One of the more apt headlines I've seen in a while: "Testing industry overwhelmed under NCLB."
The standardized testing industry is "buckling under the weight" of President Bush's education reform plan, with the law's rapidly expanding testing mandates threatening to undermine its high ideals, says a new report out Tuesday from Education Sector, an independent Washington think tank. Only about $20 of the average $8,000-per-pupil spent on education nationally goes to develop tests under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the report finds. That's a small proportion, given the tests' importance, says Thomas Toch, the report's author. Enacted in 2002, NCLB seeks to narrow the gap in basic skills between middle-class and poor students. But the modest spending on testing could pull the rug out, with many states now forced to buy or create hastily developed, low-quality tests that measure only rudimentary skills, Toch says.
Why hastily-developed and low-quality? Because the number of psychometricians available for jobs hasn't even come close to keeping up with the number of jobs, and the demand for testing, out there. They cite a statistic in the article: "52% [of 23 state testing offices] reported that they had had difficulty recruiting and retaining qualified staff for testing-related jobs."
My immediate response was, "Only 52%?" For state testing jobs? Offhand, I don't know of any organization, be it penny-pinching state testing group or high-paying,high-profile testing company, that doesn't have difficulties finding staff and staying staffed.
There is, of course, a plea for more money here, and money can certainly buy better tests, but all the money in the world can't improve the testing scene if there aren't enough psychometricians to go around.
Two years ago, pundits were claiming that we psychos were the equivalent of Arabic-speaking US soldiers - desperately needed, and in short supply. Time, March 2001: "...there is a severe shortage of psychometricians — specialists trained in educational measurement and test design." Civil Rights Project, 2004: "Indeed, nationwide there is a shortage of specialized personnel, especially psychometricians who can devise tests, monitor their validity, and develop the infrastructure needed to support extensive testing (Henriques, 2003; Jorgensen, 2002)."
My grapevine/anecdotal knowledge suggests that the shortage still exists. The National Center for Educational Statistics keeps track of such things. I noted before that, in the year 2000, there were only 13 PhDs awarded in quantitative psychology - out of 44808 total PhDs awarded in the US. How do things look now after a few years of NCLB?
Total PhDs 2002-2003: 46024.
Psychology PhDs: 4831
Quantitative Psychology PhDs: 6.
Oh, well, there's also the three with PhDs in Psychometrics, and this is just only 85% or so of the full sample, and the 2004 NORC Survey of Earned Doctorates shows that out of 4336 Education PhDs with job commitments, a maximum of 7.9% have job classifications that are likely to fall within the testing industry, but...still. The fact remains that I could easily invite all the psychometrics/quantitative psychology PhDs from 2004 over to my house for dinner (or up to my hotel room to raid the minibar during a conference, which I think has happened before).
The desperate shortage of psychometricians appears to be the one point on which NCLB supporters and detractors all agree, yet the situation doesn't appear to be getting any better.
Posted by kswygert at January 31, 2006 05:36 PM