My Career in Education Research

In 2021, I retired from my position as a Distinguished Presidential Appointee at ETS, after spending 25 years (in two separate stints) as a researcher there.  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.   But 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. 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. Although I’m now retired, I remain active in the National Council on Measurement in Education, of which I recently served as President (2018-2019) and continue to participate in the field as a writer, reviewer, editor, and committee member.                                            Updated January 16, 2022