President’s Message – March 2019
Dear colleagues: I’ll mention a couple of pieces of news before moving on to everyone’s main focus right now—the annual meeting!
Policy seminar: We held the second successful NCME policy seminar on February 13 in Washington DC. The seminar was cosponsored with the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University. (Special thanks to Dean Michael Feuer!) Carl Cohn, Professor Emeritus at Claremont Graduate University, gave an inspiring talk titled, How Measurement Influences Policy at Multiple Levels: A Practitioner’s Perspective. Our excellent discussant was NCME’s own Kyndra Middleton, Associate Professor at Howard University. If you missed the seminar, you can still view it on the NCME Website at the following link: Policy Seminar 2019
Misconduct statement: On a completely different note, the NCME Board has decided to take some steps to encourage the respectful treatment of all members. We will add to our Website a prominent statement that NCME celebrates equity, diversity, and inclusiveness. In addition, although we know of no instances of misconduct within our organization, we will add the following statement to our Handbook: “If continued membership of any person is believed to be contrary to the interests or purposes of NCME, the Board may terminate that person’s membership by a two-thirds vote.” This statement is consistent with those adopted by other professional organizations. We are hopeful that it will never be invoked.
Management company change: For the last several years, our management group has been Fernley and Fernley, located in Philadelphia. Beginning in July, our management group will be Talley Management Group (TMG), based in New Jersey. Many thanks to Fernley staff for all their work over the years and to the management task force: Steve Sireci, chair; Debbie Durrence; Suzanne Lane; Rich Patz; and Rosemary Reshetar.
ITEMS: Be sure to take a look at the ITEMS portal on the NCME site. New and exciting modules have again been posted!
Annual Meeting April 4-8, 2019 in Toronto: Communicating with the Public about Educational Measurement. Program Chairs Krista Mattern and Emily Shaw and Training and Professional Development Chair Jim Roberts have prepared an exciting program, including a number of great training sessions (described in this newsletter) and special conference sessions focusing on a variety of topics, including innovative ways of displaying test results, communicating about testing with various constituencies, communicating about international assessment results, and women in measurement. Finally, we’ll have a debate on the use of admissions tests for accountability purposes.
In particular, I’d like to again invite you to the special session I’ll be chairing:
Communicating Your Research to the Media
Sat, April 6, 10:25 to 11:55am, Fairmont Royal York Hotel, Mezzanine Level, Quebec.
This session will feature education reporters Emily Richmond, the public editor of the Education Writers Association, and Holly Yettick, the director of the Education Week Research Center. They will offer their advice on communicating research findings to the media from the perspective of those who do the day-to-day work of sifting through research and pitches. You will soon receive email instructions about how to send advance questions to the presenters. Hope you can come!
Finally, this is my last presidential message. It has been an honor to serve as your president. I hope to see you in Toronto!