IEREA Conference Scheduled for November 30th in Iowa City

While the presidential election may seem years away, it is right around the corner here in Iowa as evidenced by the many political pundits vying for sound bytes. An outsider may well consider this a time of confusion and turmoil prior to a more focused direction once the party candidates are chosen. This is also true on the education front. The reauthorization of NCLB is yet to be determined. Recent Federal guidelines for the assessment of students with special needs (the "two-percent population") have raised more questions than have provided answers. College-readiness, school-to-work transition and high-school reform are still topics of the day. As such, your conference planning committee worked hard to come up with a conference this year that would provide you with information that would be helpful in getting your jobs done—namely educating Iowa’s youth—in a time of transition with much unknown about the future.

Our conference theme this year is “Success for All: Access, Connections and Transitions” and focuses on the strong commitment Iowa educators have to ensuring that all students, regardless of background and circumstances, have an opportunity for success whatever the endeavor: finding a job, going to college, starting a business or pursing a trade.

We are very fortunate this year to have Dr. Judy Jeffrey, Director of the Iowa Department of Education to be our keynote speaker. Dr. Jeffrey will discuss how Iowa is prepared to meet the challenge of providing success for all students as they transition across the developmental curriculum. Dr. Jeffrey will speak about course taking patterns, particularly as they apply to students at risk. She will speak specifically about closing the equity gap for such students and will highlight the community college as a key component of the transitional plan.

Other presentations will include “Project Lead the Way.” This project provides technical and engineering career pathways and outlines coursework and critical experiences that are needed to help students fully explore and prepare for the world of work. Additionally, Project Lead the Way helps provide a consistent curriculum process that is recognized across the country.

Plan ahead and register early! Registration information can be found at the IEREA website.

Why is Linking College Readiness to High School Skills so Difficult?

In a previous newsletter to NCME, Dr. Michael Kirst argued that our post-secondary and secondary education systems are disconnected. He argued, that:

"A big issue is the proliferation of tests in grades 9 through 11 caused by the combination of post-secondary admissions assessments, and the new statewide tests created by the K–12 standards movement."

Dr. Kirst also suggested that there are very few synergies between the college and high school space:

"Education standards and tests are created in different K–12 and post-secondary orbits that only intersect for students in Advanced Placement courses."

Now, in all fairness to Dr. Kirst, these quotes are taken out of context; and I suggest my readers review his thesis in its entirety. When you are finished, I hope you check out my reaction:

"The 'Intrinsic Rational Validity' of an Integrated Education System"

As well as my colleagues' reaction:

"Assessing College Readiness: A Continuation of Kirst"

by Scott Marion and Brian Gong of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment. Both of these commentaries can be found in the June 2007 NCME Newsletter.

My summary conclusions were oversimplified like usual. Namely, it should not be that hard to align enabling skills required in elementary school with what will eventually be needed in high school, or that high school should teach the enabling skills that will ultimately be needed in college. The premise of the entire argument, however, is somewhat like the one about "the chicken and the egg." Dr. Kirst claims that post-secondary needs to remediate college students because they are unprepared. State testing directors claim they measure the curriculum that is required by their state standards. We all know, or should, that often the state content standards do not prepare students for success in college. (Where are the Algebra II standards?) So, instead of pitying the very successful colleges who earn lots-o-dollars remediating students, or lamenting the terrible job high schools do preparing students for college, maybe we should step back and ask what the purpose of high school is, because I am not at all sure it is to make students college ready.

IEREA Poster Submissions Deadline Soon Approaching

A reminder to let everyone know that our annual conference for the Iowa Educational Research and Evaluation Association (IEREA) is fast approaching and will be upon us before we know it. One of the popular features of the conference is our poster presentation and our paper contest. We need lots of poster and paper submissions to make this part of our conference a success. This conference is also a great opportunity for people to get involved in IEREA, support Iowa, and get feedback on timely topics in education.

Please mark your calendars and see conference information below, including the call for proposals.

Theme: Success For All: Access, Connections, and Transitions
Date: Friday, November 30, 2007
Location: Sheraton Hotel, Iowa City

Iowa Educational Research and Evaluation Association: 2007 Call for Proposals

Iowa educators are invited to submit proposals to present their research at IEREA's annual conference in Iowa City, IA. Proposals from faculty members, graduate students, and education professionals conducting research related to education, specifically this year's theme, are invited to submit proposals. Additionally, individuals involved in school-based or university-school collaborative action research studies, innovative program evaluations, and work related to technical issues of assessment are also encouraged to submit proposals. IEREA utilizes a poster presentation format, designed to foster dialogue among presenters and conference attendees. To maximize interaction during the poster sessions, posters will be displayed in an open space with sufficient room to congregate, browse, and discuss.

Refreshments will also be provided during poster sessions.
Instructions for displaying research in a poster format will be sent to presenters of all accepted posters. At least one presenter per poster must register to attend the IEREA Conference, and all poster presenters qualify for reduced conference registration fees. Details are provided upon acceptance of the proposal.

The deadline to submit poster proposals is 5:00 pm, Friday, September 14, 2007. Submissions must include two copies of the proposal. One copy of the proposal should contain author name(s), institutional affiliation(s), and complete contact information for the coordinating presenter all on a separate cover sheet. The second copy of the proposal should contain no author names, titles, or contact information in order to facilitate blind review of all proposals. The poster proposal itself should be no more than three (3) double-spaced pages (excluding
references) with reasonable margins and minimum 11-point type. Each proposal must include the following:

Title of Poster
Abstract (maximum 50 words)
Goals/Objectives
Design and Methods
Results
Significance/Impact
References

E-mail submissions are strongly encouraged (please type IEREA Proposal in the email Subject line), and receipt of proposals will be acknowledged via return e-mail. Send all poster proposals to

Jan Walker
jan.walker@drake.edu

or

IEREA Conference Planning Committee
ATTN: Dr. Jan Walker
3206 University Av
Des Moines, IA 50311
(515) 271-3719

Griddable Items Get No Respect...No Respect at All!

While most people argue that you have to earn the respect you are given, this is not always the case. Take for example the hard working, informative, creative and open-ended test item type commonly known as the "griddable item." This item type gets no respect. In fact, my guess is you don't even know what I mean when I refer to a gribbable item. Let me elaborate.

When criterion-referenced and mastery testing was all the rage back in the late 60's and early 70's, most bashers of multiple-choice or supply-only assessment items came crawling out of the woodwork. Now remember, this was prior to high-stakes assessment so most tests were loved by all! In response to this, assessment developers looked to "enhance" objective measures by making them more "authentic." One way to do this and still keep the advantages of machine scoring was to ask an open-ended item (say a multiple-step mathematics problem) and to place a grid on the response document similar to how you might grid your name or date of birth. Once the student solved the math problem and presumably reached one correct answer in one format, he or she could grid the answer on the document. What a great idea! Boy, did people hate it and, as far as I can tell, people still hate it today.

Pearson has conducted research in all manners of investigations regarding the gribbable item (see Pearson Research Bulletin #3), and very little of which has generated much interest. For example, when Pearson was advising the Florida Department of Education in this regard, the griddable item was perceive by the program's critics as an "ineffective" attempt to "legitimize" a large-scale objective assessment as measuring "authentic" and meaningful content (i.e., including performance tasks) when it did not. This really seemed to be a policy and/or political battle which positioned the proponents of performance tasks, who wanted rich embedded assessments, against the policy makers, who wanted economical and psychometrically defensible measures. It is too bad gribbable research did not carry the day.

Another issue with griddables seems to be their content classification. Multiple step mathematics problems, for example, are likely to match more than one cell of a content classification. Furthermore, depending on how they are classified, substeps are not likely to reach a Depth of Knowledge (DOK) of 3 even if the total item does. Finally, some concerns have been raised from psychometricians using IRT to calibrate gribbable items. Under IRT the argument goes, unless you are using the Rasch Model, a 3PL model will be required for traditional multiple-choice type items, but there will be no guessing associated with a griddable item. Hence, a 2PL model will be required to calibrate these items with no pseudo-guessing parameter. (We will save the argument of forcing the c-parameter to zero and not going to a mixed model for another blog.) Add to this the inevitable sprinkling of two and three category open-response items and the mixed model becomes a burden that might not be justified given the relatively few gridded items. Other attributes of the griddable item are delineated in the Pearson Research Bulletin #3.

The point of this blog (clearly a failure given that I feel the necessity to remind you of the point I was making) is to get assessment specialists, psychometricians, policy makers and teachers to objectively evaluate the merits of this item type. Another goal is to have my readers consider how the use of griddable items might help assessment become more of a driving force for good instruction. These are the goals of the blog despite the fact that gribbable items get no respect.

Summertime and the Power of Peppermint

It's lazy summertime here in Iowa City. No wait—it's more like, "Here I am, being lazy during the summer, in Iowa City." Regardless, it seems to be time for another blog post but most of my topics are cynical, political, or otherwise educationally augmentative, and these are just not the moods I want to portray for the summer. Hence, I pulled out a dated Washington Post article on testing entitled: The Power of Peppermint is Getting Put to the Test.

This article is about a principal in Silver Spring, Maryland, (gas prices have struck the Post just has they have the rest of us) who purchased peppermint candies for her students such that, "Along with smart teaching, careful preparation, a good night's sleep, and a full stomach, peppermint candies are said to improve test performance." Who would have thought? My guess is that if such information gets out, we are likely to have a shortage of peppermint just like we often have to order extra large print booklets because someone started a rumor that students did better on a test when it was presented in large print.

Principal Boucher went on to say:

"...millions of sites claimed that peppermint were the perfect midpoint snack for things like testing."

Now, before you start making fun of me for making fun of Principal Boucher, note that the Post cites evidence that this might not be as far fetched as it may sound. According to the Post article, research from the University of Cincinnati in the 1990's found that a whiff of peppermint helped test subjects concentrate and do better on tests! The psychology professor that helped conduct the research claims that there is more than a little bit of truth in the "peppermint theory." Dr. Joel Warm claims:

"Not only do you get an improvement (in focus) with peppermint, you get a change in response that affects alertness in target direction."

I am not sure what Principal Boucher found out after her test results came back. My guess is that if the scores were up, she will make claims about her wonderful teachers and their great school, but if the scores were down, it will be because the peppermint did not work. I might call her to followup, but as a colleague pointed out, perhaps a nationally funded, double-blind research study would be better!

Have a happy, safe, and productive summer!