About / Jan 10 / Zwick presents at NRC workshop on state assessment

January 5, 2010
For immediate release

Rebecca Zwick of the Gevirtz School at UC Santa Barbara presents at the National Research Council Workshop on Best Practices in State Assessment

Rebecca Zwick, a professor in the Department of Education at the Gevirtz School at UC Santa Barbara, was chosen to present at the National Research Council Workshop on Best Practices in State Assessment in December in Washington, D.C. Zwick’s presentation “State Achievement Comparisons: Is the Time Right?” will become part of a subsequent publication from the National Academies Press.

The James B. Hunt, Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy commissioned the National Research Council (NRC) to explore possibilities for next-generation, innovative assessments. The two-day workshop “Best Practices for State Assessment Systems” was one part of this project. The event brought together a diverse group of experts on testing and measurement with leaders from the local, state, and federal levels. It explored what we know about state assessment systems; the technical and political challenges that must be overcome to implement more innovative assessments; and the opportunities that exist within the Common Core State Standards Initiative and the US Department of Education’s $350 million commitment to develop tests that measure common standards.

Dr. Zwick received a doctorate in quantitative methods in education at the University of California, Berkeley and an M.S. in Statistics from Rutgers University. After completing her Ph.D., Zwick was a postdoctoral fellow at the L. L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Next she spent 12 years as a researcher at Educational Testing Service in Princeton. Since joining the Gevirtz School in 1996, Zwick has been developing and teaching courses in educational statistics and psychometrics and has served as the leader of the emphasis in research methodology. She recently completed a National Science Foundation project in which her research team developed and evaluated instructional materials to help educators to better interpret standardized test results. In her latest project, she is exploring the effect of high school quality on the predictive validity of SAT scores and high school grade-point average. Zwick has served on advisory committees for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and the SAT, and currently serves on an a the technical advisory panel for the Programme in International Student Assessment (PISA) and on the Board on Testing and Assessment of the National Academies.

[Rebecca Zwick is available for interviews; contact George Yatchisin at 805 893 5789]
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Rebecca Zwick of the Gevirtz School at UC Santa Barbara presents at the National Research Council Workshop on Best Practices in State Assessment