About Us

Karla Egan, Ph.D.

EdMetric LLC’s founder, Dr. Karla Egan, is internationally recognized for her work in standard setting. Throughout her 20-year psychometric career she has designed and led over 60 standard setting workshops, published work related to standard setting, and delivered numerous presentations related to improving standard setting. During her tenure at CTB/Mc-Graw-Hill, Dr. Egan managed the standard setting team, and she increased the efficiency of materials and report production by 50%. Dr. Egan created an innovative framework for achievement level descriptors that was used by Smarter Balanced, and she was a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee for evaluating the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) achievement levels in Reading and Mathematics. In addition, she serves on ad-hoc committees that advise the National Assessment Governing Board on NAEP achievement levels. Due to her deep expertise, Dr. Egan often serves as an external evaluator for standard setting workshops.

In addition to her work in standard setting, Dr. Egan served as the lead psychometrician for several statewide assessment programs, Dr. Egan conducted psychometric and statistical analyses on student data, including item and anchor analyses, and performed data calibration, equating, and linking. She has extensive experience in the application of both classical and item response theory models, as well as broad-based knowledge of both linear and adaptive tests. She is adept at test form assembly; the construction, equation, and maintenance of multi-year and multi-form test scales; and is an expert at investigating and troubleshooting problematic anchor items. Dr. Egan has broad experience writing technical documentation for the various research projects that she has implemented as well as research projects implemented by others. She is also a member of the Technical Advisory Committees for Dynamic Learning Maps, Louisiana, Missouri, and North Dakota, and she is chairperson for the Indiana Technical Advisory Committee.

Previously, Dr. Egan worked as an associate at the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment (NCIEA) and as both research scientist and research manager at CTB/McGraw-Hill. In 1999, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she studied under Ron Hambleton and Hariharan Swaminathan. Although she was awarded her Ph.D. in the field of Sociology, her coursework and dissertation were in the areas of psychometrics and methodology.

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