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The International Mind, Brain, and Education Society program now features two events that were not on the original program. The first event is the formal launch of the NATIONAL TESTING SURVEY (NTS, http://testingsurvey.us), a research project that has been endorsed by the IMBES Board. The second event is an invited workshop, "Educational testing for the 21st century: Challenges, models, and solutions." The NTS is an interactive online survey that asks about (1) the legitimate purposes of testing and (2) how well today's tests serve these purposes. In addition to completing a set of survey questions, respondents are offered an opportunity to write about their personal experiences with testing and share alternative testing resources. When respondents have completed the survey, they can view their results and compare them to e who visits the site can read respondents' stories, explore the resources, and track national results. Please participate in the NTS, and use your email lists and social networks to spread the word! A poster announcing the NTS launch event is attached to this message. Contact Zachary Stein (zas456@mail.harvard.edu) if you have questions or would like to become involved. NTS launch event: Testing the limits of testing Thursday, May 28th, 2009, 4:00 - 5:30 pm Zachary Stein, Marc Schwartz, and Theo Dawson The launch event will occur just prior to the opening of our second annual international conference at the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At this event, speakers will present some of the preliminary data from the NTS and examine the limits of current test development methods, incorporating the perspectives of stakeholder groups who have participated in the survey so far. More informati on is av br> Admission to the launch is FREE and open to the public, but space is limited. To attend, you must obtain a ticket from the NTS web site (http://testingsurvey.us/launch.php). A poster announcing the NTS launch event is attached to this message. Please post and/or distribute. Workshop: Educational testing for the 21st century: Challenges, models, and solutions 10:45 - 3:45, Saturday, May 30 Kurt Fischer, Marc Schwartz, Theo Dawson, Zachary Stein. The most basic form of educational testing takes the form of a "conversation" between an individual student and a teacher in which the student reveals what he or she is most likely to benefit from learning next. This kind of conversation increasingly takes a back seat to standardized forms of assessment that are designed to rank students for purposes that are dissociated from learning itself. Testing has lost its roots. The statistically generated rankings of stand ardized about the specific learning needs of individual students. And it is becoming increasingly apparent that the kind of knowledge required to succeed on a typical standardized test bears little resemblance to the kind of knowledge required for adult life. The challenge we now face is creating the kind of mass-customization that revives the educative role of assessments in the local dialogue between teachers, students, and the curriculum, while maintaining the advantages of standardization. Simply stated: we need tests that help teachers meet the learning needs of individual students--tests teachers ought to teach to. In this workshop, we explore perspectives on these issues from the classroom, cognitive developmental science, psychometrics, and philosophy and offer a concrete vision for the future of assessment. The workshop is intended for educators, administrators, researchers, and policy makers. It is FREE to those who register for the entire IMBES conference. If you a re inter he workshop, the fee is $80 before April 28th, and $95 after April 28th. You can register for the conference or the workshop at the IMBES site (http://imbes.org).

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