University Distinguished Professor Emeritus Mark D. Reckase is the recipient of a national career award this week.
The National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) will present Reckase with the 2016 Career Award at the council’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C. The award honors outstanding scholars whose publications, presentations and professional activities over the span of their career have had a widespread positive impact on the field of educational measurement. He is one of 27 individuals ever to receive the award.
“Many of those who have received the award are scholars who are my role models,” Reckase said. “I never believed that I would be thought of in the same way as these giants in the field.”
Reckase also is a featured speaker at the event, presenting on the professional responsibilities of people related to putting standardized tests together.
He joined the Michigan State University College of Education faculty in 1998, and retired officially as an active faculty member in 2015, but he is still a figure around campus. Reckase is working with a few graduate students as they finish up their programs—among the many he has had the honor of working with while at MSU. He also is working on a study with Maria Teresa Tatto on what happens to teachers in the first five years of teaching. This is a continuing study from an earlier, international study in which Reckase, Tatto and others from the college and around the world examined ways teachers enter the profession and how they are prepared.
During his tenure at MSU, Reckase worked on a number of “projects [he] wouldn’t have been working on, if not for MSU,” such as the KAT project, or Knowledge of Algebra for Teaching, with now-dean of the college, Robert Floden. He worked in the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education as a professor of Measurement and Quantitative Methods. He was named as a University Distinguished Professor, one of MSU’s highest honors, in 2009.
Outside MSU, Reckase has been heralded for his contributions to knowledge about standard setting, computer adaptive testing and models for the evaluation of educators. In 2009, he wrote and published a book through Springer on multidimensional item response theory. He has served as president of NCME, vice president of Division D for AERA and editor of several journals, among many other accomplishments.
Reckase is currently writing his second book, which will be on how educational standards are set.