2012 NCME Annual Meeting
Saturday, April 14, 10:15 a.m.-12:05 p.m.
Regency Ballroom, Hyatt Regency Hotel
NCME Opening Reception and Inaugural Plenary Session
How can the testing community help advance education practice and policy?
John Easton will describe efforts inside the Institute for Education Sciences to make education research and evaluation more useful and relevant to practitioners and policy makers, while simultaneously building better theories of school improvement and the systems needed to support school improvement. He will ask how the psychometric and testing community can contribute to this work.
John Q. Easton, the president's nominee for director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), was confirmed by the Senate on May 21, 2009, for a term of six years. Dr. Easton came to IES from Chicago, where most recently he was executive director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. He had a long association with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), serving in several research capacities, including as the director of the Department of Research, Analysis, and Assessment. Dr. Easton also served a term (2003-07) on the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policies for NAEP. In 2008, he was awarded a presidential citation from AERA for "research leadership and evaluation studies focused on improving the nature and quality of education in a large urban city." Dr. Easton holds a Ph.D. in measurement, evaluation, and statistical analysis from the University of Chicago; a master's degree from Western Washington University; and a bachelor's degree from Hobart College. He is the author or coauthor of numerous reports and articles, and two books: Charting Chicago School Reform: Democratic Localism as a Lever for Change and Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago, to be published by the University of Chicago Press in fall 2009.