Appendix C
Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff
Lauress L. Wise (Chair) is president of the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO). His research interests focus on issues related to testing and test use policy. He has served on the National Academy of Education’s Panel for the Evaluation of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Trial State Assessment, as co-principal investigator on the National Research Council’s (NRC) study to evaluate voluntary national tests, and as a member of the Committee on the Evaluation of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). He has been active on the NRC’s Board on Testing and Assessment, the Committee on Reporting Results for Accommodated Test Takers: Policy and Technical Considerations, and the Committee on the Evaluation of the Voluntary National Tests, Year 2. At HumRRO, he is currently directing an evaluation of California’s high school graduation test and a project to provide quality assurance for NAEP. Prior to joining HumRRO, he directed research and development on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) for the U.S. Department of Defense. He has a Ph.D. in mathematical psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Linda Chinnia is an educator with the Baltimore City public school system. During a 32-year career, she has served as an early childhood teacher, a senior teacher, a curriculum specialist, an assistant principal, a principal, and the director of elementary school improvement. Currently she serves as an area academic officer, supervising 35 elementary and K-8 schools. She
has been an adjunct instructor at the Baltimore City Community College, Coppin State College, Towson University, and Johns Hopkins University. She has taught courses in early childhood education, elementary education, and educational supervision and leadership. She has B.A. and M.A. degrees from Towson University.
Kay Dickersin is a professor at the Brown University School of Medicine. She is also director of the U.S. Cochrane Center, one of 14 centers world-wide participating in The Cochrane Collaboration, which aims to help people make well-informed decisions about health by preparing, maintaining, and promoting the accessibility of systematic reviews of available evidence on the benefits and risks of health care. Her areas of interest include publication bias, women’s health, and the development and utilization of methods for the evaluation of medical care and its effectiveness. She was a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Reimbursement of Routine Patient Care Costs for Medicare Patients Enrolled in Clinical Trials, the Committee on Defense Women’s Health Research, and the Committee to Review the Department of Defense’s Breast Cancer Research Program. She has an M.S. in zoology, specializing in cell biology, from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Margaret Eisenhart is professor of educational anthropology and research methodology and director of graduate studies in the School of Education, University of Colorado, Boulder. Previously she was a member of the College of Education at Virginia Tech. Her research and publications have focused on two topics: what young people learn about race, gender, and academic content in and around schools; and applications of ethnographic research methods in educational research. She is coauthor of three books as well as numerous articles and chapters. She was a member of the NRC’s Committee on Scientific Principles in Education Research. She has a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Karen Falkenberg is a lecturer in the Division of Educational Studies at Emory University. She is also the president of the Education Division of Concept Catalysts, a consulting company that has a specialization in science, mathematics, and engineering education reform. She works both nationally and internationally. She was the program manager for the National Science Foundation funded local systemic change initiative in Atlanta called
the Elementary Science Education Partners Program (ESEP), and has been a mentor for SERC@SERVE’s Technical Assistance Academy for Mathematics and Science and for the WestEd National Academy for Science and Mathematics Education Leadership. She also served on the National Academy of Engineering’s Committee for Technological Literacy. Earlier, she was a high school teacher of science, mathematics, and engineering and was featured as a classroom teacher in case studies of prominent U.S. innovations in science, math, and technology education. Before she became an educator, she worked as a research engineer. She has a Ph.D. from Emory University.
Jack McFarlin Fletcher is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Texas-Houston Health Science Center and associate director of the Center for Academic and Reading Skills. For the past 20 years, as a child neuropsychologist, he has conducted research on many aspects of the development of reading, language, and other cognitive skills in children. He has worked extensively on issues related to learning and attention problems, including definition and classification, neurobiological correlates, intervention, and most recently on the development of literacy skills in Spanish-speaking and bilingual children. He chaired the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities study section and is a former member of the NICHD Maternal and Child Health study section. He recently served on the President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education and is a member of the NICHD National Advisory Council. He has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Florida.
Robert E. Floden is a professor of teacher education, measurement and quantitative methods, and educational policy and is the director of the Institute for Research on Teaching and Learning at Michigan State University. He has written on a range of topics in philosophy, statistics, psychology, program evaluation, research on teaching, and research on teacher education. His current research examines the preparation of mathematics teachers and the development of leaders in mathematics and science education. He has a Ph.D. from Stanford University.
Ernest M. Henley is a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Washington. He has served as the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington and as director and associate director of its
Institute for Nuclear Theory. The focus of his work has been with space-time symmetries, the connection of quark-gluons to nucleons-mesons, and the changes that occur to hadrons when placed in a nuclear medium; at present he is working in the area of cosmology. He was elected to membership in the NAS in 1979 and served as chair of its Physics Section from 1998-2001. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and served as president of the American Physical Society and as a member of the U.S Liaison Committee for the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. He has a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Vinetta C. Jones is an educational psychologist and the dean of the School of Education at Howard University. During a 30-year career in public education, she has maintained a singular focus: developing and supporting professionals and creating institutional environments that develop the potential of all students to achieve high levels of academic excellence, especially those who have been traditionally underserved by the public education system. She has written and lectured widely on issues related to the education of diverse populations, especially in the areas of academic tracking, the power of teacher expectations, and the role of mathematics as a critical factor in opening pathways to success for minority and poor students. She served for eight years as executive director of EQUITY 2000 at the College Board, where she led one of the largest and most successful education reform programs in the country. She has served on numerous boards and national committees and was inducted into the Education Hall of Fame by the National Alliance of Black School Educators in 2000. She has a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Brian W. Junker is professor of statistics, Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include the statistical foundations of latent variable models for measurement, as well as applications of latent variable modeling in the design and analysis of standardized tests, small-scale experiments in psychology and psychiatry, and large-scale educational surveys such as the NAEP. He is a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, a member of the board of trustees and the editorial council of the Psychometric Society, and an associate editor and editor-elect of Psychometrika. He also served on the NRC’s Committee on Embedding Common Test Items in State and District Assessments. He is currently a member of the Design and
Analysis Committee for NAEP. He has a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Illinois (1988).
David Klahr is a professor and former head of the Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. His current research focuses on cognitive development, scientific reasoning, and cognitively based instructional interventions in early science education. His earlier work addressed cognitive processes in such diverse areas as voting behavior, college admissions, consumer choice, peer review and problem solving. He pioneered the application of information-processing analysis to questions of cognitive development and formulated the first computational models to account for children’s thinking processes. He was a member of the NRC’s Committee on the Foundations of Assessment. He has a Ph.D. in organizations and social behavior from Carnegie Mellon University.
Ellen Condliffe Lagemann is the Charles Warren Professor of the History of American Education and dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr. Lagemann has been a professor of history and education at New York University, taught for 16 years at Teachers College at Columbia University, and served as the president of the Spencer Foundation and the National Academy of Education. She was a member of the NRC’s Committee on Scientific Principles in Educational Research. She has an undergraduate degree from Smith College, an M.A. in social studies from Teachers College, and a Ph.D. in history and education from Columbia University.
Barbara Schneider is a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. She is a codirector of the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children and Work and the director of the Data Research and Development Center, a new federal interagency initiative designed to build research capacity. Her current interests include how social contexts, primarily schools and families, influence individuals’ interests and actions. She has a Ph.D. from Northwestern University.
Lisa Towne (Study Director) is a senior program officer in the NRC’s Center for Education and adjunct instructor of statistics at the Johns Hopkins University Institute of Policy Studies. She has also worked for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. Department
of Education Planning and Evaluation Service. She received an M.P.P. from Georgetown University.
Joseph Tobin is a professor in the College of Education at Arizona State University. Previously he served as a professor in the College of Education at the University of Hawaii. His research interests include educational ethnography, Japanese culture and education, visual anthropology, early childhood education, and children and the media. He was a member of the NRC’s Board on International Comparative Studies in Education. He has a Ph.D. in human development from the University of Chicago.
Tina M. Winters (Research Associate) works in the NRC’s Center for Education. Over the past 10 years, she has worked on a wide variety of education studies at the NRC and has provided research assistance for several reports, including Scientific Research in Education, Knowing What Students Know, and the National Science Education Standards.
