Since fall 2001, the Spencer Foundation has sponsored an interdisciplinary initiative focused on expanding the foundations of educational assessment. The project supports a series of cross-disciplinary conversations concerning the theories and methods through which assessment is conceptualized, practiced, and evaluated. Such discussions are intended to surface tacit assumptions and to identify important, researchable questions that extend the purview of the field of educational testing. Those who initially conceptualized the project described two important goals: First, we seek to situate standardized testing in its sociocultural contexts. This includes examining the historical circumstances in which standardized testing has developed, the social practices of the professional communities involved in testing, and the social effects of using tests in schools. Second, we seek to develop and study alternative means of assessment-alternative strategies for gathering, warranting, and using trustworthy evidence about individuals and institutions-strategies that might complement and/or challenge practices based in psychometrics.
The "Idea of Testing" project brings together a small panel of scholars who base their work in various disciplines, including but extending well beyond psychology and psychometrics. Pamela Moss (University of Michigan), Diana Pullin (Boston College), James Paul Gee (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Edward H. Haertel (Stanford University), and Lauren Jones Young (Spencer Foundation) are the project organizers. Additional participants include King Beach (Michigan State University), James Greeno (Stanford University), Carol Lee (Northwestern University), Hugh Mehan (University of California, San Diego), Robert Mislevy (University of Maryland, College Park), and Fritz Mosher (consultant to the Spencer Foundation), with assistance provided by Doris Fischer (Spencer Foundation) and Andrew Ho (Stanford University). From the initial conversations, the concept of "opportunity to learn" emerged as both an intersection of participants' interests and a means to focus work about the preconditions of valid assessment, better methods of assessment, and implications of assessment for equity and social justice. This set of activities will conclude in spring 2005 with the publication of essays that speak to the goals of the project.