PSU) were successful in disrupting the annual selection process (Nugent, 2020; Sireci, 2020). The angry mob that stormed the building in which test booklets were stored, stole them, and burned them in the streets, did not come out of the blue.…”

Surveying the Measurement Profession to Assist Recruiting in the United States

“…Increasing diversity of the profession at scale requires a transformation of the profession itself. Public dissatisfaction with testing, especially with relation to race and ethnicity (e.g., Sireci, 2021) garners significant media attention. Although not studied, this likely impacts students’ desire to join the field.…”