Nancy Cole is an

educational psychologist An educational psychologist is a psychologist whose differentiating functions may include diagnostic and psycho-educational assessment, psychological counseling in educational communities ( students, teachers, parents, and academic authorit ...

and expert on educational assessment. Cole is past president of the

American Educational Research Association The American Educational Research Association (AERA, pronounced "A-E-R-A") is a professional organization representing education researchers in the United States and around the world. AERA's mission is to advance knowledge about education and ...

and the

Educational Testing Service Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private educational testing and assessment organization. It is headquartered in Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey, Lawrence Township, New Jersey, but has a P ...

(ETS), and former Dean of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned her Ph.D. in psychology from the

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the Public university, public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referre ...

. Her undergraduate education in psychology was at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres. Rice University comp ...

(B.A., 1964). Cole co-authored ''Gender and Fair Assessment'' (Willingham & Cole, 1997), which is regarded as the most extensive study ever completed on gender and educational assessment. The study analyzed data from more than 400 assessments of over 15 million students.

Criticism

In his book, "Uneducated Guesses", Howard Wainer refers to Cole's presidency of the ETS as "disastrous." FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing reports ETS and Test Cheating. http://www.fairtest.org/ets-and-test-cheating Accessed Sept 10 2012. that during this period, ETS " ignored internal warnings about security problems in its computer adaptive Graduate Record Exam (GRE), according to documents recently made public in a U.S. district court...To protect its image and profits in the rush to introduce the new type of test into the marketplace, ETS also misled the New York State legislature about how the system actually worked...In fact, in her deposition, ETS President Nancy Cole admits it is now clear, in retrospect, that back in November of 1994, one or two good memorizers could have given a substantial advantage to a subsequent test-taker."

References

Willingham, W. W., & Cole, N. S. (1997). ''Gender and fair assessment''. Mahwah, NJ, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

External links

Nancy Cole Bio
American women psychologists Rice University alumni University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Nationality missing 21st-century American women American educational psychologists 21st-century American psychologists {{psychologist-stub