Today, the hegemony of formal education’s traditional business model is being challenged.  Macro trends in employment, technological advances and the inability for our legacy educational systems to maintain pace with an unprecedented global demand for learning have fueled a renaissance in educational entrepreneurship and innovation that are sure to change the way we think about education and learning.

A renowned American Professor of Measurement and Testing, Robert Ebel, published the following definition of a performance test:

“In a performance test the subject is required to demonstrate his or her skill by manipulating objects or instruments.”

This definition was first published in a measurement textbook in 1965. The definition seems solid, except that evolving technology may have changed the concept of manipulating objects or instruments since the time of publication.  For example, robotic surgery to perform a kidney transplant from a location 7,000 miles away from the patient.  This type of ultra-high speed data transfer and related virtual environment begins to change the concept of manipulating objects or instruments.

There has been a lot of buzz about ISO/IEC 17024: 2012 – Conformity Assessment – General requirements for bodies operating certification of persons.  With so many acronyms associated with this standard (ISO, IEC, ANSI, IAF, etc.) it is easy to get confused about who owns this standard and who accredits against it.   We will explore specifics of the standard itself in another post.  The purpose of this post is to help explain the various bodies associated with ISO 17024.

In a recent Internet search, I came across Professional Certifications: Can we Avoid Them? by Uganda-based consultant, Michael Niyitegeka. In this article, he suggests that in the wake of education commoditization, education qualifications have become “tradable goods,” forcing employers to find alternative avenues to gauge one’s competency above and beyond academic qualifications.  While we might share a different view about education, the point that certification plays a role in qualifying people for employment or takes over where education leaves off is worth examining and assigning a value to.  

The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (APA, AERA, & NCME, 2014) (Standards) was recently revised and updated.  As credentialing organizations begin to process what the revised version of the Standards means to them, it is important to point out most of the workplace testing and credentialing chapter remained the same.  However, statements about the need for reliable subscore reporting are of vast importance, as is the design of examination score reports.