National Academies Press: OpenBook

Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults (2005)

Chapter: Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff

« Previous: Appendix D September 2004 Bookmark Standard-Setting Session with the 2003 NAAL Data
Suggested Citation:"Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2005. Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11267.
×
Page 327
Suggested Citation:"Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2005. Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11267.
×
Page 328
Suggested Citation:"Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2005. Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11267.
×
Page 329
Suggested Citation:"Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2005. Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11267.
×
Page 330
Suggested Citation:"Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2005. Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11267.
×
Page 331
Suggested Citation:"Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2005. Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11267.
×
Page 332
Suggested Citation:"Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2005. Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11267.
×
Page 333
Suggested Citation:"Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2005. Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11267.
×
Page 334
Suggested Citation:"Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2005. Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11267.
×
Page 335
Suggested Citation:"Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2005. Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11267.
×
Page 336

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

Appendix E Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff Christopher F. Edley, Jr. (Co-Chair), is dean and professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to his recent move to Berkeley, he spent 23 years on the law faculty at Harvard University. His work is prima- rily related to civil rights and education, and he has a long history of public service. In the Clinton administration, he worked as associate director for economics and government at the Office of Management and Budget, as special counsel to the president directing a White House review of affirma- tive action, and as a consultant to the president’s advisory board on the race initiative. Edley’s academic work is primarily in the area of civil rights, with additional concentrations in public policy and administrative law. He has taught federalism, budget policy, Defense Department procurement law, national security law, and environmental law. He is a cofounder of the Civil Rights Project, a multidisciplinary research and policy think tank focused on issues of racial justice. From 1999 to early in 2005, he served on the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He is a member of the Na- tional Commission on Federal Election Reform. He has an M.A. in public policy from Harvard University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Robert M. Hauser (Co-Chair) is Vilas research professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has directed the Center for Demography and Ecology and the Institute for Research on Poverty. He currently directs the Center for Demography of Health and Aging, which is supported by the National Institute on Aging. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and 327

328 APPENDIX E the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served on the National Research Council’s Committee on National Statistics, Commission on Be- havioral and Social Sciences and Education, and Board on Testing and Assessment. He has worked on the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study since 1969 and directed it since 1980. His current research interests include trends in educational progression and social mobility in the United States among racial and ethnic groups, the uses of educational assessment as a policy tool, the effects of families on social and economic inequality, and changes in socioeconomic standing, health, and well-being across the life course. He has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan. Judith A. Alamprese is a principal associate at Abt Associates Inc., where she directs research, evaluation, policy, and technical assistance projects in adult education and workforce development. She is conducting a multiyear national study to investigate the organizational, instructional, and indi- vidual-level factors associated with adults’ capacity to improve their decod- ing and fluency skills. Her other research includes evaluations of states’ adult education programs with a focus on program improvement and de- velopment of leadership skills, design of family literacy programs, studies of the effectiveness of family literacy programs and programs aimed at prepar- ing parents with low basic skills for work, and evaluations of workplace literacy programs. She was a codeveloper of the National External Diploma Program, the first competency-based applied performance assessment sys- tem for adults. She currently serves on the National Institute for Literacy/ National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy’s Adult Lit- eracy Research Working Group and the Verizon University Board of Advi- sors, and she is an adviser on several adult literacy studies. She has an M.A. in sociology from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Michael X. Delli Carpini is dean of the Annenberg School for Communica- tion at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously he was director of the public policy program of the Pew Charitable Trusts (1999-2003) and a member of the Political Science Department at Barnard College and gradu- ate faculty of Columbia University (1987-2002), serving as chair of the Barnard department from 1995 to 1999. His research explores the role of the citizen in American politics, with particular emphasis on the impact of the mass media on public opinion, political knowledge, and political par- ticipation. He is the author of two books as well as numerous articles, essays, and edited volumes on political communications, public opinion, and political socialization. He has B.A. and M.A. degrees from the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania (1975) and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota (1980).

COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND STAFF 329 Constance F. Citro (Senior Program Officer) is director of the Committee on National Statistics at the National Academies. She is a former vice president and deputy director of Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., and was an American Statistical Association/National Science Foundation re- search fellow at the U.S. Census Bureau. At the National Research Council, she has served as study director for numerous projects, including the Panel to Review the 2000 Census, the Panel on Estimates of Poverty for Small Geographic Areas, the Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance, the Panel to Evaluate the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the Panel to Evaluate Microsimulation Models for Social Welfare Programs, and the Panel on Decennial Census Methodology. Her research has focused on the quality and accessibility of large, complex microdata files, as well as analy- sis related to income and poverty measurement. She is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. She has a B.A. from the University of Rochester and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in political science from Yale Uni- versity. Stuart W. Elliott (Senior Program Officer) is director of the Board on Testing and Assessment at the National Research Council, where he has worked on projects related to science assessment, citizenship examinations, incentives and accountability, and information technology. Before coming to the National Research Council, he worked as an economic consultant for several private-sector consulting firms. He was also a research fellow in cognitive psychology and economics at Carnegie Mellon University and a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. He has a Ph.D. in econom- ics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Vivian L. Gadsden is director and senior research scientist for the National Center on Fathers and Families and senior research scientist for the Na- tional Center on Adult Literacy in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also an associate professor of education for the graduate school. Her research examines intergenerational learning in families and in diverse social and cultural contexts. Her current research projects include a longitudinal study on intergenerational learning within African American and Latino families and a school-based study with sec- ond graders. A third project involves young, urban fathers, mothers, and children in school. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, edited books, and monograph series. Among her awards are a Spencer–National Academy of Engineering postdoctoral fellowship, the outstanding early career achievement award from the American Educational Research Asso- ciation, and several major research grants. She has an Ed.D. in educational psychology and policy from the University of Michigan.

330 APPENDIX E Andrew J. Hartman is currently an elementary school teacher-intern in the Denver Public Schools. Prior to entering this program, he was director of policy and research at the Bell Policy Center in Denver. He is the former executive director of the National Institute for Literacy in Washington, DC, a position he held for eight years. Prior to that, he served as staff director for the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor. He was the recipi- ent of the national 2001 literacy leadership award. He was a member of the National Advisory Committee for the development of national standards in civics education. He has a Ph.D. in child development from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Glynda A. Hull is the area chair of language, literacy, and culture and associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include sociocultural studies of how writers’ and readers’ constructions of texts are shaped by past school- ing, current instruction, institutions, and communities; use of multimedia technologies with at-risk students; understanding the roles that literacy plays in the workplace, particularly for low-income and at-risk popula- tions; how new information technologies are affecting the nature of work and the literacy skills that workers are expected to have; and literacy skills in at-risk students. She has twice received the Richard Braddock memorial award for the best article of the year in college composition and communi- cation. In 2001 she also received the National Council of Teachers of English award for best article reporting qualitative or quantitative research related to technical or scientific communication. Her most recent books include School’s Out! Bridging Out-of-School Literacies with Classroom Practice and Changing Work, Changing Workers: Critical Perspectives on Language, Literacy, and Skills. She has a Ph.D. in English from the Univer- sity of Pittsburgh. Judith Anderson Koenig (Study Director) is a senior program officer with the National Research Council’s Board on Testing and Assessment. She has worked on the board’s projects related to the National Assessment of Edu- cational Progress, assessing students with special needs, and teacher licens- ing and advanced certification. Previously she was a senior research associ- ate with the Association of American Medical Colleges, where she led a research program on the Medical College Admission Test. She has also worked as a special education teacher and diagnostician with school sys- tems in Michigan and Virginia. She has a Ph.D. in educational measure- ment, statistics, and evaluation from the University of Maryland. Rebecca A. Maynard is university trustee professor of education and social policy at the University of Pennsylvania and senior program associate at the

COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND STAFF 331 William T. Grant Foundation. Prior to 1993, she was senior vice president and director of Princeton Research at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. Her research has included numerous large-scale demonstration program evaluations on issues related to teenage parenthood, teenage pregnancy prevention, and child care, employment, and welfare policies. Currently she is principal investigator for three major projects: the National Evalua- tion of Title V Abstinence Education Programs, the Project to Improve and Disseminate Guidelines for Conducting Systematic Reviews of Research in Education and Social Welfare Policy, and the ACCESS program for science and technology studied. She has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin. Lorraine McDonnell is professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on the design and imple- mentation of education reform initiatives, the politics of student testing, and the development and use of educational accountability systems. Her most recent book is Politics, Persuasion, and Educational Testing (2004). At the National Research Council, she was cochair of the Committee on Goals 2000 and the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities and vice chair of the Board on Testing and Assessment. Currently she cochairs the Commit- tee on the U.S. Naturalization Test Redesign. She has a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University. Larry J. Mikulecky is professor of education at Indiana University. His research examines adolescent and adult literacy issues. His most recent research focuses on the uses of technology for language and literacy learn- ing as well as for professional development. His recent publications have focused on literacy in the workplace, in terms of the literacy skills required in the workplace as well as workplace literacy programs. He has served as principal investigator on more than 20 research projects funded by the federal government as well as foundations and corporations. He is a mem- ber of Phi Beta Kappa and has been awarded Indiana University’s Gorman teaching award as well as its highest teaching award, the Frederic Bachman Lieber distinguished teaching award. He is also the recipient of Laubach of Canada’s distinguished service award and the state of Indiana’s community service award for literacy work. He has a Ph.D. in reading curriculum and instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Robert J. Mislevy is a professor in the University of Maryland’s Depart- ment of Educational Measurement, Statistics, and Evaluation. Previously he worked at the Educational Testing Service for 16 years, where he was distinguished research scientist in the Division of Statistics and Psychomet- rics Research. His research interests center on applying recent develop-

332 APPENDIX E ments in statistical methodology and cognitive research to practical prob- lems in educational and psychological measurement. His current projects include developing an assessment design system, with applications in simu- lation-based assessments. He has published dozens of journal articles and book chapters and has been the recipient of the American Educational Research Association’s Raymond B. Cattell early career award for pro- grammatic research as well as the National Council of Measurement in Education’s triennial award for technical contributions to educational mea- surement. He is currently a member of the National Research Council’s Board on Testing and Assessment. He has a Ph.D. in methodology of behavioral research from the University of Chicago (1981). Norman G. Peterson is research director at the Satisfaction Performance Research Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He contributes to research design, development, and evaluation of individual and organizational mea- sures, statistical analyses, and application of research findings to organiza- tional issues. Previously he was a senior research fellow at the American Institutes for Research. His research interests include occupational analysis, the development and validation of measures of individual differences, em- ployee selection and classification systems, and the prediction of human performance in occupational and training settings. He is a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the American Psy- chological Association, and the American Psychological Society. He has a Ph.D. in psychology, specializing in industrial and organizational psychol- ogy, from the University of Minnesota. John P. Poggio is a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Research and director of development of the Kansas Assessment Pro- grams at the University of Kansas, where he teaches courses in measure- ment, statistics, and research methodology. He served on the editorial boards of Applied Measurement in Education from 1986 to 1991 and the Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education from 1985 to 1995. He has served on numerous advisory committees, particularly to state education agencies, and he currently serves on the technical advisory committee for the Kansas and Kentucky state assessment programs, where he has been extensively involved in test development, test design, and standard-setting procedures. He has conducted a number of studies that involved compari- sons of various standard-setting procedures. He is the author of numerous publications, including journal articles, book chapters, and books, on edu- cational measurement. He has a Ph.D. in educational research from Boston College.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND STAFF 333 Rima E. Rudd is senior lecturer on society, human development, and health at the Harvard University School of Public Health. She serves as director of educational programs for her department and teaches graduate courses on health literacy, innovative strategies in health education, and program plan- ning. Her current work focuses on health literacy, and she works closely with the adult education, public health, and medical sectors. She is a re- search fellow of the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy and is principal investigator or co-principal investigator for three studies of adult literacy and health. She authored the action plan for the health literacy objective in Healthy People 2010 Communicating Health: Priorities and Strategies for Progress (2003) and the Educational Testing Services report, Literacy and Health in America (2004). She served on the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Health Literacy, which produced the report Health Literacy: Prescription to End Confusion (2004). She has an Sc.D. in public health from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hy- giene and Public Health. Mary Jane Schmitt is the project director responsible for oversight of a comprehensive mathematics curriculum development project for adults and out-of-school youth at TERC in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In addition, she works at Harvard University with dining service and maintenance work- ers whose goals include job skill enhancement and high school equivalency certification. She served on the National Institute for Literacy’s expert re- view panel for the development and validation of the Equipped for the Future standards. She has served as a consultant for Statistics Canada, the Adult Literacy Media Alliance, the Texas State Department of Education, and the GED Testing Service of the American Council on Education. Her research interests are in the area of adults’ acquisition of numeracy skills. She has an M.A. in human development and psychology from Harvard University, where she is currently a doctoral candidate in the Graduate School of Education. Lynne Steuerle Schofield (Research Assistant) is special assistant to the dean at the College of Education at Temple University, where she is responsible for new project development and partnership building. She has an M.A. in statistics and an M.A. in public policy from Carnegie Mellon University. She is certified to teach mathematics in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. She is a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon University and expects to receive a Ph.D. in statistics and public policy in spring 2007. David M. Thissen is professor of psychology at the Department of Psychol- ogy and the L.L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory of the University of

334 APPENDIX E North Carolina, Chapel Hill. From 1999 to 2002, he served as an officer for the Psychometric Society and was president of the group from 2000 to 2001. He has been an associate editor for Psychometrika and an advisory editor for the Journal of Educational Measurement and has served on the editorial board for Psychological Methods; he is currently editor of the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics. He has numerous publica- tions in the area of item response theory, including journal articles, book chapters, and books. He serves on the technical advisory committees for the state assessment programs in North Carolina and Louisiana, and on the validity studies panel of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. His research interests lie in the areas of psychometrics, item response theory, models for human growth and development, and graphics and statistics in psychological contexts. He has a Ph.D. in behavioral sciences from the University of Chicago. Andrew E. Tompkins (Research Assistant) is a research assistant for the National Research Council’s Board on Testing and Assessment, where he has worked in various capacities, aiding committees in their research in such areas as testing equity and access, test design, advanced study of mathematics and science in high schools, performance assessments for adult education, and the redesign of the naturalization test. He has an M.A. in history from the State University of New York at Albany. Lori Houghton Wright (Program Officer) is a program officer with the National Research Council’s Board on Testing and Assessment, where she is working on projects related to appropriate uses of school-level education data and evaluation of advanced teacher certification programs. Prior to joining the National Research Council, she worked with the Student As- sessment Services unit of the Massachusetts Department of Education, where she was involved with the development, scoring, and range-finding for the state mathematics criterion-referenced assessment (MCAS) for grades 4, 6, 8, and 10. She also spent one year as a visiting assistant professor at the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Croix. She has a Ph.D. in educational leadership and policy analysis from the University of Mis- souri-Columbia. Heide Spruck Wrigley is a senior research associate for Aguirre Interna- tional in California. Her work has involved research and evaluation in all areas of adult literacy education and training, with a special emphasis on minority populations. As the Aguirre manager of a national study entitled What Works in Adult ESL Literacy, she is responsible for the overall design of a framework for literacy development and language acquisition and is involved in all aspects of implementation. As part of two current projects

COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND STAFF 335 funded by the federal government, she is developing models for implemen- tation and assessment of workplace literacy, on-the-job training, and voca- tional training programs for those with low levels of literacy and limited proficiency in English. As a consultant for both state-level and national agencies, including the National Institute for Literacy, she has helped to design frameworks for performance-based assessments and evaluations. She has a Ph.D. in education from the University of Southern California.

Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $55.00 Buy Ebook | $43.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) is a household survey conducted periodically by the Department of Education that evaluates the literacy skills of a sample of adults in the United Stages ages 16 and older. NAAL results are used to characterize adults' literacy skills and to inform policy and programmatic decisions. The Committee on Performance Levels for Adult Literacy was convened at the Department's request for assistance in determining a means for booking assessment results that would be useful and understandable for NAAL'S many varied audiences. Through a process detailed in the book, the committee determined that five performance level categories should be used to characterize adults' literacy skills: nonliterate in English, below basic literacy, basic literacy, intermediate literacy, and advanced literacy. This book documents the process the committee used to determine these performance categories, estimates the percentages of adults whose literacy skills fall into each category, recommends ways to communicate about adults' literacy skills based on NAAL, and makes suggestions for ways to improve future assessments of adult literacy.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!