Responses to Bob Herbert and testing

 

          On Bob Herbert's column on the Fordham report, Andy Rotherham writes:

                    I agree that the column was over the top but Koretz is a serious guy and the column didn’t really do the complexity and thoughtfulness of his views justice, but that’s on Herbert not  
                   Koretz.  But, that said, I think Herbert was just being provocative; he must realize that some of the ideas he implicitly championed in his column last week (that also cited an ed school prof, Tom
                    Kane, you  should note!) are predicated on some of the very testing he decries this  week.

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In further defense of Koretz, another friend writes:

          Maybe I gave him too much credit but I read the story that Herbert was calling for a real standard, rather than letting states pick and choose whichever standard gets them through the gate.
 

In any case, to his credit, in a 2002 interview Koretz said:

"The argument should be something different. We know that there is a need for more accountability in some public schools. We know that the public is not prepared to abandon a quest for more accountability, and it's hard to imagine that a good accountability system wouldn't somehow take into account what some kids actually learn. Accountability systems are going to stick around, and tests are clearly going to be a big part of them. The argument ought to be: how can we include tests in accountability systems in ways that minimize some of these undesirable effects and maximize what we gain? At this point that question, in my view, is unanswered.
 
"It's a very complex  question, and it's one that cannot be answered solely by improvement of the testing system. We do know as psychometricians a number of things that can be done to lessen the problem. They tend to be expensive and they tend to have other problems as well, which makes them politically unacceptable. But even if there were the political will to spend money to improve testing systems  as much as we can, that's not going to be enough.
 
"It's also important to refrain from basing serious decisions on a single measure. This axiom of  educational measurement is currently much more widely ignored than not.  There aren't any great examples out there of the use of multiple measures in  accountability systems. Nobody has designed a good multiple measure system  in part because the policymakers were not really interested in it. So there  wasn't much incentive or funding for researchers. There are some really difficult problems that lead me to think while that we need to improve testing programs, we are going to have to tinker around with accountability systems beyond that to make them work."
 

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/features/koretz03212002.html

                 So perhaps Herbert is wrong on two counts, not just the Fordham report but  also the thinking of his interview subject? Well, as you have said  
                    before, the Times does not always get it right.