Child psychologist gives up after making public cries for SAGE test validity

A child psychologist surrendered his efforts to validate the standardized test called Student Assessment of Growth and Excellence, which is administered to students this April and May.

A valid test means that the test is proven to measure what it is supposed to measure.

“I’ve done all that I can do professionally,” said Gary Thompson, a psychologist and director of clinical training for the Early Life of Psychology and Education Center. “I pointed out the obvious, and lawmakers decided to go another route.”

Thompson said the lawmakers wanted to make the issue political.

“I don’t do politics or public policy, that is somebody else’s gig so to speak,” he said.

A year ago Thompson offered $100,000 to the Utah State Office of Education in order for them to provide validity tests for the SAGE test. “They don’t have any validity studies whatsoever,” Thompson said. “We are just taking the words of a private test publishing company that says it measures academics and there is no proof for that.”

It was the Utah lawmaker’s job to weigh the evidence and then make a choice, Thompson said.

“Our job as scientists is to inform the community and lawmakers about ethics and science in an objective manner… and then we are done,” he said.

Thompson’s concerns for validity were never answered. “There are no validity tests and we have no clue what this test measures or what it doesn’t measure,” Thompson said.

Thompson’s practice involves academic and psychological testing, the tests the practice uses have to be valid tests. “By law we have to use tests that have gone through validity studies and we have to review those studies prior to giving them to kids,” Thompson said.

Thompson felt like they did their job to receive the correct validity reports. “As a professional, this was not our problem. We are objective doctors, not activists or politicians,” he said.

American Institutes for Research, AIR, helped produce the test and made a five year contract with the state of Utah for the SAGE test. Executive vice president, AIR and president of AIR assessment said they showed the correct validity required.

“In Utah the teachers are very involved in the writing and development,” said Jon Cohen, the executive vice president for AIR. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t put them through all of the various checks that need to happen in order to ensure construct validity, which is that you are measuring what you say you are measuring.”