My Career in Education Research

In 2021, I retired from my position as a Distinguished Presidential Appointee at Educational Testing Service, after spending 25 years (in two separate stints) as a researcher there. My recent research at ETS focused on test validity and fairness and on the college admissions process, which was the topic of my 2017 book, Who Gets In? Strategies for Fair and Effective College Admissions. I started at ETS after earning my doctorate in Quantitative Methods in Education at the University of California, Berkeley and completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Psychometric Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In between my two ETS gigs, I was a professor at the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I taught classes in measurement, statistics, and educational testing. My career in education actually began long before I earned a Ph.D. During the 1970s, I received my teacher certification and worked in teaching and counseling positions with children, adolescents, and adults. These experiences helped to broaden my perspective on the role of tests and measurement. Although I’m now retired, I remain active in the National Council on Measurement in Education, of which I previously served as president (2018-2019) and the Measurement and Research Methodologies Division of the American Educational Research Association, which recently honored me with the Robert L. Linn Award for contributions to educational measurement and assessment policy.

Updated May 2, 2024