WestEd’s Assessment Research and Innovation team, led by Dr. Marianne Perie, is leading multiple research studies into how to make assessment data fair, relevant, and useful to all students, their teachers, and their parents.

The field is paying attention, as the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), the largest and most influential organization of assessment researchers in the world, has selected Dr. Perie and members of her team to participate in 11 different conference presentations (both virtual and in-person), training sessions, and paper sessions at their 2023 Annual Meeting in Chicago this April.

A complete list of the team’s NCME sessions is provided below. Although they cover a diverse range of topics, they are united by two major themes:

  1. How to fundamentally rethink assessments that have traditionally reflected the dominant white culture in America to reflect the experiences and knowledge of all students in an unbiased way, and
  2. How to refine our assessment design and scoring processes to ensure that assessments provide essential data that can be used to help improve the learning outcomes for all students.

Five of the 11 sessions will focus explicitly on issues of fairness and reducing assessment bias, with several of the others focused on producing, reporting, and interpreting assessment results in meaningful and useful ways.

WestEd is committed to centering equity in all our work, and perhaps nowhere is this more essential than in the assessments we design and deliver to help educators provide the most focused and useful instruction possible for every student.

To learn more about our extensive work in assessment, please join us at NCME and visit our Comprehensive Assessment Solutions website.

NCME Presentations and Sessions

  • Tools and Strategies for the Design and Evaluation of Interactive Dashboard Reports
    WestEd Presenter: Priya Kannan
  • An Overview of Operational Psychometric Work in the Real World
    WestEd Presenter: Sarah Quesen
  • Standard Setting and Proficiency Level Descriptors
    Paper: Using Locally-Derived Cut Scores to Improve Universal Screening for All Students
    WestEd Author: Quintin Love
  • Challenges and Opportunities in Score Reporting
    WestEd Presenter: Priya Kannan
  • Culturally Responsive and Related Approaches to Assessment: What Are They?
    WestEd Presenter: Molly Faulkner-Bond
  • Re-thinking Construct Definitions and Measurement Methods to Include Black and Hispanic Cultures
  • Through-Year Assessment and Growth
    Paper: Expected Classification Accuracy for Categorical Growth Models
    WestEd Authors: Daniel Murphy, Matthew Brunetti, Quintin Love, and Sarah Quesen
  • NCME Business Meeting and Presidential Address
    WestEd Participant: Priya Kannan
  • AERA Reception: Division H Movers and Shakers
    WestEd Participant: Matt Silberglitt
  • Systems for Equitable Educational Assessment
    WestEd Moderator: Matt Silberglitt
    WestEd Presenter: Molly Faulkner-Bond
  • Test Equity and Fairness from the Voices That Matter
    WestEd Presenter: Molly Faulkner-Bond
  • AERA Division-D Business Meeting and Reception
    WestEd Co-Chair: Priya Kannan

For more details, visit our AERA/NCME event page.