About the Authors

Andy Porter
Andy Porter is Dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania and George and Diane Weiss Professor of Education. Trained as a statistician/psychometrician, he has been an active education researcher for more than 30 years and has led successful education research and development centers for 25 years. Porter currently chairs the assessment and accountability technical panels for the states of Ohio, Wisconsin and Missouri and serves on the technical panel for the State of Kentucky. His tools for measuring the content of instruction in K12 schools for the subjects of math, science, and English language arts are used in over 30 states. He is an elected member and vice president of the National Academy of Education, member of the National Assessment Governing Board, Lifetime National Associate of the National Academies, and past-President of the American Educational Research Association. Websites: andyporter.org; gse.upenn.edu/.

 

Joseph Murphy
Joseph Murphy is a Professor of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations at Vanderbilt University. He is a former administrator at the school, district, and state levels. He has published extensively on the topic of leadership in the leading journals in education as well as in the major practitioner outlets. His work on school administration focuses on the instructional dimensions of school leadership, beginning with his (and Philip Hallinger's) seminal work on principal and superintendent instructional leadership in the 1980's though his most recent volume (and related research) on teacher leadership (Connecting Teacher Leadership and School Development, 2005). His work has had an important influence on the shape and texture of school leadership in the United States, perhaps most noticeably as the foundation for the ISLLC Standards for School Leaders. Murphy has had considerable experience in developing processes and tools for leadership assessment. For example, he led the teams that created the specifications (with ETS) for the national licensure examination (School Leader Licensure Assessment) and for the statewide administrator evaluation system in Delaware.

 

Ellen Goldring
Ellen Goldring is the Alexander Heard Distinguished Service Professor and Professor of Education Policy and Leadership at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. She recently served as the coeditor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. She is also a member of the Task Force on Developing Research to Improve Educational Leadership, cosponsored by the American Education Research Association, The Laboratory of Student Success, and University Council for Educational Administration. Her work has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, The WT Grant Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Institute of Educational Sciences. Goldring has widespread experience in the field of educational leadership. Most recently, she has designed and implemented a principal leadership academy that is now in its fourth year of partnership with the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.

 

Stephen Elliott
Stephen Elliott is an educational psychologist with a specialization in school psychology and applied measurement. He is a Professor of Special Education and the Dunn Family Chair of Educational and Psychological Assessment in Peabody College at Vanderbilt University. Steve directs the Center for Assessment and Intervention Research and teaches courses in Assessment and Scale Development. He has designed, developed, and conducted norming and validity studies, in collaboration with major test publishers, for the Social Skills Rating System, Academic Competence Evaluation Scales, Academic Intervention Monitoring System, and the Student Self-Concept Scales. Steve has also been the lead developer on statewide alternate assessment systems for the Wisconsin, Idaho, Mississippi, and Hawaii departments of education. These alternate assessment systems involve multiple raters, multiple sources of evidence collected over time, criterion referenced scoring rubrics, and integrated proficiency reports.