Nancy Cole

Last updated

Nancy Cole is an educational psychologist and expert on educational assessment. Cole is past president of the American Educational Research Association and the Educational Testing Service (ETS), and former Dean of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of North Carolina. Her undergraduate education in psychology was at Rice University (B.A., 1964).

Contents

Cole co-authored Gender and Fair Assessment (Willingham & Cole, 1997), which is regarded as the most extensive study ever completed on gender and educational assessment. The study analyzed data from more than 400 assessments of over 15 million students.

Criticism

In his book, "Uneducated Guesses", [1] Howard Wainer refers to Cole's presidency of the ETS as "disastrous." FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing reports [2] that during this period, ETS " ignored internal warnings about security problems in its computer adaptive Graduate Record Exam (GRE), according to documents recently made public in a U.S. district court...To protect its image and profits in the rush to introduce the new type of test into the marketplace, ETS also misled the New York State legislature about how the system actually worked...In fact, in her deposition, ETS President Nancy Cole admits it is now clear, in retrospect, that back in November of 1994, one or two good memorizers could have given a substantial advantage to a subsequent test-taker."

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyril Burt</span> English educational psychologist (1883–1971)

Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt, FBA was an English educational psychologist and geneticist who also made contributions to statistics. He is known for his studies on the heritability of IQ.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Standardized test</span> Test administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner

A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graduate Record Examinations</span> Standardized tests

The Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) is a standardized test that is part of the admissions process for many graduate schools in the United States and Canada and a few other countries. The GRE is owned and administered by Educational Testing Service (ETS). The test was established in 1936 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Educational Testing Service</span> Educational testing and assessment organization

Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private educational testing and assessment organization. It is headquartered in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, but has a Princeton address.

A Praxis test is one of a series of American teacher certification exams written and administered by the Educational Testing Service. Various Praxis tests are usually required before, during, and after teacher training courses in the U.S.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linda Gottfredson</span> American psychologist & scholar

Linda Susanne Gottfredson is an American psychologist and writer. She is professor emerita of educational psychology at the University of Delaware and co-director of the Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society. She is best known for writing the 1994 letter "Mainstream Science on Intelligence", which was published in the Wall Street Journal in defense of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's controversial book The Bell Curve (1994).

Alfred Wade Boykin is an American psychology professor known for his work in the field of education. He is a member of the faculty of Howard University. He has made contributions to the study of academic discrepancies between African American children and Caucasian children. Through his work at the Capstone Institute at Howard University he has created plans for implementations of educational reform.

Gwyneth M. Boodoo is an American psychologist and expert on educational measurement.

Holistic grading or holistic scoring, in standards-based education, is an approach to scoring essays using a simple grading structure that bases a grade on a paper's overall quality. This type of grading, which is also described as nonreductionist grading, contrasts with analytic grading, which takes more factors into account when assigning a grade. Holistic grading can also be used to assess classroom-based work. Rather than counting errors, a paper is judged holistically and often compared to an anchor paper to evaluate if it meets a writing standard. It differs from other methods of scoring written discourse in two basic ways. It treats the composition as a whole, not assigning separate values to different parts of the writing. And it uses two or more raters, with the final score derived from their independent scores. Holistic scoring has gone by other names: "non-analytic," "overall quality," "general merit," "general impression," "rapid impression." Although the value and validation of the system are a matter of debate, holistic scoring of writing is still in wide application.

Mathematical anxiety, also known as math phobia, is a feeling of tension and anxiety that interferes with the manipulation of numbers and the solving of mathematical problems in daily life and academic situations.

Edmund Wyatt Gordon is an American psychologist and professor. Gordon was recognized as a preeminent scholar of African-American studies when he was awarded the 2011 John Hope Franklin Award from Diverse Issues in Higher Education magazine at the 93rd Annual Meeting of the American Council on Education.

Language assessment or language testing is a field of study under the umbrella of applied linguistics. Its main focus is the assessment of first, second or other language in the school, college, or university context; assessment of language use in the workplace; and assessment of language in the immigration, citizenship, and asylum contexts. The assessment may include listening, speaking, reading, writing, an integration of two or more of these skills, or other constructs of language ability. Equal weight may be placed on knowledge and proficiency, or greater weight may be given to one aspect or the other.

Norman “Fritz” Frederiksen (1909-1998) was an American research psychologist and leading proponent of performance assessment, an approach to educational and occupational testing that focused on the use of tasks similar to the ones individuals actually encounter in real classroom and work environments. In keeping with the philosophy underlying this approach, Frederiksen was a critic of multiple-choice testing, which he felt negatively influenced school curricula and classroom practice. Much of his research centered upon creating and evaluating alternative approaches to the measurement of knowledge and skill, which he pursued over a 40-year career at Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, NJ. For his work, he received the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Knowledge in 1984 and, by the time of his retirement from ETS, had attained the position of Distinguished Scientist, the organization's highest-ranking scientific title at that time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howard Wainer</span>

Howard Charles Wainer is an American statistician, past principal research scientist at the Educational Testing Service, adjunct professor of statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and author, known for his contributions in the fields of statistics, psychometrics, and statistical graphics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Exam</span> Educational assessment

An examination or test is an educational assessment intended to measure a test-taker's knowledge, skill, aptitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics. A test may be administered verbally, on paper, on a computer, or in a predetermined area that requires a test taker to demonstrate or perform a set of skills.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to human intelligence:

Rebecca Zwick is an American statistician and researcher in educational assessment and psychometrics. She is a professor emeritus in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the author of a book on university and college admission, Who Gets In? Strategies for Fair and Effective College Admissions.

Randy Elliot Bennett is an American educational researcher who specializes in educational assessment. He is currently the Norman O. Frederiksen Chair in Assessment Innovation at Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ. His research and writing focus on bringing together advances in cognitive science, technology, and measurement to improve teaching and learning. He received the ETS Senior Scientist Award in 1996, the ETS Career Achievement Award in 2005, the Teachers College, Columbia University Distinguished Alumni Award in 2016, Fellow status in the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2017, the National Council on Measurement in Education's (NCME) Bradley Hanson Award for Contributions to Educational Measurement in 2019, the E. F. Lindquist Award from AERA and ACT in 2020, elected membership in the National Academy of Education in 2022, and the AERA Cognition and Assessment Special Interest Group Outstanding Contribution to Research in Cognition and Assessment Award in 2024. Randy Bennett was elected President of both the International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA), a worldwide organization primarily constituted of governmental and NGO measurement organizations, and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME), whose members are employed in universities, testing organizations, state and federal education departments, and school districts.

Jacqueline P. Leighton is a Canadian-Chilean educational psychologist, academic and author. She is a full professor in the Faculty of Education as well as vice-dean of Faculty Development and Faculty Affairs at the University of Alberta.

Matthias von Davier is a psychometrician, academic, inventor, and author. He is the executive director of the TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center in Lynch School of Education and Human Development and the J. Donald Monan, S.J., University Professor in Education at Boston College.

References

  1. Howard Wainer. "Uneducated Guesses". Princeton University Press,2011. ISBN   978-0-691-14928-8. Chapter 2: "On substituting Achievement Tests for aptitude tests in College admissions"
  2. ETS and Test Cheating. http://www.fairtest.org/ets-and-test-cheating Accessed Sept 10 2012.

Willingham, W. W., & Cole, N. S. (1997). Gender and fair assessment. Mahwah, NJ, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Cultural offices
Preceded by President of the American Educational Research Association
1988–1989
Succeeded by