{"id":633,"date":"2006-07-16T08:42:38","date_gmt":"2006-07-16T12:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=633"},"modified":"2006-07-16T08:42:38","modified_gmt":"2006-07-16T12:42:38","slug":"the-politics-of-composite-scales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=633","title":{"rendered":"The politics of composite scales"},"content":{"rendered":"

The logjam is gone now, at least for chapter 2, thanks to a discussion with a classroom teacher (my wife). Talking the ideas over last night made me realize I had been dancing around the central dilemma of relying on tests: The same qualities that satisfy technical requirements for psychometrics distance us from knowing concretely what children do. As someone with statistical training, I know all the advantages of test construction that leads to a composite scale that ranks individuals in a consistent fashion. (Here, it doesn’t matter particularly whether we are ranking individuals against each other or against a particular standard.)
\nYet such a composite scale cannot be the basis for a transparent accountability system. As far as I am aware, no test currently used by any state—nor NAEP—can tell us how many 9-year-olds know their multiplication tables. We can quibble all we want about whether such a statistic captures what we want of children’s knowledge of math—thus, the advantage of a composite scale—yet turning achievement into a composite scale creates a distance between what children do and what we know about their skills. Imagine for a second if we did have such knowledge: we’d probably debate whether knowing multiplication tables is a reasonable goal for 9-year-olds, where we should want automaticity in arithmetic, whether multiplication tables say anything about math as a more complex subject in general, etc. That debate would be raucous, splintered, and absolutely appropriate for a democracy. That we don’t have such a debate about expectations impoverishes us and our schools.
\nFocusing on different aspects of testing—the sociology of knowledge (e.g., Noel Wilson’s critique of psychometrics<\/a>), how test construction provides an opening for test-prep, the political legacy of IQ tests, etc.—is important, and I will address several in the chapter, but I needed someone to push me on the central issues. Thanks, Elizabeth!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The logjam is gone now, at least for chapter 2, thanks to a discussion with a classroom teacher (my wife). Talking the ideas over last night made me realize I had been dancing around the central dilemma of relying on tests: The same qualities that satisfy technical requirements for psychometrics distance us from knowing concretely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountability-frankenstein"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-ad","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}