Keeping Score

Keeping Score on Credit Scores

Keeping Score for All

U.S. public schools are responsible for educating large numbers of English language learners and students with disabilities. This book considers policies for including students with disabilities and English language learners in assessment programs. It also examines the research findings on testing accommodations and their effect on test performance. Keeping Score for All discusses the comparability of states' policies with each other and with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) policies and explores the impact of these differences on the interpretations of NAEP results. The book presents a critical review of the research literature and makes suggestions for future research to evaluate the validity of test scores obtained under accommodated conditions. The book concludes by proposing a new framework for conceptualizing accommodations. This framework would be useful both for policymakers, test designers, and practitioners in determining appropriate accommodations for specific assessments and for researchers in planning validity studies.

God Is Keeping Score

How familiar are you with the concept of keeping score? Seems like a silly question since most are very aware of scores that are kept, especially when they involve us. Would you also say that it's accurate to indicate that we are a people who appreciate fairness, exercised toward ourselves and others? It should go without saying that fairness is very important to all of us. There are many areas in this physical life where keeping score to ensure fairness would be abundantly evident. For example, a score is kept during a baseball game, or a basketball game, or a football game. Why? To fairly determine which team ultimately wins the game. In addition, a very accurate time clock is utilized to declare the winner of a race, whether it involves automobiles, swimmers, or those who are running on a track. These simple examples, and many others, should strike a familiar chord with us. Since we are flesh and blood human beings, the physical world is important to our lives. We can only deal with the things that can be seen and touched and heard and smelled and tasted. That is the world we live in, the world where our familiarity rests. However, we need to understand that we are limited by the physical world, the things we experience on a physical plane. This is the case because there is another world surrounding us that deserves even more of our attention. The most critical realm for each of us is the spiritual world, and it does surround us even though we may not always be aware of it. What I want to consider through this study is the fact that God is also keeping score. It seems obvious that there are many times when we feel cheated in this physical realm, that we have not been treated fairly. But when it comes to the spiritual realm, no one will ever be cheated or treated unfairly. And this can only occur because God is keeping score. As we shall see through the pages of this book, in a very real sense, God is the ultimate scorekeeper!