John P. Poggio

John Poggio, Ph.D. is a Professor of Educational Psychology and Research at the University of Kansas. Professor Poggio works with a research team through the eLearning Design Lab on research and service grants and contracts in areas involving human assessment in learning contexts, higher education admissions, placement and course testing needs and issues, planning and conducting educational program evaluations, and monitoring school improvement for education agencies. For the past thirty years Dr. Poggio and his colleagues have worked closely with the state, province, national and international leaders to coordinate and implement the design and development of tests that are administered to regular, special education and ESL students in reading, mathematics, writing, social studies and science. In this capacity, Poggio and his colleagues have helped education agencies move from reliance on paper and pencil multiple choice tests for evaluating learning to establishing assessment and accountability systems that have students produce information by working individually and in groups, create assessments that support as well as evaluate higher order skills outcomes, and move decidedly into computer-based assessment. Today the very diverse computerized systems that he has developed are widely used in K-12 education. Central to this work has been the development of testing systems and supports (audio, calculators, images, etc.) that meet professional standards of validity, reliability, freedom for bias, test form equating, evaluation of performance assessments, and establishing test performance standards. He and his group of researchers have worked to assure links and connections among assessments, curriculum and instructional approaches to create systems that support and advance teaching, student aids and tools as standardized calculators, and learning simple and complex skills with students in a variety of education environments. Dr. Poggio has served as an advisor on student testing, instructional systems and school accountability nationally and internationally. In his academic role, Professor Poggio teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in measurement, evaluation, research design and statistical analysis. He has authored over 200 papers, articles, technical reports, book chapters, tests and texts on topics relating to testing, assessment, evaluation and statistical analysis in education. Dr. Poggio specializes in psychometric methods, educational assessment and policy, and large scale assessment.