Editorial

Just prior to putting the final touches on this issue of Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, I learned that Benjamin Bloom had passed away. Most EM:IP readers know Ben from the Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistical Analysis (MESA) program at the Uni- versity of Chicago. Our past president, Ed Haertel, is a graduate of the program. Three of the EM:IP board members, dozens of other measurement professionals, and I are graduates of the program. If you work in schools, you know that teachers all call the taxonomy Bloom’s taxonomy, and, if you work internationally, you run into mastery learning theory at every turn. More recently, his work on the development of talent has had considerable influence on gifted education. All MESA students have a Ben Bloom story-many have more than one. The theme of most of these stories is Ben’s dis- satisfaction with work which didn’t aim high enough, which wasn’t as good as he believed we could do, and which was expressed to us, when students-well, di- rectly. At the same time, each of us can remember a kindness, an encouragement, or a bit of wisdom that helped us along the way. What I learned from my inter- actions with Mr. Bloom was simple: Our moral respon- sibility as educators is to try to improve the lives of children. If we are not doing that, we are not doing our job. We mourn the passing of a great educator and send our condolences to his wife, Sophie.

This issue of EM:IP features, first, Ed Haertel’s pres- idential address at last year’s Annual Meeting. In his thoughtful and well-received presentation, Ed unpacks the arguments related to establishing the validity of

high-stakes testing programs. He goes on to propose a set of studies that might be conducted concerning pro- grams that address questions we don’t consider often. This article typifies what many of us have come to ex- pect from Ed: uncommon sense.

The second article in the issue provokes us to think again about some of the assumptions we commonly make in comparing the test scores among groups of people. Howard Wainer walks us through the logic of test equating and group comparisons, and we end up in some places we may find less than comfortable.

In the third article in this issue, Greg Camilli and Bill Firestone look at the concept of educational indicators. They point out some of the difficulties encountered in using indicators: Develop a taxonomy for classifying in- dicators-in particular, examining the idea of the nor- mative use of indicators-and suggest research that might advance the utility of using indicators.

The issue concludes with the next article from our new International Department. First, we have a summary of the highlights of the first 25 years of the International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA), pre- sented by Frances Ottobre, the Executive Secretary of IAEA (who is retiring after 25 years of service to the or- ganization). Then, we learn about new developments in the National Examination System in Botswana from Bagele Chilisa, of the University of Botswana. I hope you enjoy the issue.

Jeffrey Smith Editor

The NCME Recruitment of Educational Specialists Committee

is in the process of updating its Lists of Assistantships and Internships and Other Awards for mea- surement students. Once the Lists have been updated, we intend to disseminate them broadly, so that prospective and current measurement students will have access to these valuable resources.

We invite people to inform us of items that should be added to the Lists. We would also like to ensure that all the current items on the List are completely accurate (e.g., contact name and phone number). The current Lists can be viewed under Opportunities on the NCME website at: http:// ncme.org.

Please send new items and corrections to Cynthia Parshall, at the Institute for Instructional Re- search & Practice, USF, HMS 401, Tampa, FL 33620 by e-mail: parshall@seaweed.coedu.usf.edu; phone: 813-974-1256; or fax: 813-974-5132.

4 Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice