Hi Mark,
Good call out. When I read that part I assumed it was the nested nature of school settings with students measured by teachers, in classes, in schools, in districts, etc... Many have found hiearchical linear models to help here. These complexities in the measurement model are probably somewhat unique to education and need some additional work beyond most business applications.
That said, I suspect it's true also that the analytic applications havn't focused enough on the the conceptual relationships amoungst their measures and items. I've been reading about Rasch analytic techniques and suspect their application across assignments/courses/programs would strengthen our measures of learning outcomes.
Jeff