The worm turns...and they said WHAT?

a panelist asserting that we're going good things in grades K-3 in assessment was greeted with loud (not entirely friendly) guffaws.

We're doing a sort of round-robin of the speakers now, with a lot of talk about metrics and other psychometric buzz words, and it's impossible to see who is saying what. Oh, and sometimes they're talking over each other. Sorry for the lapse here. Large portions of the audience have sort of zoned.

Someone says he wants to be able to tell "if it's the first grade or the second grade teacher that screwed that up" (in talking about a kid not reading at grade level by 2nd)

AH, a question on the role of the district (I'm sorry; I am not calling them LEA's)...could a group of LEA's form a consortium? someone asks. No, they are part of the state. However, the LEA's can opt in or out in developing the test "though once it's the state test, of course, all LEA's will have to take the test" replies Weiss.

Question on teachers developing assessments (which someone now calls "performance tasks"): "teachers have a very strong role" says Nellhaus (weird from the MCAS guy). Teachers, he says, "know just how to do that." Somebody is now talking about teachers not being able to do it "without really good expert guidance" but they can pilot them...(flabbergasting) "tremendous form in assessment building" ..."having teachers score is good, but getting feedback on how well the score is going" "tremendous value in training teachers" in how to develop test questions, oh, and you save money by not having to pay for question writers!

"We know that teachers mark papers differently if the student is known, versus if the student is not known" Bringing in marking that is absolutely blind...this from the Canadian guy.