National expert appointed co-director of Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation

LAWRENCE — A nationally recognized expert in K-12 assessment, accountability systems and performance standards joins the Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation at the University of Kansas as its co-director. Marianne Perie joins Neal Kingston, current director and faculty member in the KU School of Education.

“Marianne Perie brings a national perspective that focuses on the interface between assessment and policy,” Kingston said. “She brings a multitude of assets in the field of K-12 assessment, accountability and performance standards, which will not only benefit CETE, but the hundreds of students, parents, educators and schools CETE staff work with in Kansas and across the country.”

Perie has assisted many states in developing assessments and accountability systems and has created publications that have guided assessment and accountability leaders and policy makers.

“Dr. Perie is widely recognized for the quality of service she provides,” said Kristopher Kaase, president of The Institute for Evidence-based Reform. “The University of Kansas is fortunate to have someone of Dr. Perie’s experience and expertise.”

Perie comes to CETE after 6 1/2 years at the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment in Dover, N.H., where she consulted with many states about optimal design of assessment and accountability systems as well as setting performance standards.

“Marianne is a very nimble thinker,” said Melissa Fincher, associate superintendent for assessment and accountability at the Georgia Department of Education. “She understands what states are up against and how complicated it is to operationalize assessments and to get tests built and ready for students and school administrators. She has been able to come up with solutions for many states to some pretty thorny issues.”

Her expertise includes setting performance standards, and she has provided extensive technical advice on the matter to several states. Perie also has taught courses and writes extensively on standard setting.

“One of Marianne’s many strengths is the ability to synthesize research ideas across a number of topics and apply this synthesis to the issue at hand,” said Phoebe Winter, executive vice president for education policy at Pacific Metrics, a K-12, large-scale assessment company. “This results in creative and theoretically sound approaches to novel assessment issues.”

Perie also brings expertise in test validity evaluation and has served and continues to serve on several state technical advisory committees, providing expert advice and technical assistance. She has worked to develop validity arguments for alternate assessments, which are assessments given to students with disabilities.

She worked with Georgia and many other states in crafting a series of studies of states’ alternate assessment programs where she facilitated discussions across states to discover their commonalities and differences and what it all meant.

“With her guidance, this study of alternate assessments was a great opportunity for us to do some in-depth analysis and see our program's strengths and weaknesses,” Fincher said.

She has also provided several workshops on validity of alternate assessments to states through the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs and Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Perie also served as senior program administrator for three years with Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., where she worked extensively on K-12 standard-setting planning, design and implementation. She also developed training programs to teach staff to run standard-setting workshops and taught graduate-level seminars on standard setting.

Perie received her doctorate in educational research, evaluation and measurement from the University of Virginia and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Cornell University.

CETE is a nationally recognized research center specializing in K-12 large-scale assessment and online test delivery systems. For more than 30 years, CETE has developed cutting-edge testing programs and technology tools. Through its partnership with the Kansas State Department of Education, CETE offers assessments to all 286 Kansas school districts. During the 2011-2012 school year, CETE administered 4.6 million test sessions online, and 99.8 percent of the Kansas general and modified assessments were administered by computer using CETE testing software.