Laura Pinsonneault works to create resources and facilitate events that support successful systems and structures for accountability, balanced assessment, and data use in a continuous improvement context. Her interests focus on the intersection of policy and practice, namely, how to design, implement, and evaluate accountability, assessment, and reporting systems that meaningfully and appropriately inform processes that support educational improvement.
Before coming to the Center for Assessment in 2021, Laura spent 11 years with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction where she was Director of the Office of Educational Accountability for over nine years. In her role, she led the design and implementation of separate state and federal accountability systems, work that involved stakeholder engagement, establishing vision and purpose for the system, communications and extensive documentation, standard settings, report design, and coordination with information technology and data systems. She regularly connected with teams across the agency to integrate accountability outcomes within a larger supported system of continuous improvement. Among other things, these connections supported a redesign and expansion of the state accountability system to better reflect a focus on equity, to make the system more user-friendly, and to include data about career and course opportunities in high schools.
Laura is interested in helping clients carefully connect accountability and assessment system design with intended use, including how information about the system is provided to different audiences. She has extensive experience leading stakeholder and advisory groups, developing and providing professional development, supporting report design, writing both technical and user-friendly documentation, guiding policy development and interpretation, and working to create cohesion across separate accountability systems.
Laura has a Master of Public Policy (MPP) degree with a focus on education and social welfare policy from the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
Recent and Relevant Publications
Domaleski, C., D’Brot, J., Pinsonneault, L., Gong, B., & Brandt, C. (2023). The Path Forward for School Accountability: Practical Ways to Improve School Accountability Systems Now. National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment.
