Author: Carla Evans

Dr. Carla Evans is a Senior Associate at the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment (Center for Assessment). She is actively engaged with projects that attempt to bridge the gap between classroom assessment and large-scale assessment.

Carla supports states in designing and implementing assessment reforms, especially those that rely on performance assessments. For example, she worked with others from the Center for Assessment as the lead technical consultants on New Hampshire’s Performance Assessment of Competency Education (PACE) innovative assessment system, with the Michigan Assessment Consortium on classroom performance assessments, and currently with the Hawai‘i Department of Education on culturally responsive performance assessments and implementation supports. She is also working in multiple states to support the design and implementation of balanced assessment systems with a particular focus on scaling and sustaining assessment literacy initiatives with K-12 teachers and school/district leaders.

Carla’s research focuses on the impacts and implementation of assessment and accountability policies on teaching and learning. She is especially interested in policy research related to balanced assessment systems, culturally responsive assessment, performance-based assessments, and assessment literacy.

Carla is publishing two books in 2024: one volume with Scott Marion, Understanding Instructionally Useful Assessment, and an NCME volume co-edited with Catherine Taylor, Culturally Responsive Assessment in Classrooms and Large-Scale Contexts: Theory, Research and Practice.

Carla has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and regularly presents her research at the American Educational Research Association (AERA), National Council for Measurement in Education (NCME), and the National Conference on Student Assessment (NCSA). Carla is also a frequent blogger on the Center's website and has created a set of open-source Classroom Assessment Literacy modules as well as resources on assessing 21st century skills.

Carla received a Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire with a concentration in Assessment, Evaluation, and Policy. She was awarded numerous honors, including AERA Division H’s Outstanding Dissertation Award, UNH Dissertation Year Fellowship, UNH Graduate Research Assistantships, and UNH Education Department Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award. Carla serves on AERA’s Classroom Assessment SIG leadership team and as an adjunct professor of education at the University of New Hampshire. Carla began her career as an elementary classroom teacher for almost a decade.