President’s Message – December 2018

President's Message

Dear colleagues: 

Two big NCME events are coming up soon—the February Policy Seminar and of course, the Annual Meeting!  I’m including information on both of these, followed by some general news items. 

Registration is now open for the NCME 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 processed all of this year’s submissions.  Of the roughly 700 proposals that were submitted, 375 individual proposals, 50 symposium proposals, and 23 training session proposals have been accepted.  A big thank you to our three chairs and their committees, to Kevin Krost, the Grad Student Issues Committee Chair, who organized two special electronic board sessions, to everyone who submitted or reviewed proposals, and to Fernley staff for making this happen!   

  • I’ll be chairing a special session that 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 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. This will be an interactive session, in which the reporters will provide hands-on exercises for attendees to help them understand how a piece of research makes its way from a press release into a published story. Hope you can come! 
  • Other exciting special sessions will focus 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.  
  • The days of going to Canada without a passport are long gone!  Make sure your passport and visa (if applicable) are up to date.  We have summarized information on visa requirements.   Also, if you need a letter of invitation in order to attend the conference, you can request one by emailing ncme@fernley.com. 
  • The NCME headquarters hotel is the Fairmount Royal York. 
  • NCME has selected CoreApps to provide the conference app this year.  Those who pretested apps from three companies thought this one was by far the best. 
  • The paper program is back, by popular demand and will be available to those who request it. 

NCME Policy Seminar, February 13, 12:00-2:00 PM, George Washington University, Washington DC: 

We are excited to announce our second policy seminar.  Carl Cohn, Professor Emeritus at Claremont Graduate University, will be our speaker.  His talk is titled, How Measurement Influences Policy at Multiple Levels: A Practitioner’s Perspective.  Our discussant will be Kyndra Middleton, Associate Professor at Howard University.  Registration is free, but limited due to room size.  The presentations will be livestreamed.  See the NCME Website for details. 

Other News: 

New journal:  NCME and Beijing Normal University (BNU) announced the establishment of the Chinese/English Journal of Educational Measurement and Evaluation (CEJEME；教育测量与评估双语季刊). This journal, the brainchild of NCME Past President Randy Bennett, will be co-edited by Professors Li Cai (UCLA) and Tao Xin (BNU). The journal will be published electronically, beginning in 2020, with all articles presented in both English and Chinese 

New JEM Editor:  We’re pleased to announce that we have selected a new editor for JEM, Sandip Sinharay.  Congratulations, Sandip!  Sandip will begin considering new manuscripts in January 2019.  Current editors George Engelhard and Jonathan Templin will continue to consider any manuscripts already in the pipeline. 

2019 Awards:  The awards chairs and committees have completed the hard work of selecting the 2019 award-winners.  See the article in this newsletter!  Congratulations to all! 

Second Annual NCME Conference on Classroom Assessment:  Many NCME members, as well as potential future members attended this very successful conference in Lawrence, Kansas, October 8-10.  Thanks again to Neal Kingston for hosting the conference and to the Classroom Assessment Task Force, headed by Kristen Huff and Dale Whittington, for their work in planning it.  The 2019 conference will be held on September 18-19 at the University of Colorado campus in Boulder.  Proposal submissions will be accepted beginning January 3, 2019.  See the article in this newsletter for more information. 

Position statement on K-12 Classroom Assessment:  NCME recently released this position statement, which spells out the importance of the science and practice of classroom assessment.  

ITEMS: Be sure to take a look at the ITEMS Portal.  New and interesting modules have been posted.  Also, be on the lookout for further modules that will focus on classroom assessment. 

Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and relaxing holiday season!