NCAASE - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Director of Technology Development

Aaron Glasgow has developed computer-based solutions for the educational community since 1995. He has served as the technical coordinator and lead developer for several federal grants and state contracts. His interests include: web applications, database design and administration, electronic media capture and utilization, and general application development.

Job Titles:

• Video Consultant

Adam Pritt is an E-Learning Technology Specialist in the College of Education in the Department of Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership at the the University of Oregon.

Job Titles:

• Principal Investigator
• BRT Affiliate
• Co - Principal Investigator
• Executive Director at the Center
• Professional

Dr. Kamata is the Executive Director at the Center on Research and Evaluation (CORE). He has also been a Professor at Southern Methodist University since August 2013 (Department of Education Policy & Leadership, Center on Research and Evaluation, Simmons School of Education & Human Development; Department of Psychology, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences). Prior to joining SMU, Dr. Kamata was a faculty member at the University of Oregon and Florida State University. Dr. Kamata's primary research interest is psychometrics and educational and psychological measurement, focusing on implementation of item-level test data analysis methodology through various modeling framework, including item response theory, multilevel modeling, and structural equation modeling. He did pioneering work on multilevel item response theory modeling, where item response data from individuals are nested within group units, such as schools. This line of work is represented by his 2001 publication in Journal of Educational Measurement, a special issue on multilevel measurement modeling in Journal of Applied Measurement in 2005, and several book chapters on the topic, including a recent chapter in the Handbook of Advanced Multilevel Analysis (2011). Other recent interests include developing effect size measures for testlet modeling, developing reliability measures of growth trajectory for longitudinal data modeling, and Bayesian inference for complex psychometric models. Dr. Kamata received his doctoral degree in Measurement and Quantitative Methods from Michigan State University in 1998. Part of a related project, funded by IES and led by Principal Investigator Akihito Kamata, Developing Computational Tools for Model-Based Oral Reading Fluency Assessments, expands upon the estimation model developed by the CORE + Prosody project at BRT. This project includes the development of a sentence-level model that takes into account between-sentence dependency, and incomplete reading. CORE + Prosody

Job Titles:

• Analyst
• Programmer
• Analyst Programmer III

Alex Schumann started at BRT in the summer of 2021, Alex brings 25 years of experience creating computing solutions to fit the needs of everyday people. He has special interests in web application development, databases, cloud systems architecture, and open source. Previously Alex has worked with zebrafish research, physics, astronomy, hardware validation, and university housing. Alex received a bachelor's degree in Management Information Systems from Oregon State University. When he is not sitting at the command line or parenting 4 kids, Alex enjoys hiking, 3d printing, electronics, and Minecraft.

Job Titles:

• Senior Research Associate

Brock Rowley earned his D.Ed. in 2016. His dissertation involved an analysis of the Approaches to Learning measure included in Oregon's Kindergarten Assessment. Input from parents and teachers was collected on a variety of behavioral rating scales across time. A cut-score for the Approaches to Learning assessment was proposed using a ROC analysis. Brock is currently serving as a Senior Research Associate at BRT. Prior to this assignment, he worked as a director of special education, elementary principal, high school vice principal, dean of students, and classroom teacher. His areas of expertise include alternate assessments based on alternate academic achievement standards (AA-AAAS), accommodations, response to intervention, behavioral assessments, and evaluation related to IDEA eligibility. Brock's primary research interests are: Modeling academic growth for students with disabilities, Large-scale special education assessment, and Respectful accountability systems. Education and Licensure D.Ed. Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership. University of Oregon, June 2015 M.Ed. Educational Policy and Management (Instructional Leadership) with an emphasis in Effective Behavioral Supports. University of Oregon, August 1999

Job Titles:

• Associate Professor
• BRT Researcher

Cengiz Zopluoglu, Associate Professor, joined the faculty in the Department of Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership at the University of Oregon in June 2020 after serving seven years in the Research, Measurement, and Evaluation program at the University of Miami. Dr. Zopluoglu received his Ph.D. in Quantitative Methods in Education program from the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota. He was teaching math in a middle school in Turkey and moved to the U.S. in 2007 after he was awarded a highly competitive scholarship from the Turkish Ministry of National Education for graduate study in the U.S. in educational measurement. Prior to his faculty experience, Dr. Zopluoglu held research assistant positions with the Quantitative Methods in Education program and Office of Research and Consultation Services at the University of Minnesota, and also had the privilege of doing psychometric research at the Minneapolis Public Schools in Minnesota and ACT, Inc. in Iowa. Dr. Zopluoglu has taught advanced-level graduate courses on psychometrics and statistical methodology including General Linear Models, Item Response Theory, Measurement and Psychometric Theory, Categorical Data Analysis, and Data Analysis with R in Educational and Behavioral Research. Dr. Zopluoglu has substantial experience in providing statistics and measurement consultation to faculty and students on their projects. His methodological publications have appeared in leading measurement and statistics journals including Applied Psychological Measurement, Behavior Research Methods, Educational and Psychological Measurement, Multivariate Behavioral Research, Psychometrika, Psychological Methods, and Structural Equation Modeling as well as in journals focusing on applied research. His most recent work and personal blog can be accessed from his personal website at cengiz.me

Job Titles:

• BRT Research Assistant

Job Titles:

• BRT Affiliate

Job Titles:

• Data Manager

Denise Swanson has worked for Behavioral Research and Teaching in a variety of capacities since 1992. Her responsibilities have included data collection; data file clean-up; scan form creation, production and scanning; website development and maintenance of the BRT Projects website; organization, cataloguing, and updating of research materials and resources; and customer service, providing email and phone-based support to K-12 educators throughout the United States. She works closely with researchers to prepare and clean data files in preparation for data analysis and in the production and management of research-oriented documents and assessment materials. Denise came to BRT after a career as a seasonal Park Interpreter with the U. S. Park Service, U. S. Forest Service, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers, and the Illinois Department of Conservation. She graduated from Southern Illinois University with a B.S. in Recreation (emphasis in Outdoor Education). Denise's nomination emphasized her leadership role in supporting a positive work environment in BRT as well as her long-standing contributions to the wider UO community through her service to the women's basketball team and the care with which she helps ensure the BRT offices and the campus as a whole reflect positively on the University. "Denise is focused on doing her job really well and is always willing to step in to help on projects. She is my go-to person when it comes to getting detailed projects that require a lot of coordination done," explained BRT Co-Director Julie Alonzo. "But what makes Denise really stand out is that she is also deeply concerned with making sure the work environment is supportive and positive. Whether it's organizing a birthday celebration, hosting a baby shower, helping someone move, or rallying the troops to support other members of the BRT team when they are in need, Denise is always front and center, going above and beyond to help make BRT a really special place to work."

Job Titles:

• Headliner
• Research Assistant Professor at BRT
• Star Reviewer

Daniel Anderson, Research Assistant Professor at BRT, is leading a new set of data science courses through the University of Oregon's College of Education. Building off the success of prior offerings, Daniel is now planning to offer a three-course sequence this year (during the fall, winter, and spring), which may be extended with two additional offerings during the fall and winter of the 2019-2020 school year. The course offerings heavily emphasize working with data programmatically, transparent and reproducible workflows, and visualizing and communicating data, all through the statistical computing environment R. "I started learning R during my doctoral studies because it just kind of seemed like the thing to do", Daniel says, "but it has completely changed my life - not just in the way I work with and think about data, but in terms of opening my eyes to an entirely different world I didn't even know existed and providing me opportunities I never expected." A big part of the world Daniel had previously not interacted with, is the free and open source soft ware community, or FOSS. As a beginner, Daniel says these communities can often be intimidating, but he insists that the R community is different. "Just go on twitter and be a lurker." He suggests. "Search around using the #rstats hash tag and you'll see a community that is absolutely committed to welcoming users at all levels, including absolute beginners." Daniel Anderson, Ph.D., Star Reviewer! March 2, 2018 BRT Research Associate Daniel Anderson, Ph.D., will be honored at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) for his outstanding service as a peer reviewer for the journal Educational Researcher. Dr. Anderson began working for Behavioral Research and Teaching soon after graduating with his Master's degree from the University of Oregon in 2009 and has been an integral part of the BRT team ever since. He earned his … Continue reading Daniel Anderson, Ph.D., Star Reviewer!

Job Titles:

• Researcher
• BRT Affiliate

Dr. Jan Hasbrouck is a leading researcher, educational consultant, and author. She was a reading specialist and literacy coach for 15 years before teaching at the University of Oregon and later becoming a professor at Texas A&M University. She served as Executive Consultant to the Washington State Reading Initiative and as an advisor to the Texas Reading Initiative. Dr. Hasbrouck has provided educational consulting to individual schools across the United States as well as in Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, and Germany, helping teachers, specialists, and administrators design and implement effective assessment and instructional programs targeted to help low-performing readers. Dr. Hasbrouck earned her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Oregon, and completed her Ph.D. at Texas A&M. Her research in areas of reading fluency, reading assessment, instructional coaching, and English Learners has been published in numerous professional books and journals. She is the author and coauthor/coeditor of several books including "Conquering Dyslexia", "Reading Fluency", "Student-Focused Coaching" and "Climbing the Ladder of Reading & Writing", along with several assessment tools. Dr. Hasbrouck works with the McGraw Hill publishers as an author of their "Wonders" and "WonderWorks" reading and intervention programs. In 2019 she helped found Read Washington, a 501(c3) nonprofit organization with the mission to "provide professional development opportunities, based on the science of reading, so every student becomes a skilled and confident reader." She also enjoys volunteering at her grandson's K-8 school in Seattle.

Job Titles:

• Professor
• Professor at Behavioral Research
• Research Assistant Professor
• Research Associate Professor

Joseph Nese is a Research Associate Professor at Behavioral Research and Teaching at the University of Oregon. He received his Ph.D. in school psychology from the University of Maryland, and his B.A from the University of California at Santa Barbara. His research focuses on developing and improving systems that support data-based decision making in schools, applying advanced statistical methods and data science principles to educational assessment & measurement, and education access & quality. Joseph has been Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on projects totaling over $9 million in external funding. He is the PI/Co-PI on three IES measurement grants (R305A140203, R305A200018, R305D200038) to develop and validate a scaled computerized assessment system of oral reading fluency. He is the Co-I on a NIH/NIDA grant (1R01DA059401-01) to evaluate the effectiveness of the ISLA model (Inclusive Skill- building Learning Approach) to improve both education access and quality and the social and community environment to prevent school exclusion and substance misuse, and was also the Co-PI on an IES innovation grant (R305A180006) to develop the ISLA intervention to replace exclusionary discipline with instructional and restorative practices. Dr. Joseph F.T. Nese was recently promoted to the rank of Research Associate Professor by the University of Oregon.

Job Titles:

• BRT Co - Director
• Headliner
• Research Associate Professor & Behavioral Research & Teaching Co - Director
• Research Associate Professor & BRT Co - Director

Julie Alonzo earned her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership with a specialization in Learning Assessment / Systems Performance at the University of Oregon in 2007. She earned her B.A. in English from Carleton College in 1990, her NBPTS Certification in Adolescent and Young Adult English Language Arts in 2002, and worked as a high school teacher for 12 years prior to beginning her doctoral studies. While a graduate student, she was named a Stafford Student Scholar representing the University of Oregon as a member of The National Institute on Leadership, Disability and Students Placed at Risk. An article she co-authored was honored as the Article of the Year by the peer-reviewed journal Assessment for Effective Intervention. Julie has worked at BRT since 2002, initially as a graduate employee, then a full-time member of the research team. In 2016, she was promoted to Co-Director at BRT, a position she has maintained ever since. A Research Associate Professor at the University of Oregon, Julie has taught graduate-level writing and research courses for the College of Education and Chairs dissertation committees in the Department of Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership. Julie's primary research interests include teacher professional development and the meaningful inclusion of students with diverse learning needs. With a $1.5 million research grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) launching in August of 2016, Dr. Julie Alonzo, Co-Director of BRT, is excited about the future. "The funding for Project DATA for RTI," she explains, "came at the perfect time, exactly one decade after we received the initial funding that enabled us to develop the easyCBM system. The initial work, funded by the Office of Special Education Programs, gave us the seed money to work with a great team of K-5 educators to design the original system, including building the basic reports and functionality. Three additional grants from IES in the past ten years provided the opportunity to develop, refine, and expand the types of assessments the system provides as well as the grade levels it covers. Now, we are moving into the study of how best to support teachers in their use of the data, all with the goal of helping students succeed academically." "This new grant will enable us to test out different approaches to providing professional development to teachers to help them harness the power of RTI data. One of our basic premises is that the key to helping students meet academic expectations is to ensure that they are being taught in a way that meets their needs. Teachers need to be able to track the impact of their instruction, making adjustments in curriculum, strategies, grouping, and intensity as needed until they reach that ‘ah-ha moment' when it all starts falling into place. Project Data for RTI gives us four years in which to develop and validate not only the content of professional development units, but also the way it is delivered to teachers, all with the goal supporting teachers in their daily work." Dr. Alonzo has been intimately involved with the easyCBM project since its earliest conception. "The idea for the original proposal came from JT [Dr. Gerald Tindal, Director of BRT], based on his experiences with CBMs and his own graduate student days at the University of Minnesota, and when we received funding to become one of three Model Demonstration Centers for Response to Intervention in the nation, I couldn't wait to get started. I was a doctoral student at the time, and the project gave me the opportunity to integrate my previous work experience as a high school teacher and sometimes administrator with my Ph.D. coursework in statistics, measurement, and assessment."

Job Titles:

• BRT Researcher
• Research Assistant Professor

Leilani Sáez (Ph.D., Educational Psychology) conducts research focused on executive functioning, classroom behavior, and teacher practice factors in learning to read. She is particularly interested in the prevention and support of learning difficulties across the lifespan and has been a principal investigator of two large-scale and numerous smaller-scale funded projects. Leilani has primarily written and presented in the areas of working memory processing, measurement, and reading skill development. She has extensive experience developing educational assessments that measure cognitive, academic, and behavioral domains. To enable meaningful "assessment-guided" preschool practices for reducing children's risk for reading disabilities and strengthening the emergence of their classroom learning receptiveness, Leilani and her team created an online tool with assessment, generative curriculum, and teacher-training capabilities. BRT Researcher, Leilani Sáez, Promoted to Research Assistant Professor September, 2016 The University of Oregon recently recognized Dr. Leilani Sáez's contributions to research and practice with a promotion to the Research Professor ranks. "The promotion marks an important milestone for Dr. Sáez here at UO in that it moves her to the most prestigious of trajectories available for career NTTF research faculty," explains BRT Co-Director Julie Alonzo. "Leilani's work as Principal Investigator on Project Iceberg and the pivotal role she has…

Job Titles:

• Associate Professor
• Research Assistant Professor

Rhonda Nese, PhD joined Educational and Community Supports in 2013 after receiving her PhD in School Psychology. Through the OSEP-funded National TA-Center on PBIS, Dr. Nese provides technical assistance to state, district, and school level teams across the nation on PBIS practices, including effective classroom behavior management strategies, bullying prevention, and alternatives to exclusionary discipline practices. Within her position as a technical assistance provider, she has also utilized her expertise in single-case research to examine the effectiveness of intervention programs, including video-based parent training and bullying prevention. She currently serves as the Project Coordinator for an IES-funded Goal 1 grant (PI: McIntosh) exploring sustainability of school-wide PBIS, and is responsible for managing longitudinal data collection and analyses across over 800 schools throughout the United States. She has published articles on intervention implementation and sustainability of evidence-based practices in peer-reviewed journals including School Psychology Quarterly, Behavioral Disorders, and Children and Youth Services Review. Dr. Nese recently served as the Principal Investigator on a foundation grant focused on collecting preliminary data on an instructional alternative to suspensions intervention, which is the primary focus of her current research interests. She brings a great deal of expertise as it relates to training teachers and administrators on equitable instructional practices, systems change, and policy implementation to support their community of learners. The project extends Nese's earlier work on preventative strategies to improve student outcomes, and in particular her focus on alternatives to exclusionary discipline practices. Nese has previously explored the topic with Fairway Fund grant funding Piloting a Systematic Instructional Alternative to Out-of-School Suspension in a presentation she made at the 2016 annual conference of the Oregon School Psychology Association and in a Symposium presentation at the 2017 Northwest Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports Spring Conference. The IES funding, however, is an important next step in that it will enable Nese and her colleagues to develop and evaluate an instructional alternative to exclusionary discipline in schools. In the abstract for her grant proposal, Nese explained: "Ample scientific research documents that exclusionary discipline practices are both ineffective for reducing problem behaviors (American Academy of Pediatrics Council on School Health, 2013) and harmful to the long-term social and academic outcomes of students (Noltemeyer et al., 2015). Further, exclusionary discipline practices are especially harmful given their disproportionate use with students of color (McIntosh et al., 2014), students with disabilities (Losen et al., 2015), and those who are struggling academically (U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, 2014). Therefore, the purpose of this project is to develop the ISLA Model [instructional suspension learning alternative] to help students return to class faster and with the needed skills to remain in class while also improving classroom practices and administrator responses to reduce the use of exclusionary discipline." Nese, who earned her Ph.D. in School Psychology in 2013, has received accolades for her scholarship, receiving an Excellence in Research/Outreach Early Career Award in 2017 and numerous scholarship and fellowship honors spanning two decades. She has published widely in highly-regarded journals including Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, Educational Researcher, Behavioral Disorders, Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, Children and Youth Services Review, Prevention Science, Assessment for Effective Intervention, and School Psychology Quarterly. One of the articles which she co-wrote with colleagues received the 2017 Article of the Year Award from Behavioral Disorders. Dr. Rhonda N.T. Nese, who works as a Research Assistant Professor in the Educational and Community Supports research unit within the University of Oregon's College of Education, recently received the good news that her grant proposal Development of an Instructional Alternative to Out-of-School Suspension was selected by the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) for four-years of funding to the tune of just under $1.5 million. The project extends Nese's earlier work on preventative strategies to improve student outcomes, and in…

Job Titles:

• Analyst
• Programmer

Evan Townsend joined BRT in the Spring of 2015 where he has focused on the development of BRT's web and mobile assessment systems. He earned his Bachelor's in Computer and Information Science at the University of Oregon and has interests in high performance computing, artificial intelligence, shaping the future of human-computer interaction.

Job Titles:

• BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH & TEACHING Meet Us Our Team
• BRT Director
• Director of Behavioral Research & Teaching

Before becoming Emeritus Professor in 2019, Dr. Tindal was the Castle-McIntosh-Knight Professor in the College of Education - University of Oregon. He is the Director of Behavioral Research and Teaching (BRT). His research focuses on integrating students with disabilities in general education classrooms, curriculum-based measurement for screening students at risk of learning problems, monitoring student progress, and evaluating instructional programs. Dr. Tindal is currently Professor Emeritus and the Director of Behavioral Research and Teaching (BRT) - University of Oregon. He is the former Castle-McIntosh-Knight Professor in the College of Education and past Department Head of Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership. His research focuses on integrating students with disabilities in general education classrooms, curriculum-based measurement for screening students at risk, monitoring student progress, and evaluating instructional programs. Dr. Tindal also conducts research on large scale testing and development of alternate assessments. This work includes investigations of teacher decision-making on test participation, test accommodations, and extended assessments of basic skills. He publishes and reviews articles in many special education journals and has written extensively on curriculum-based measurement and large-scale testing. He has also taught scores of courses on assessment systems, data driven decision-making, research design, and program evaluation. His research and teaching form the basis for developing digital assessments: easyCBM© (serving 140,000 teachers and one million students across the U.S.), WriteRightNow©, and CBMskills®.

Job Titles:

• Research Assistant

Joe Swinehart earned his M.Ed in Educational Policy and Management from the University of Oregon in 1999. After 15 years of teaching in Oregon, he taught for six years in American international schools in Jordan and Nicaragua, and now has returned to Eugene. Joe's focus is on providing meaningful mathematics instruction and assessment to all learners. Education and Licensure M.Ed. Educational Policy and Management (Instructional Leadership) with an emphasis in Classroom Technology. University of Oregon, August 1999

Job Titles:

• Analyst Programmer II

Joshua Walli n joined BRT in 2022 to work on the easyCBM project, an online service that provides testing, data management, and reporting for K-8 reading and math to thousands of schools across the country.

Job Titles:

• Office Manager

Julie Deskin is currently the Office Specialist 2 at Behavioral Research and Teaching at the University of Oregon. She is responsible for planning and scheduling conferences and meetings. In addition, she composes and distributes communications to ensure attendees have accurate in for mation for these meetings. She also provides editing of materials prepared for pre-school through grade 12 educators, including dissemination to parents and Department of Education personnel. Materials edited include the annual technical report for the Oregon Departments of Education's Extended Assessment for Students with Significant Disabilities, and pre-school curriculum materials for the LRA Greenhouse online application. Juli also provides customer support for educators' on how to sign up and manage their easyCBM accounts. The easyCBM system is a user based assessment tool to over 1.5 million students and K-12 educators across the United States as well as internationally.

Job Titles:

• Specialist

Job Titles:

• Associate Professor

Job Titles:

• BRT Affiliate

Job Titles:

• Research Coordinator of Finance and Operations

Job Titles:

• Dean, College of Education, University of Oregon

Job Titles:

• Research Assistant

Job Titles:

• Research Associate
• BRT Researcher and EMPL Professor Provide Collaborative Mentoring Experience for Graduate Students
• Research Assistant Professor
• Research Associate Professor

P. Shawn Irvin graduated with a PhD in 2015 from the Department of Educational Methodology, Policy and Leadership at the University of Oregon (UO), specializing in assessment and measurement. Shawn currently works at Behavioral Research and Teaching (BRT) in the College of Education and was promoted to Research Associate Professor in summer 2023. Prior to joining UO/BRT, Shawn worked in diverse educational settings, elementary through graduate -- previously earn ing a M.S. in Educational Leadership and Ohio principal/teacher license s from Antioch University and a M.S. in Geology/Geochemistry from Miami University. Shawn's research and development in education centers on the intersection of measurement, assessment, instruction, & equity. He primarily focuses on how student-, classroom- and school-level data can be systematized, accessed, modeled, and visualized in novel ways to support improved teacher and student outcomes (e.g., targeted professional development, reduction in negative impact from disability, and increasing accessibility in PK-12+ settings). His current work, funded through federal grants and state department contracts, includes development and implementation of statewide alternate assessments in Oregon and Virginia, and leverages quantitative and qualitative approaches, innovative technologies, and design-based, practitioner-driven development cycles. Specifically, he works to link assessment data and instruction to improve accessibility and academic outcomes for struggling students, especially those experiencing significant disabilities. Collaboration with researchers, practitioners, state departments, and community partners is an integral component to his work and essential for practical, lasting impact. University of Oregon (UO) Associate Professor Kathleen Scalise from the Department of Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership department (EMPL), BRT Research Assistant Professor P. Shawn Irvin, and Special Education doctoral student Fahad Alresheed helped coordinate a group of graduate students who worked together to synthesize the literature on accommodations in computer-based interactive assessment tasks for students with disabilities. The collaborative project, which ultimately involved three faculty and eight doctoral students from the UO College of Education (COE), resulted in a publication in the highly-respected peer-reviewed Journal of Special Education Technology. The goal of the project was diverse. Drs. Scalise and Irvin wanted to find a meaningful way to mentor graduate students through the synthesis and publication process. In addition, they wanted to inform educators, school administrators, policy makers, and assessment developers on the availability and use of accommodations in interactive assessment contexts, particularly in the area of science assessments. Finally, the synthesis provides an empirical foundation for future external funding related to research on accommodation development and application in the area of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), with an emphasis on digital interactive assessment tasks. Research Associate Shawn Irvin added, "She's simply an amazing colleague and friend-one of the best people at UO or anywhere else."