Key Personnel
EVEA is helmed by a leadership team with decades of experience among them conducting
research, providing education leadership, managing grants and projects, and producing
high quality products to help all students achieve academic success
These leaders will oversee EVEA’s activities to ensure that project outputs are
theoretically sound, technically rigorous, and aligned with project targets and
intentions
SENIOR ADVISOR AND STATE LEAD: Joe Willhoft, Ph.D, is the
Assistant Superintendent for Assessment and Student Information for the Washington
Office of the Superintendent for Public Instruction. In addition to his responsibilities
for Washington’s statewide student testing program and student information systems,
he is presently a member of the EIMAC Assessment Task Force and chairman of the
NAEP Policy Task Force for the National Assessment Governing Board. As the Senior
Advisor and State Lead for EVEA, and will ensure that the project is
implemented in concert with the needs of Washington and the other participating
states.
CO PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Ellen Forte, Ph.D, is the President
and founder of edCount, LLC and has nearly two decades’ experience conducting research;
providing advice and reporting on standards, assessments, and accountability; and
assisting state and local education agencies in the successful interpretation and
implementation of education policies. She currently holds seats on the assessment
Technical Advisory Committees for four states and Puerto Rico, is Principal Investigator
for two other ongoing validity studies, both funded by grants through the US Department
of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs, and is the chief policy advisor
to the National Deaf Education Center at Gallaudet University on its implementation
of standards, assessments, and accountability mechanisms as required under the 2008
Education of the Deaf Act. As Co-Principal Investigator she provides oversight to
all the activities of this project, including the Management Team.
CO PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Marianne Perie, Ph.D, is a Senior
Associate at the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment (NCIEA-Center
for Assessment), whose work centers on standard setting, reporting, accountability,
technical documentation, and validity studies. She has conducted standard-setting
studies in over sixteen states, districts, and foreign countries and is currently
providing technical assistance to a group of states developing and evaluating a
validity argument for their alternate assessment based on alternate achievement
standards. As Co-Principal Investigator and part of the Management Team, she provides
coordination and leadership to the Expert Panel.
CO PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Alison Bailey, Ph.D, is Professor
in the Division of Psychological Studies in Education of the Department of Education,
University of California, Los Angeles, as well as faculty associate researcher at
the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST).
Dr. Bailey’s work focuses on language, literacy and assessment, specifically the
academic English language development of second-language learners, and English language
assessment. She serves on the ELD assessment technical advisory board to the California
Department of Education, and has authored numerous books and articles, including
The Language Demands of School: Putting Academic English to the Test, (Yale University
Press, 2007). As Co-Principal Investigator and a member of the Management Team,
she provides direct oversight to the research partners.
PROJECT DIRECTOR: Elizabeth Towles-Reeves, Ph.D, is an expert
in the field of special needs students and alternate assessment, and served as project
coordinator for the University of Kentucky’s National Alternate Assessment Center
for 5 years, overseeing projects funded by the US Department of Education’s Office
of Special Education Programs. Her work at NAAC included serving as research coordinator
for a Validity GSEG, which engaged a five-state consortium in studies to test and
strengthen the validity of the participating states’ alternate assessment systems.
As the Project Director, Dr. Towles-Reeves will provide direct oversight to the
Administration and Partnerships within the proposal.
DEPUTY PROJECT DIRECTOR: Sara Waring, Ph.D, is an expert
in the field of English as a Second Language (ESL). In the past, she was the State
Director of Title III at the South Dakota Department of Education and has served
the Sioux Falls Public School District in various capacities, including as the Director
of Federal Programs and Grants Management, as the district-level coordinator of
a discretionary grant teacher training program for professional development for
ESL and mainstream teachers, and as an ESL teacher at the elementary, middle school
and high school levels. As the Deputy Project Director, Dr. Waring will coordinate
the research partners in conjunction with Dr. Bailey. Together, these leaders will
direct the Management Team, the Expert Panel, and the research partners throughout
the course of the project.