PRINCETON, N.J., May 1, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Six assessment developers and research scientists from Educational Testing Service (ETS) received an award for Outstanding Contribution to Practice in Cognition and Assessment from the American Educational Research Association's (AERA) Cognition and Assessment Special Interest Group (SIG). ETS, along with project collaborators Achieve and Pearson, received the award at AERA's annual meeting earlier this month.
ETS and other team members were recognized for developing an innovative model of text and item cognitive complexity measures for the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) program. The model the team designed and put into practice improves the development of item types and evaluations.
The members of the ETS team include Nancy Glazer, Strategic Director, Assessment Development (AD); Joanna Gorin, Senior Research Director, Cognitive & Learning Sciences; Jeff Haberstroh, Principal Assessment Designer, AD College Board® Assessment; Patricia Klag, General Manager, AD; Kathleen Sheehan, Principal Research Scientist, Assessment Innovations; and Steve Lazer, Senior Vice President, Student & Teacher Assessments.
"I had the privilege of commenting on this work at the 2013 Council of Chief State School Officers Student Assessment Conference," writes James W. Pellegrino, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Education and co-Director of UIC's Learning Sciences Research Institute. "I consider it to be at the cutting edge with respect to item and materials development for large-scale assessment aligned to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics and highly deserving of the award."
ETS has a contract with PARCC to design and develop ELA and mathematics items for its Common Core aligned summative assessments. Items are currently being field tested in preparation for PARCC's operational assessments that are scheduled for implementation during the 2015-16 school years.
"ETS's PARCC items introduce a number of innovations in addition to the use of new cognitive complexity measures. These include new types and items with technology-enhanced features that use advanced interoperability protocols, as well as new accessibility features, including Accessible Portable Item Protocol," says Klag. "ETS is very proud to be leading the industry in supporting these advances for the K–12 assessment community."
Glazer believes their work is extremely important today because of the existence of new, more cognitively demanding standards in ELA and math. "This AERA SIG Award provides external validation from the measurement community that ETS continues to be an industry leader in innovations in measurement theory, design and practice," she says.
About ETS
At ETS, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, and by conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded as a nonprofit in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually — including the TOEFL
® and TOEIC
® tests, the GRE
® tests and The Praxis Series
® assessments — in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. www.ets.org
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SOURCE Educational Testing Service