Research & Expertise - NWEA

Michael Gaddis, PhD

Taylor Riordan — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 19:50:28 +0000

Broadly, Michael Gaddis’s work provides evidence of inequality in the US related to race/ethnicity, social class, and education. He studies educational inequality across five dimensions: (1) the effects of educational credentials on important life outcomes, including employment and health; (2) when and how educational credentials attenuate or exacerbate racial/ethnic discrimination; (3) intergenerational mobility as it relates to the direct and indirect effects of educational attainment across generations; (4) differences in students’ mental health and campus-level stigma across college and universities and the subsequent impact on academic achievement and attainment; and (5) racial/ethnic and SES inequalities in cultural capital and social capital and their effects on academic achievement and attainment among K–12 students.
Dr. Gaddis published a 2018 book on the experimental method used to investigate discrimination titled Audit Studies: Behind the Scenes with Theory, Method, and Nuance. His research has been published in numerous journals. In 2020, he was named Honorable Mention for the Distinguished Early Career Award by the American Sociological Association’s Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities. Prior to joining NWEA, Dr. Gaddis was an associate professor of sociology at UCLA, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy research at the University of Michigan, and an assistant professor of sociology and demography at Penn State University. He received a PhD in sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The post Michael Gaddis, PhD appeared first on NWEA.

Yon Soo Suh, PhD

Melissa Hay — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 19:47:06 +0000

Yon Soo Suh’s interests lie in developing and applying quantitative methods to promote more accurate modeling, interpretation, and use of educational data in assessment settings and empirical research. She specializes in latent variable modeling with a focus on understanding fine-grained psychological and cognitive processes underlying various response data. Prior to joining NWEA, Yon Soo worked with institutions such as the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, PBS Kids, and the Korean Institution of Curriculum and Education while at UCLA CRESST. Her projects included psychometric analyses of large-scale assessment data, analysis of telemetry data from digital educational games, and scale development and validation. Yon Soo holds a PhD in education, focused on quantitative methods, and a master’s degree in statistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. She also received a master’s degree in education and a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature, along with a national teaching certificate for English, from Yonsei University in South Korea.

The post Yon Soo Suh, PhD appeared first on NWEA.

Colleen Oppenzato

Melissa Hay — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 19:44:08 +0000

Colleen Oppenzato’s research focuses on how students develop mathematical thinking, from early childhood through the middle grades. Her specific interests include children’s understanding of rational numbers, how textbook input affects student learning, and how to measure teachers’ math pedagogical content knowledge. She is currently completing her PhD in cognitive science in education at Teachers College. Prior to joining NWEA, Colleen worked as an elementary school and middle school special education teacher and then as a math curriculum developer, editor, and project manager. She was also an affiliate with the Development and Research in Early Math Education (DREME) Network, where she created materials for teacher educators and for family math activities.

The post Colleen Oppenzato appeared first on NWEA.

Daniel Katz

Melissa Hay — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 19:39:27 +0000

Danny Katz is a research scientist focusing on the philosophy of measurement, ontology, and psychometrics. He is interested in methods for improving measurement claims in educational settings as well as using ideas from the philosophies of science and language to understand how we conceptualize what might be measurable in the human sciences. He hopes to do more work connecting educational measurement, psychometrics, and education policy. He has worked and published in areas related to test fairness, adolescent literacy, university-level biology education, and program evaluation. He is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The post Daniel Katz appeared first on NWEA.

Scott J. Peters, PhD

Melissa Hay — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 18:20:26 +0000

Scott J. Peters specializes in educational assessment and data use, gifted and talented student identification, equity within advanced educational opportunities, and effectiveness of educational policy. His research focuses on how schools can leverage assessment data for maximum school and student benefit. His ongoing projects relate to balancing cost, sensitivity, and equity in gifted and talented student identification, how to proactively screen students for advanced learning opportunities, examining growth trajectories for advanced learners, and how to ensure all students have access to advanced learning opportunities.

Prior to coming to NWEA, for 13 years, Dr. Peters served as a professor of assessment and research methodology at the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater. His scholarly work has appeared in the Australian Educational Researcher, AERA Open, Teaching for High Potential, the British Journal of Educational Psychology, Exceptional Children, and Gifted Child Quarterly, and many other publications. He received his PhD from Purdue University in educational psychology and applied research methodology.

The post Scott J. Peters, PhD appeared first on NWEA.

Ayesha K. Hashim, PhD

Melissa Hay — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 18:06:19 +0000

Ayesha K. Hashim draws on interdisciplinary and mixed-methods research designs to study the impacts of district-level school policies on student learning, as well as the leadership, organizational, and implementation conditions that can explain observed results. Her research covers a range of topics including the integration of technology with standards-based instruction, school choice and accountability, teacher professional development, and COVID recovery. Ayesha’s work has been published in Education Finance and Policy, Economics of Education Review, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Computers and Education, American Journal of Education, and Peabody Journal of Education.

Prior to joining NWEA, Ayesha was an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She completed her PhD in urban education policy, MA in economics, and master’s in public policy at the University of Southern California. She received the New Scholar Award in 2017 from the Association for Education Finance and Policy for her dissertation research.

The post Ayesha K. Hashim, PhD appeared first on NWEA.

Miles Davison, PhD

Melissa Hay — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 23:55:26 +0000

Miles Davison specializes in using quantitative and mixed-methodologies to examine how K-12 intervention policies and programs impact equity in schools. His research is driven by a desire to assist schools in creating optimal learning environments for students. He is particularly interested in understanding how particular processes and mechanisms associated with school policies ultimately impact student behavioral and academic outcomes. Specifically, his recent work has focused on changes in school disciplinary practices and disparities after the implementation of restorative justice policies. Through this work, Miles has gained a passion for producing research that is actionable and relevant to policymakers and practitioners.

Dr. Davison holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Irvine.

The post Miles Davison, PhD appeared first on NWEA.

Katherine Lazenby, PhD

Melissa Hay — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 17:08:37 +0000

Kat’s research interests include authentic, phenomenon-based learning experiences in science classrooms. She is especially interested in developing and using learning progressions to support and assess students’ competence with scientific practices, such as modeling and explaining scientific phenomena. Kat completed her PhD in chemistry and MA in educational measurement and statistics at the University of Iowa. Prior to joining NWEA, Kat worked in discipline-based education research, primarily in chemistry contexts, at San Diego State University and the University of Iowa.

The post Katherine Lazenby, PhD appeared first on NWEA.

Susan Kowalski, PhD

Melissa Hay — Wed, 25 May 2022 17:16:44 +0000

Susan Kowalski began her career in science education teaching high school physics and physical science in Bloomington, MN. She completed her PhD in curriculum and instruction from the University of Minnesota and the spent several years developing and researching curricula and professional learning experiences at BSCS Science Learning. Her current work investigates new approaches to three-dimensional assessment in support of the Next Generation Science Standards. She is focused on how teachers might learn to more effectively use assessment data to inform their day-to-day science instruction and enhance equitable learning opportunities for students.

The post Susan Kowalski, PhD appeared first on NWEA.

Fang Peng, PhD

Melissa Hay — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 15:24:24 +0000

Fang Peng works with the MAP Reading Fluency assessment. Among her interests and areas of expertise are computerized adaptive testing, measurement validity, early childhood development, and applications of natural language processing and machine learning in assessment contexts. Prior to joining NWEA in 2022, Fang worked as a psychometrician at the National Council of State Boards of Nursing where she gained extensive operational and research experience in large-scale licensure examinations. Fang holds a PhD in Educational Psychology with a concentration in Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The post Fang Peng, PhD appeared first on NWEA.