Since ya’ll know how much I love data-driven assessment, I decided to uncork a wee bit of Super Bowl data and show you why I deserve one of those high-fallutin’ ETS jobs, the kind that pays over six-figures if you are selected to work in the hallowed halls of this “non-profit” institution.

Stand back and watch I sew the seeds of Bubble Test Brilliance while using nothing but our Holy Day of pizza, chicken wings and potato chips to make our schoolchildren squeal.

(Cause if they don’t squeal, it’s not a good test question, is it?)

–4,000 tons of popcorn were estimated to have been eaten yesterday. If one would have stringed/strung/strunged all that popcorn together, the ring would circle the earth 5 1/2 times. According to this information, what is the earth’s radius? (Ya feelin’ me, ETS? Ya feelin’ me?)

–15,000 tons of chips were eaten. If an elephant weighs 2 3/4 tons and a textbook weighs 1/62,476 of a ton, how many textbooks would you need to stack up in order to equal the amount of potato chips our nation ate yesterday?

Please express you answer in terms of elephants.

–8 millions pounds of guacamole were consumed on Super Bowl Sunday which ranks second to Cinco de Mayo. How many English Language Learners does a school need to demonize in order to create enough guacamole to sustain us through 3 Cinco de Mayos in a Leap Year?

Helpful ETS hint we’ll offer to make sure all test questions are not culturally biased: Cinco de Mayo occurs on May 5th — except during a Leap Year when it occurs on, well… May 5th.

–Each year we, in America, eat 3 billion pizzas as a nation. During the Super Bowl 350 slices of pizza are being consumed each second over the course of a 12 hour day. If 1/11 of those pizzas are pepperoni and 1/14 are veggie, who was driving the pizza delivery car when it took them a freakin’ hour and a half to deliver Paulie and his drunk friends a cold pie?

Come on ETS, I am lofting softballs to ya right here. Think of the bubble tests that could be created from this American phenomenon!

Am I hired? Am I hired?

One last FYI… Did you know that Indianapolis public schools took Super Bowl Monday off? Yep, they shut down. Burned a snow day. And why? Cause last time the Colts went to the Super Bowl on the Monday which followed the game, 64% of the kids came down with what was affectionately named the “Blue Flu”… but their parents miraculously healed them all by Tuesday when attendance returned to normal.

So this year, IPS took no chances and called off school before the game even kicked off.

Has anyone ever noticed that for a non-profit ETS sure seems to be making a lot of money? I mean look at that line-up they offer.

They “sell” (that’s right, they “sell” these tests… we rarely think of them that way though, do we?)…

They sell the SAT. They sell the PSAT.

I could stop right there. Does that sound to anyone else like a pretty good business to be in? I mean if people don’t want to buy your product, they can always… not apply for college.

Yet, the hits continue.

They sell the AP exams.
They sell the Praxis. (And boy don’t I feel that paying for and suffering through the Praxis really proved to be a critical part of my teacher preparation. I mean where would I be without it?)

They sell the CAHSEE. (For those of you not in my state, that’s alphabet soup for the California High School Exit Examination.)

ETS sells other stuff too but I am not really sure why. I mean it’s time to cry “Mercy!” ETS, you win. You are the best at what you do and you are doing it better than anyone else has ever done it before.

We give. Please respect our cries for “Uncle!”

In education, financial times have never been more dire. Yet in the testing industry, times seem to have never been more robust. And no one sees a relationship?

Call off the dogs, dudes… we’re dying on the vine out here. And if your mission really is to advance learning, then please recognize the stranglehold you have over us right now. We’re flailing out here. Flailing quite badly.

BTW, if a poison blowdart hits me in the neck next week — or suddenly you start to hear some mudslinging impugning my character, like how I was caught sleeping with Tiger Woods (hey, there’s gotta be another twist to the story, doesn’t there?) don’t say I didn’t warn you.

God bless ETS. I mean if you know anything about me, you know how much I find the whole industry of bubble tests to be 1) an absolute cash cow for the bubble test makers and 2) an unquestionably flawed means for either student or teacher assessment.

And now, ETS, is unveiling — from behind their magic black cloak of psychometrician darkness — the all new Personal Potential Index.

PPI bay-bee! You may not know it yet but one day it’ll be yet another acronym which joins your lexicon of educational alphabet soup.

Here’s some info on PPI.

In short, the PPI will be attached to the new GRE as an insight into a prospective applicant’s non-cognitive ability. (Stay with me here… this is worth it.)

As ETS says, the PPI is an index whereby “three or four professors or supervisors — generally those who will also be writing letters of recommendation — will answer a series of questions about candidates’ non-cognitive skills in various areas, as well as a more general set of questions. Applicants will be rated on a scale of 1-5 on questions about their abilities in these six areas: knowledge and creativity, communication skills, team work, resilience, planning and organization, and ethics and integrity.”

Let me repeat that. A student’s teachers will rate the kids “knowledge and creativity, communication skills, team work, resilience, planning and organization, and ethics and integrity.”

Now, being unsure of matters, I consulted the dictionary as to a definition of cognitive. Merriam Webster defines cognitive as “relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity”

Uhm, excuse me… how are any of the “non-cognitive” skills “non-cognitive?”

Okay, forget I asked.

Uhm, excuse me… aren’t the quirky kids I am fond of “creative” and the quirky kids who annoy me “kids who demonstrate poor communication skills”?

Okay, forget I asked.

Uhm, excuse me… is this not an attempt to quantify unquantifiable things by people who might not really be best qualified to make these quantifications anyway?

Okay, forget I asked.

Uhm, excuse me… does this mean that sucking up is now mandatory instead of optional in order to advance in school?

Okay, I tease.

I guess on one hand I should tip my hat to ETS for finally acknowledging to their critics (like me) that their tests don’t give a full enough or broad enough or accurate enough picture of test takers even though they most certainly imply that their assessments do.

Because that’s really what this PPI thing is — a concession to that exact idea. I mean, by building this PPI thing-ey, they are tipping their cap to the idea that, “Ya know what… maybe their is more to a student than the ability to choose the correct bubble with a number 2 pencil in hand.”

Ya think?

The only thing I can for sure say as I watch this all unfold is that for a non-profit, ETS sure makes a lot of money.