Position Papers

Education Reform: Making this the ‘Best of Times' (109KB, PDF)
by Malbert Smith, III, Ph.D., President, MetaMetrics, October 2009

When I read and hear about all of the activities associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and Race to the Top, my thoughts go back to my ninth grade reading assignment of Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities:" It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness... we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way. With many of the issues before us today-including health care, immigration and education-there are those who believe our country is poised to enter a new and enlightened period. On the other hand, there are those who think our nation is on the edge of the precipice toward foolishness and despair.

The Hippocratic Oath and Grade Equivalents (79KB, PDF)
by Malbert Smith, III, Ph.D., President, MetaMetrics, July 2009

Medical researchers and practitioners often cite Hippocrates' famous adage, "Above all, do no harm." Implicit in this statement is that all actions are not helpful and, in fact, can be harmful. While we typically think of the Hippocratic Oath in terms of medical treatments, the principle also applies to the assessment of students' reading and mathematics abilities. For years, the educational measurement community has lamented the practice of reporting students' abilities as grade equivalents. And yet, some assessments continue to measure performance using these inaccurate and often misleading metrics.

The misconceptions of grade equivalents have been well documented by research organizations, most noting that the metrics create more confusion than clarity (AERA/APA/NCME, 1985; Airasian, 1994; Miller, Linn and Gronlund, 2009; Stiggins, 2009). In 1981, for example, the International Reading Association (IRA) crafted a resolution on the misuse of grade equivalents. In it, the organization "strongly advocates that those who administer standardized reading tests abandon the practice of using grade equivalents to report performance of either individuals or groups of test takers" (1981). In spite of the advice, counsel and warnings from IRA, as well as other leading organizations...

Why P-16/P-20 Educational Systems? (102KB, PDF)
by Malbert Smith, III, Ph.D., President, MetaMetrics, October 2008

In response to the challenges of preparing students to compete in a global marketplace, policy makers have started to conceptualize education more broadly than kindergarten through high school. As such, a "21st century" view that includes preschool through postsecondary education (P-16 or P-20), increasingly is becoming the norm...

The Need for Differentiating Mathematics Instruction (103KB, PDF)
by Malbert Smith, III, Ph.D., President, MetaMetrics, January 2009

Of all the challenges facing educators today, perhaps, the most difficult is meeting the needs of individual learners. Within any given classroom, there will be a heterogeneous mix of ability levels- from students who perform above grade level to those who struggle to meet grade-level expectations. Yet, while differentiating reading instruction has become the norm in most classrooms, when it comes to teaching mathematics, targeting learning to the needs of individual students is much less common. In order to truly prepare students for success in and out of the classroom, teachers must differentiate the mathematics curriculum to meet the needs of all learners-by remediating or accelerating instruction, when necessary, and providing them with opportunities to learn and grow.

The Reading-Writing Connection (90KB, PDF)
by Malbert Smith, III, Ph.D., President, MetaMetrics, March 2009

Reading Next (2004) and Writing Next (2007) have documented the importance of the reading-writing connection. Both reports affirm that students' reading and writing abilities are complimentary and growth in one skill inevitably leads to growth in the other (i.e., students become better readers by strengthening their writing skills and vice-versa). This point is further emphasized by author Francine Prose, who noted in her book, "Reading Like a Writer" (2006), that long before there were creative-writing workshops and degrees, aspiring writers learned to write by reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries. "What writers know is that, ultimately, we learn to write by practice, hard work, by repeated trial and error, success and failure, and from the books we admire," she wrote1. Furthermore, MetaMetrics, Inc.'s research indicates that the correlation coefficient between reading and writing is...