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Biography
Gregory Cizek researches and teaches about educational testing, program evaluation, research methods, statistics and applied psychometrics. He regularly comments on standard setting, testing policies, classroom assessment and cheating on tests.
Cizek provides expert consultation on testing programs and policy as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board and an advisory panel for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. He has held leadership positions in the American Educational Research Association and is past president of the National Council on Measurement in Education.
Cizek (pronounced SIGH-zick) has written more than 200 books, chapters, articles, conference papers and reports. He is editor of the “Handbook of Educational Policy” (1999) and “Setting Performance Standards” (2001, 2012); co-editor of the “Handbook of Formative Assessment” (2010), and author of “Detecting and Preventing Classroom Cheating” (2003), and co-author of “Addressing Test Anxiety in a High-Stakes Environment” (2005) and “Standard Setting: A Practitioner’s Guide” (2007), and other works.
Prior to joining the faculty at Carolina, Cizek managed national licensure and certification testing programs for American College Testing (ACT), served as a test development specialist for a statewide assessment program, and taught elementary school for five years in Michigan.
He regularly works with states, organizations, and the U.S. Department of Education on technical and policy issues related to large-scale standards-based testing programs for students in grades K–12.
He began his career as an elementary school teacher in Michigan, where he taught second and fourth grades. Before coming to UNC, he was a professor of educational research and measurement at the University of Toledo and, from 1997-99, he was elected to and served as vice-president of a local board of education in Ohio.
Industry Expertise (4)
Education/Learning
Research
Public Policy
Program Development
Areas of Expertise (7)
Academic Standards
Assessment
Grade Inflation
Common Core Standards
Test Validity
Cheating on Tests
Accountability
Accomplishments (2)
AERA Division D Award for Significant Contribution to Educational Measurement and Research Methodology (professional)
2006-01-01
American Educational Research Association (AERA) Division D Award for Significant Contribution to Educational Measurement and Research Methodology
NCME Award for Dissemination of Educational Measurement Concepts (professional)
2007-01-01
National Council on Measurement in Education Award for Dissemination of Educational Measurement Concepts
Education (3)
Michigan State University: B.A., Elementary Education 1979
Michigan State University: M.A., Curriculum and Instruction 1983
Michigan State University: Ph.D., Measurement, Evaluation, and Research Design 1991
Affiliations (5)
- American Educational Research Association
- National Council on Measurement in Education
- Editorial Board: Applied Measurement in Education
- Editorial Board: Journal of Educational Measurement
- Editorial Board: Educational and Psychological Measurement
Links (1)
Media Appearances (4)
Will states swap standards-based tests for SAT, ACT?
Education Week print
2016-01-04
Cizek said educators and policymakers need to examine how the high school experience would change by moving to SAT and ACT tests as measures of high school achievement.
Searching for clarity on formative assessment
Education Week print
Cizek said that because of confusion about the purpose of formative assessments among teachers, the assessments often are implemented in different ways, leading to very different educational outcomes.
Testing my patience
New York Daily News print
2014-08-26
In this op-ed column, Cizek is critical of complaints of work being done to establish a testing regime in New York schools. “Large testing contractors appear to get hammered regularly in the New York press for, essentially, being large,” Cizek wrote. “Well, when a task is large and has large consequences for students and the state’s education system, large is good. For my next flight, I’d prefer a plane made by Airbus or Boeing, not Ed’s Economy Aircraft Construction Co.”
How were they caught? Expert on test cheating explains
NBC's 'Rock Center with Brian Williams' tv
2011-11-28
For the program “Rock Center with Brian Williams,” Cizek showed longtime television news anchor Harry Smith how erasures on test answer sheets are detected on scanning equipment and how corrected answers on test sheets in Atlanta far exceeded what was likely to have been done by the students themselves.
Event Appearances (2)
Getting student assessment right
Holshouser Legislators Retreat: Education for a Stronger North Carolina Greensboro, North Carolina
2016-01-12
Opting-out: Psychometric and policy implications
Annual meeting of the National Council on Measurement in Education Washington, D.C.
2016-04-09
Articles (3)
Validating test score meaning and defending test score use: Different purposes, different methods
Assessment in Education
2015-08-18
Advances in validity theory and alacrity in validation practice have suffered because the term validity has been used to refer to two incompatible concerns: (1) the degree of support for specified interpretations of test scores (i.e. intended score meaning) and (2) the degree of support for specified applications (i.e. intended test uses). This article provides a brief summary of current validity theory, explication of a critical flaw in the current conceptualization of validity, and a framework that both accommodates and differentiates validation of test score inferences and justification of test use.
Defining and distinguishing validity: Interpretations of score meaning and justifications of test use
Psychological Methods
2012-03-17
The concept of validity has suffered because the term has been used to refer to 2 incompatible concerns: the degree of support for specified interpretations of test scores (i.e., intended score meaning) and the degree of support for specified applications (i.e., intended test uses). This article has 3 purposes: (a) to provide a brief summary of current validity theory, (b) to illustrate the incompatibility of incorporating score meaning and score use into a single concept, and (c) to propose and describe a framework that both accommodates and differentiates validation of test score inferences and justification of test use.
Progress on validity: The glass half full, the work half done
Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice.
2016-06-20
A response to articles on issues of validity in social science measurement.
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