Previous consultants Neal Kingston, Ph.D. Neal Kingston, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Associate Department Chair in the Psychology and Research in Education Department and Director of the Center for Educational Research and Evaluation at the University of Kansas. His research focuses on enhancing the validity and utility of large-scale assessments to better facilitate student learning. To this end his interests include: Use of computers to enhance test validity including the development of new item types and implementation of principles of universal design; Development and implementation of improved psychometric/cognitive models to provide more informative sub-scores and better diagnostic information; Improved scoring systems to maximize the validity and reliability of constructed response items both using human graders and computer-based grading; and improved score reporting systems to help educators make test results more readily actionable. As the former Kentucky Associate Commissioner for Curriculum and Assessment, Dr. Kingston was responsible for a statewide assessment system that included performance events and mathematics and writing portfolios. As the former Vice President of Research at CTB McGraw-Hill he shared responsibility for ensuring that products met educator needs. Robert McKinley, Ph.D. Dr. McKinley is currently an independent consultant and proprietor of Tamabilt Software Solutions, a company that provides custom software development and psychometric consulting services. Previously he wass the director of the Computer-Based Testing Research Department at ACT, in which capacity he managed both the developmental and the operational work on numerous CBT programs and projects. He has published numerous articles and research reports on various aspects of Item Response Theory and Computerized Adaptive Testing. Prior to assuming his position at ACT, Dr. McKinley was a Principal Development Scientist and Group Leader for the Research Division of ETS. As leader of the ETS Operations team for the GMAT, GRE, and TOEFL CBT programs, he developed and implemented a wide variety of methods and procedures still in use at ETS for the calibration of CBT item banks, CBT pool development and evaluation, and the packaging and distribution of CBT pools. From 1984 to 1986 Dr. McKinley was a faculty member in the Educational Research Department at The University of Toledo, where he taught graduate level courses in educational statistics, psychometrics, and experimental design. Stephen G. Sireci, Ph.D. Stephen G. Sireci is Professor of Education and Co-Chairperson of the Research and Evaluation Methods Program and Director of the Center for Educational Assessment in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He earned his Ph.D. in psychometrics from Fordham University and his master and bachelor degrees in psychology from Loyola College in Maryland. Before UMASS, he was Senior Psychometrician at the GED Testing Service, Psychometrician for the Uniform CPA Exam, and Research Supervisor of Testing for the Newark, NJ, Board of Education. He is known for his research in evaluating test fairness, particularly issues related to content validity, test bias, cross-lingual assessment, standard setting, and sensitivity review. He currently serves on several advisory boards including the Graduate Management Admissions Council Technical Advisory Committee, the Technical Advisory Panel for the Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy, and technical advisory committees for Puerto Rico and Texas. He is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and Division 5 of the American Psychological Association. He has also served as President of the Northeastern Educational Research Association, a Senior Scientist for the Gallup Organization, and a member of the Board of Directors for the National Council on Measurement in Education. In 2003 he received the School of Education's Outstanding Teacher Award and in 2007 he received the University of Massachusetts Chancellor's Medal. Professor Sireci reviews articles for over a dozen professional journals and he is on the editorial boards of Applied Measurement in Education, Educational and Psychological Measurement, the European Journal of Psychological Assessment, and Psicothema, and he is the co-editor of the International Journal of Testing. Craig S. Wells, Ph.D. Dr. Wells is an Assistant Professor of Education in the Research and Evaluation Methods Program in the School of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his Ph. D. and M. S. in psychometrics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and his B. A. in psychology (honors) from Castleton State College. He is an active member of the National Council on Measurement in Education and American Educational Research Association. Dr. Wells' research interests center on the development and application of quantitative methods in the behavioral sciences. His research has largely been motivated by measurement problems he experienced, both as an educational testing practitioner and in consultation with colleagues in other substantive areas. He is particularly interested in the area of item response theory, especially as related to differential item functioning, assessing model fit, and modeling item response functions nonparametrically, and more generally in the areas of nonparametric statistics and the theory of hypothesis testing. In addition, he is interested in the philosophy of science and its implications for the work of educational statisticians and psychometricians. In 2008, he received the College Outstanding Teacher Award from the School of Education.