Synergies for better learning: an international perspective on evaluation and assessment

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. As far as I can tell from what information is available about the temporary staffers on the Web, none had any background in educational assessment or evaluation. See the web page listing the background reports for their names and short bios: http: //www. oecd. org/edu/school/oecdreviewonevaluationandassessmentframeworksforimprovingschooloutcomespapersandstudies. htm2. Just some of the names of researchers who had published relevant research missing from any and all REAFISO reports include: Adams, J. O. Anderson, L. Anderson, Anastasi, Bangert-Drowns, Basol, Battiste, Beck, Bjork, Block, Bottoms, Boylan, Britton, Brooke, Brookhart, Cawelti, Chapman, Corcoran, Dawson Allensworth, Correa, Becker, 1990; Briggs, 2001; Briggs Camara, 1999, 2008; Cankoy Crocker, 2005; DerSimonian Ellis, Konoske, Wulfeck, Fraker, 1986/1987; Kulik, Bangert-Drowns, Messick Moore, 1991; Powers, 1993; Powers Robb Roediger Smyth, 1990; Snedecor, 1989; Stone Palmer, 2002; Tuckman, 1994; Tuckman Whitla, 1988. 4. At least some of this dilution, however, should be credited to REAFISO's citation generosity towards its non-OECD country-visit reviewers, almost half of them British, and three-quarters British, Canadian, or Dutch. 5. They are: Annex 4. A1 on student assessment frameworks in lower secondary education (pp. 239–268) ; Annex 4. A2 on the same for primary and upper secondary education (p. 269 and on-line) ; Annex 5. A on teacher appraisal frameworks (pp. 353–381) ; and Annex 7. A on school leader appraisal frameworks (pp. 569–581). 6. In a review-editorial, The Economist's editors rib doomsayers and hand-wringers, asserting that research is always improving conditions, despite the various impediments of human behaviour. If only that were true (Shumpeter, Citation2012). For a less sanguine view of progress, see Surowiecki (Citation2007). 7. Written in a 1676 letter to Robert Hooke according to Wikiquote, which attributes a similar phrase made earlier to Bernard of Chartres. http: //en. wikiquote. org/wiki/IsaacNewton8. Selective referencing and dismissive reviewing suffice to suppress most unwanted information available from the vast research proletariat. But, occasionally, a conflicting voice can be heard above the background noise, rising above the threshold where celebrity researchers debate – where it might even be heard and reported by journalists – and must be directly confronted. On such occasions, the preferred method of information suppression seems to be character assassination. It is virtually impossible for an ordinary scholar lacking a publicity platform to defend himself (or herself) against attacks from well-funded government research centres or think tanks supplied with their own information dissemination bureaus. 9. To be thorough, I would add the variant 'misdirection'. A good example of misdirection is all the attention paid to Finland in US media over the past few years. The US education establishment dislikes high-stakes testing and Finland administers little of it at the elementary-secondary level, but also scores well on international assessments (e. g. TIMSS, PISA). So long as the media focus on Finland, they cannot notice that the many other countries that score better than the USA on international assessments administer plenty of high-stakes tests. 10. See, for example, the review by Lilienfeld and Thames (Citation2009), of my chapter in Correcting Fallacies about Educational and Psychological Testing. 11. https: //www. change. org/petitions/the-community-of-mathematics-educators-join-in-defending-fundamental-values12. From my own experience, it seems a popular defence of US education professors to cry 'censorship' when one criticises their work and thereby avoid, through false outrage, any discussion, debate, or resolution to a controversy. 13. Some of the critique can be found in chapter 5 of Kill the Messenger (Phelps, Citation2003). 14. For an excellent general discussion of the issues around stifling debate, see Williams (Citation2011). 15. CRESST researcher (number of citations): Laura Hamilton (32) ; Brian Stecher (17) ; Stephen Klein (17) ; Daniel Koretz (15) ; Robert Linn (7). 16. Hout and Elliot (Citation2011). 17. See Clarke (Citation2013), Koretz (Citation2013), and Shepard (Citation2013). Long a junior partner in CRESST's censorial efforts, the even more radically constructivist and (anti-) testing policy group at Boston College has somehow maintained control of the educational testing function at the World Bank for decades, first with its affiliated researchers and graduates Thomas Kelleghan, then Vincent Greaney, and now Marguerite Clarke, all Irish citizens. Leadership succession in this office of the World Bank is not meritocratic; it is filial.