President’s Message – October 2026

Dear NCME Colleagues,

I hope the new school year and the beginning of fall are off to a wonderful start for everyone. September was an especially active month for NCME, with opportunities to deepen our international engagement, advance important conversations about responsible AI, and connect with colleagues across the measurement community. I am grateful for the energy, expertise, and commitment that our members continue to bring to this work.

At the 51st Annual Conference of the International Association for Educational Assessment in Toronto, NCME presented a plenary panel, Navigating AI’s Transformation of Educational Measurement: Perspectives on Responsible Innovation from NCME. Moderated by NCME Executive Director Susan Lyons, the panel brought together Christopher Ormerod, Okan Bulut, Qiwei (Britt) He, and me to share four connected strands of NCME’s work: the Presidential Task Force on Responsible AI; research at the intersection of AI and measurement; professional learning and capacity building; and the revision of the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. Our discussion emphasized that responsible AI requires more than promising tools. It requires clear assessment claims, strong evidence, attention to validity and fairness, transparency about how AI is used, and human accountability for consequential decisions.

The IAEA conference also gave us opportunities to connect informally with colleagues through an NCME networking reception. We had excellent attendance over 150 IAEA members attending and engaging with NCME leadership. These conversations reinforced the value of sustained collaboration across national and organizational contexts. AI is affecting assessment systems worldwide, but its uses, risks, and consequences are shaped by local educational purposes, policies, languages, cultures, and resources. International dialogue is therefore essential as NCME develops guidance, learning opportunities, and partnerships that can support responsible innovation across diverse settings.

A central point of the keynote was that we cannot evaluate only the final product of human–AI work. When collaboration is part of the construct, assessments need evidence about the collaborative process, supported by expanded validity, fairness, and comparability arguments. These choices matter because assessment claims inform consequential decisions and shape educational opportunity. The broader challenge extends beyond assessment: educators and measurement professionals must also be explicit about which human competencies remain essential, how learning should cultivate them, and where cognitive offloading to AI may create unintended consequences.

Earlier this week, we hosted the second NCME Artificial Intelligence in Measurement and Education Conference—AIME-Con—in Pittsburgh. I am tremendously proud of this conference and of NCME’s leadership in creating a dedicated forum where the measurement community can help shape the integration of AI in education rather than simply react to it. This year’s theme, “Measurement Science in AI-Integrated Assessment and Pedagogy,” placed psychometric rigor at the center of innovation. The program brought together researchers, practitioners, policymakers, educators, technology experts, psychometricians, natural language processing specialists, and learning analytics scholars for hands-on training, keynotes, paper and panel sessions, posters, demonstrations, and opportunities for networking and collaboration.

The growth of AIME-Con has been remarkable. Building on the sold-out inaugural conference, submissions doubled this year to 355 across individual papers, posters, organized symposia and discussions, and demonstrations. We were able to accept 254 sessions, creating a rich and ambitious program. The conference welcomed over 600 attendees this year and opened with a day of hands-on training, followed by two days of keynotes, research presentations, panels, poster sessions, and receptions. This momentum affirms both the urgency of the questions before us and the need for NCME to continue convening interdisciplinary expertise around validity, reliability, fairness, transparency, and meaningful learning.

I am deeply grateful to conference and program co-chairs Joshua Wilson, Christopher Ormerod, and Maggie Beiting-Parrish, as well as Polina Harik for her service on the Program Committee, the AIME SIGIMIE, NCME staff, reviewers, presenters, sponsors, and volunteers whose work made this conference possible. Their collective effort has created a vibrant space for rigorous inquiry, bold ideas, and new collaborations.

I am also pleased to share two announcements highlighted at the conference. First, the NCME Endowment—our Fund for Measurement Excellence and Integrity—has surpassed $150,000. This important milestone reflects the generosity of members and friends who are investing in the future of our field, and I extend my sincere thanks to every donor. Second, planning is already underway for AIME-Con 2027, to be held October 25–27, 2027, at the Westin Seattle. The theme, “From Models to Measurement: Data Science, AI, and Evidence in Education,” will expand engagement with the data science, educational data mining, learning analytics, and AI communities while keeping rigorous measurement evidence at the center.

Together, our engagement at IAEA and the continued growth of AIME-Con demonstrate how NCME is advancing several priorities at once: responsible AI, stronger connections among research, policy, and practice, interdisciplinary capacity, and deeper international partnership. Thank you for the many ways you contribute to this momentum. I look forward to continuing this work with you and to the conversations, collaborations, and learning still ahead this fall.

Best,
Kadriye