lydia lu is distinguished researcher there working in -- with assessment in higher education. mccaffery who used to be a colleague of mine and steve kline's when we were at rand in the late '90s now has a chair -- he is one of the most thoughtful people, a statistician who really knows a great deal about the issues that fredrik was talking about. i want to say a little bit -- the bottom line is fredrik's paper is a serious critique and he poses problems that are important. and what i want to do is just make a couple of comments that are simulated by his argument and then i want to just tell you a little bit about a new way we might think about framing research on higher education, leading perhaps with educational assessment but going beyond that a little bit. i think that accountability did have a lot to do with the ramp up of assessment in higher education. i'm talking about the spellings commission and so on. but i want to note that in the case of our group, reform and not accountability was the principle motivator. steve and i, some other colleagues at rand in the late '90s

lydia lu is a distinguished researcher there working in -- with assessment in higher education. dan mccaffery who used to be a colleague of mine and steve kline's when we were at rand in the late '90s, now has a chair -- he is one of the most thoughtful people, a statistician who really knows a great deal about the issues that fredrik was talking about. i want to say a little bit -- the bottom line is fredrik's paper is a serious critique and he poses problems that are important. and what i want to do is just make a couple of comments that are stimulated by his argument and then i want to just tell you a little bit about a new way we might think about framing research on higher education, leading perhaps with educational assessment but going beyond that a little bit. i think that accountability did have a lot to do with the ramp-up of assessment in higher education. i'm talking about the spellings commission and so on. but i want to note that in the case of our group, reform and not accountability was the principle motivator. steve and i, some other colleagues at rand in the lat