Author: Nathan Dadey

Nathan Dadey is interested in the design, scaling, and use of educational assessments, particularly assessments used for accountability purposes. He aims to produce methodological and applied work that contributes to improved understanding and use of assessment results in policy contexts.

In terms of methodological work, Nathan focuses on tackling issues in which typical educational measurement approaches fall short. One such area is the measurement of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). For example, Nathan has supported multiple state departments of education (Delaware, Wisconsin, and Nebraska) in developing conceptualizations of their NGSS statewide systems of assessments, leading content specialists in the creation of three dimensional tasks, assisting multiple SCASS groups within the Council of Chief State School Officers and reviewing NGSS performance task quality and evaluation tools (with Achieve). A second area deals with the numerous challenges inherent in designing and implementing comprehensive systems of assessment. While working to tackling these kinds of challenges, Nathan has explored ways in which a set of “mini-interim” assessments can be scaled (with Curriculum Associates), written a policy brief addressing ESSA’s interim assessment provision and explored ways in which Bayesian networks can be used to summarize interim and summative assessment results.

In terms of applied work, Nathan focuses on issues that threaten the validity of assessment and accountability operational programs. These issues include the dimensionality of alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards (on behalf of NCSC), the impact of interruptions on online assessment results (on behalf of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia) as well as recommendations to address such impacts (on behalf of CCSSO), the representation of English Language Proficiency within state accountability systems (on behalf of the Latino Policy Forum), and the comparability of assessment scores across multiple digital devices (on behalf of the TILSA SCASS).

Nathan received a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder with a concentration in research and evaluation methodology.