In the past, I have blogged about testing in China and Korea.  While we often thinking of standardized testing as a Western phenomenon, it really has its roots over 2000 years ago in the Chinese imperial exam system with the concept later being adopted in the East in the 19th century.

The scale of some of these Asian programs is quite impressive (as well as is the potential for high profile problems which I will blog about tomorrow in regard to recent issues in India with delivery of their equivalent of the GMAT). At the end last month, nearly a million candidates took the Chinese Civil Service Examination. Attributed to the economic slowdown, the number of test takers (photos) has increased by a factor of 15 since 2003. Given there are only 15,000 openings for a million test takers, the stakes are impressively high. These government positions are often coveted for their stability and are sometimes referred to as the "Iron Rice Bowl."

Reid Klion

I read an interesting article the other day on the psychological challenges faced by financial professionals in light of the investment market plummet of the past year. Written by a gentleman originally trained as a clinical psychologist who has spent the past 25 years as an investment advisor, he outlines a number of stressors and dynamics facing this group of professionals.

• Loss of faith in the fundamental investment  theories that underlie the models followed by investment professionals which completely failed to predict potential losses of this speed and magnitude.
• Subsequent revelations about the investment industry have also proven unsettling, leaving professionals to doubt the credibility of their own organization.
• Guilt and helplessness about the losses faced by clients
•  Personal losses in investments and retirement plans (with the latter often being in parent company stock).
• Concerns about the future in a profession and industry that suddenly became wholly unpredictable.

Given it is written for an audience of clinical psychologists, the article becomes a bit technical in spots. However, it provides a rather unique perspective on some issues that I honestly had not given much thought and is worth a look if it captures your interest.

Reid Klion

pan recently developed a strategic partnership relationship with Global Psychometrics Services (GPS). Headed by Reed Castle, Ph.D., GPS is a recognized leader in the development of high quality testing programs for certification and licensure organizations. By combining pan’s network of more than 800 proctored testing centers with GPS’s experience in test program development, our partnership can now provide a full-service certification solution ranging from job analysis studies and test content creation to proctored test delivery. More information can be found here.

Reid Klion

It sometimes concerns me when I read an article in the mainstream press and have to check if haven’t accidentally ended up on The Onion. I had one of those experiences the other day when I came across an article about how parents in New York City are paying up to $1000 to have their 3- and 4-year-olds  coached on how to take the tests used to qualify students for gifted and talented kindergarten public school programs. Apparently motivated by the desire to avoid the cost of private schooling, these parents describe themselves as seeking the opportunity “to have a choice.” While I admit to not fully understanding all the dynamics around raising a child in Manhattan, I find the whole thing rather ridiculous and resonate to a recent piece in Time about over-involved parents.  

At the other end of the spectrum in terms of over-parenting, I was intrigued by a high school graduation coaching program in the Indianapolis Public Schools. Unfortunately, not unlike many large urban school districts, IPS struggles with high school graduation rates under 50% and students and families who often face a myriad of challenges outside the classroom. Financed by the local Chamber of Commerce, the intent of the program is to help students to complete high school.  Here, it is good to see the business community lend a hand where resources of this type are scarce. In the long run, it is hard to see how a program like this won't benefit all involved--students, their families, and the community at large.

Reid Klion

Since the economic crisis emerged over a year ago, there has been a rash of reports on the influx of students into post-secondary institutions, especially community and technical colleges. Here is the most recent from the Economist. In addition to citing economic factors, the article also points to a number of other dynamics that contribute to this trend. First, post-secondary enrollment rates have been going up for several years. Increasing the pool of potential students, the percentage of young people who fail to complete high school has shrunk from nearly 16% to less than 10% over the past 30 years. Additionally, the current economic woes have driven home the point that the availability of well-paying unskilled labor jobs has dropped precipitously over the past two decades marked by cataclysmic changes in the U.S. automotive industry as well as the trend toward the outsourcing of manufacturing

It is clear that the current upsurge of interest in training is in part influenced by the perception by many that they have no other viable options. However, it is hard to think there are not some silver linings in the grey clouds. First, while there are no guarantees that additional training will definitely lead to a job offer at the end of the line, it is hard to think that a broadened skill set will decrease an individual’s employability, especially if schooling is in a skill with high demand. From a broader societal perspective, there also seem to be few negatives in increasing the value of the nation’s human capital which will benefit us all in the long run.

Reid Klion

Just a reminder that the Call for Papers for the International Testing Commission Conference (to be held July 19-21, 2010 in Hong Kong) closes on December 1.  I had the opportunity to attend the ITC Conference in 2007 and would suggest it to anyone interested in increasing their understanding of issues related to the globalization of assessment. There are multiple considerations that emerge when a testing program is implemented internationally with challenges ranging from the practical to the psychometric to the legal. As the need for assessment programs that be used in multinational contexts grows, so does the necessity for assessment professionals to understand the complexities that come along with the territory.

Reid Klion

Yesterday was the day for almost 700,000 Korean high school students to take the nearly 9-hour long College Scholastic Ability Test. Given only once a year, it is critical to gaining admission to a Korean university. Coupled with the fact that more than 80% of Korean high school seniors attend university, this is a critical event. High school students spend months preparing, and their families often go to churches and temples to pray for a good outcome. To help manage the logistics, work started an hour late yesterday to minimize traffic jams, and aircraft were diverted from flying near test sites to minimize noise disruptions. In past years, the power company has even placed crews on standby in case the power grid would somehow become disrupted and impact testing.

While we often think of testing as a Western phenomenon, standardized tests have been used in Asia for over 2000 years. Indeed, the concept of using tests to hire civil servants was first implemented in the West in the late 1800s when the British began following testing practices they first observed in China.

Reid Klion

The Merit Systems Protection Board, a federal agency charged with ascertaining that other federal agencies carry out personnel-related activities in compliance with the law, recently released a report on the use of job simulations in assessing job candidates.  While written specifically for the federal context, it is a good source of information to anyone interested in the topic.

For those who may not be familiar, a job simulation presents a realistic work situation and assesses how an applicant responds to it. When you think about it, the set of tasks that might be considered job simulations is rather broad to include things like having welders demonstrate their skills on standard tasks, having pilots demonstrate their skills in a flight simulator, or a store manager asking applicants how they might respond to specific customer inquiries. While they may differ in terms of fidelity to actual work tasks, job simulations often provide good information about a job candidate’s skill level with a high degree of face validity.  The MSPB report discusses the different types job simulations, their relative benefits and weakness, as well as how to create and conduct them. The document also goes on to detail how simulations might be more broadly used by federal government. Some very useful information at the right price...

Reid Klion

In light of all the current excitement in the world of professional sports with the World Series finishing up this week, the NFL heating up, and the NBA season starting, a frequent topic of discussion is player salaries. This seems particularly salient given that the New York Yankee’s payroll for 2009 tops 200 million dollars.

When I hear these numbers, it brings to mind a Sports Illustrated article from earlier this year documenting the poor job that most athletes do in managing their money. While many of us cast a bit of an envious eye on the salaries that some top athletes make (for example, Tiger Woods was estimated to have made $110 million last year), the statistics on athletes who wind up broke despite multi-million dollar paydays is staggering. Some interesting statistics:

• Within 5 years of retirement, 60% of NBA players are broke.
• Within two years of retirement, 78% of NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress.
• Divorce rates for athletes range from 60-80%. Emotional issues aside, this also tends to have a major negative financial impact, especially if there are children involved.

The article outlines a number of contributing factors. Some of the most common are naiveté about financial affairs (certainly not uncommon for most folks in their early 20s) poor decisions about whom to trust (especially when it comes to managing millions of dollars), and a desire for tangible investments in things like businesses and real estate that seem easier to understand (though are almost always riskier) than stocks and bonds.

Reid Klion

While virtually all the proctored testing that pan does is in the HR space, there is a huge amount of proctored testing that takes place within an education context--think PSAT, SAT,  MCAT, GRE, LSAT and the like. A recent NYT piece focuses on the problem of proctors who fail to do their jobs or even manage to be disruptive during SAT testing sessions. The article indicates that SAT proctors are not specifically trained for the task (which surprised me a bit since our policy is to train all proctors on each program they supervise).  And reviewing some of the reported issues that occur during paper and pencil testing, it is clear that computer-based test administration (as we use in our testing centers) can ensure a much more standardized experience in terms of test timing, the right test forms going to the right candidate, and the like.

One bit of advice provided by an SAT test coach (yes, this is apparently a whole industry in and of itself) is that if a candidate notices a problem during test administration, he or she should either voice a complaint immediately and ask that it be addressed or “forget about it” (as opposed to simply grumbling about it after the fact). Here, it is important that test takers assume some responsibility in advocating for themselves by pointing out problems if they become apparent. The coach also goes on to say that “you have to expect that there will be distractions. If you’re seated next to a kid who is muttering under his breath, or sneezing, or grunting, just deal with it. Move on.”

Reid Klion