Moma Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Pychometricians

It looks like the eponymous educator is in the wrong field, slightly. I literally have seen the writing on the wall so I have no excuse. I remember several times stopping in front a bulletin board dedicated to evaluation and statistics at my school. There, jobs were posted with starting salaries way beyond what I have long since resigned myself to. What kind of jobs? Psychometrics jobs. The NYTimes writes today about the increasing demand among test making and test efficacy specialists. It's a small group. The Times reports that nationally only 50 Ph.D.s graduate yearly in the field. With so much emphasis on testing, much to the chagrin of some of my more philosophically minded professors, and increasing concern about testing errors (see here and here), psychometrics is becoming a popular topic among wonks and lay people alike. For more on what we as a nation can do to remedy this 5 year-old cart-before-the-horse approach check out Education Sector's take (pdf).