Catalyst: November 9, 2025
This week’s webinar explored how assessment can evolve from a tool of measurement into a driver of learning, one that harnesses the potential of artificial intelligence to deepen understanding and efficacy. We were joined by Kristen Huff (Curriculum Associates), Scott Marion ( Center for Assessment ), Maxine McKinney de Royston (Erikson Institute), and Mario Piacentini (OECD).
Together, the panelists shared frameworks and research that reimagine assessment as a catalyst for learning. They highlighted how principled design, instructional usefulness, performance-based approaches, and culturally grounded assessment can help educators create richer, more authentic learning experiences. Each offered insights from their respective chapters:
- Designing and Developing Educational Assessments for Contemporary Needs - Kristen Huff
- Conceptualizing and Evaluating Instructionally Useful Assessments - Scott Marion & Carla Evans
- Innovating Assessment Design to Better Measure and Support Learning - Mario Piacentini & Natalie Foster
- The Cultural Foundations of Learning: Design Considerations for Measurement and Assessment - Maxine McKinney de Royston (co-authored with Roy Pea, Carol Lee, Na'ilah Nasir)
We’ll continue this conversation on November 18 for a webinar focused on Volume II. Series editor Stephen Sireci ( UMass Amherst Center for Educational Assessment ) will join Susan Brookhart (Duquesne University), Tianying Feng ( CRESST, UCLA ), Neal Kingston ( Achievement & Assessment Institute at KU ), Maria Elena Oliveri (Purdue University), and the Study Group team for the discussion. Register here.
Eric & the Study Group
Featured Resources:
The Architecture of Inference: Appreciating Robert Mislevy’s Evidence-Centered Design in the Age of AI
“Robert Mislevy’s 'architecture of inference’ lives on in the age of AI. In this week’s Getting Smart article, Eric Tucker shares how Mislevy’s Evidence-Centered Design (ECD) framework isn’t just a model, but a mindset for tackling complexity with clarity and collaboration. As blackbox systems are making consequential decisions about learners and workers, evidentiary reasoning approaches such as ECD are an essential architecture of inference.
Mislevy's legacy is not a monument to be admired, but a practice to be inhabited: a clear, collaborative challenge to solve the next tough problem together, centered on the reliable architecture of inference. If you’d like to contribute to a memorial volume we are organizing, please reach out.
Designing and Developing Educational Assessments for Contemporary Needs
Our measures of learning haven’t kept pace with what students truly need to master. Kristen Huff’s Principled Assessment Design (P-A-D) offers a disciplined framework that builds quality and validity into every step of assessment design. By mapping how students actually think and learn, P-A-D ensures tests measure what matters most with clarity, fairness, and rigor. This design science, explained in more detail in the brief explainer video below, is an infrastructure we need to prepare a future-ready, globally competitive workforce.
Arguments in Support of Innovating Assessments
The future won’t reward what’s easiest to score; it will reward what matters most. James Pellegrino reimagines assessment as a flashlight, not a verdict, illuminating how learners think and grow. With AI and digital tools, we can now measure creativity, problem-solving, and reasoning in real-time, which can transform assessment into a tool for learning, not judgment. The video below further explores Pellegrino’s ideas shared in his recently published chapter Arguments in Support of Innovating Assessments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMGgs6-B528
Conceptualizing and Evaluating Instructionally Useful Assessments
If you know educators are drowning in a “snowstorm of data” but starved for insight, this short explainer video is for you. Leading researchers Scott Marion and Carla Evans expose why traditional assessment systems fail to inform teaching—and outline a new model for Instructionally Useful Assessment that delivers timely, actionable insights aligned with real learning. Watch the video and download their open-access chapter, “Conceptualizing and Evaluating Instructionally Useful Assessments,” to start rethinking how data can truly serve the classroom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1csfWQS1jUQ
Profiled Resources:
Liu, Liu, Sherer, and LeMahieu articulate approaches to leverage AI and technology to measure skills acquisition, particularly skills such as communication, collaboration, and critical thinking with validity and reliability. Read: A Skills-Based Vision for Assessment, Insight, and Educational Improvement.
Hanno, Horner, Portilla, and Hsueh pinpoint the lack of easy-to-use, scientifically sound tools to inform early education practitioners and leaders. The Measures for Early Success Initiative supports the development of child assessments that accurately capture what young learners know and are able to do. Co-design that centers voices of pre-K educators and families helps create relevant tools grounded in their lived contexts. Read: Centering the Voices of Assessment Users in the Advancement of Early Learning Measures.
Coming Soon: Webinars & Events
Reconceptualizing Assessment to Improve Learning in the Age of AI Webinar
Join Susan Brookhart (Duquesne University), Teanna Feng (UCLA CRESST), Neal Kingston (University of Kansas), Maria Elena Oliveri (Purdue University), Stephen Sireci (University of Massachusetts Amherst), and the Study Group on November 18 at 3 PM EST for our upcoming webinar exploring the Handbook for Assessment in the Service of Learning. This session will unpack Volume II: Reconceptualizing Assessment to Improve Learning in the Age of AI. We'll dive into how assessment can move from foundational principles to the conceptual tools and methods needed to build assessment systems that actively improve, not just measure, learning.
Register using the links below:
- 11/18, 3-4 PM EST – Volume II: Reconceptualizing Assessment to Improve Learning Webinar
- 12/4, 1-2 PM EST – Volume III: Examples of Assessment in the Service of Learning Webinar
Celebrate the Legacy of Scholar Edmund W. Gordon and the Publication of the Handbook Series at UMass Amherst on Nov. 14, from 4-6 PM
Join us for a Celebration of the Handbook Series on Friday, November 14th. The event, held both in-person at UMass Amherst and remotely, will feature Distinguished University Professor Stephen G. Sireci (UMass Amherst), Chancellor Javier Reyes (UMass Amherst), Distinguished Professor Eva L. Baker (UCLA), Professor Howard Everson (CUNY), Eric Tucker (Study Group), Erin Jerome (UMass Libraries), Professor Emeritus Edmund W. Gordon (Columbia University), and Dean Greg Kelly (UMass Amherst).
Register here to join the event in person or remotely.
Help Honor Evidence-Centered Design and the Legacy of Bob Mislevy
We invite you to contribute a short chapter to a new volume honoring the legacy of Robert J. Mislevy, tentatively titled Modeling What Matters: The Research and Legacy of Robert J. Mislevy. Eric Tucker and Maria Elena Oliveri are editing the volume, which will be published in the Fall of 2026. This volume will be published as an electronic version with an Open Access license.
If you are interested in writing a short chapter, please submit a brief abstract (150-200 words) for your proposed chapter no later than November 17, 2025, via email to Eric@study-group.org and oliveri.m@live.com. Please reach out ASAP to express interest and let us know to expect your abstract.
Stay Connected
Stay connected with the Study Group’s Advancing AI, Measurement and Assessment System Innovation initiative:
- LinkedIn: follow to receive the latest updates from our team
- Newsletter: sign up to receive the Catalyst
- Substack: sign up to receive the latest posts from Amplifying Human Potential
- Getting Smart Blog Series: if you have topic ideas or are interested in collaborating, we would love to hear from you.