Dr. W. James Popham
Professor Emeritus, UCLA
Founder – IOX Assessment Associates

ABOUT DR. POPHAM

W. James Popham has spent the bulk of his educational career as a teacher. His first teaching assignment, for example, was in a small eastern Oregon high school where he taught English and social studies while serving as yearbook advisor, class sponsor, and unpaid tennis coach. That recompense meshed ideally with the quality of his coaching.

Most of Dr. Popham's teaching career took place at UCLA where, for nearly 30 years, he taught courses in instructional methods for prospective teachers as well as courses in evaluation and measurement for graduate students. At UCLA he won several distinguished teaching awards. In January 2000, he was recognized by UCLA Today as one of UCLA's top 20 professors of the 20th century. (He notes that the 20th century was a full-length century, unlike the current abbreviated one.) In 1992, he took early retirement from UCLA upon learning that emeritus professors received free parking.

Because at UCLA he was acutely aware of the perishability of professors who failed to publish, he spent his non-teaching hours affixing words to paper. The result: over 25 books, 200 journal articles, 50 research reports, and 175 papers presented before research societies. Although not noted in his official vita, while at UCLA he also authored 1,426 grocery lists.

His most recently published books are Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need to Know, 3rd Ed. (2002); Modern Educational Measurement: Practical Guidelines for Educational Leaders, 3rd Ed. (2000); Testing! Testing! What Every Parent Should Know About School Tests (2000), all published by Allyn & Bacon; and The Truth About Testing: An Educator's Call to Action (2001), published by ASCD. Dr. Popham encourages purchase of these books, not only because he endorses their content, but also because he regards their semi-annual royalties as psychologically reassuring.

In 1978, Dr. Popham was elected to the presidency of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). He was also the founding editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a quarterly journal published by AERA. He has attended each year's AERA meeting since his first in 1958. He is inordinately compulsive.

In 1968, Dr. Popham established IOX Assessment Associates, an R&D group that formerly created statewide student achievement tests for a dozen states. He has personally passed all of those tests, largely because of his unlimited access to the tests' answer keys.

In 2002 the National Council on Measurement in Education presented him with its Award for Career Contributions to Educational Measurement. Dr. Popham's complete 41-page, single-spaced vita can be requested. It is really dull reading.

Dr. Sarah J. Stanley
Former Teacher & Principal
President – IOX Assessment Associates

ABOUT DR. STANLEY

After teaching and working as a principal in the public schools, Sarah entered UCLA's Graduate School of Education to study with Madeline Hunter, at that time the nation's most influential staff developer. Upon completing her UCLA graduate studies with emphases on instruction, research, and evaluation, Dr. Stanley spent the next seven years coordinating evaluation and test-development projects at IOX Assessment Associates (IOX).

Sarah became President of IOX in 1995, and has played a major role in producing, and often moderating, the staff development and parent-education videos produced by IOX. Moreover, Dr. Stanley created and produced a series of nationally syndicated 90-second inserts for local television stations. This series, Education Plus, was designed to help parents help their children succeed in school and in life.

To further the support of Education Plus and other similar programs, Sarah established The Learning Community, a non-profit corporation whose mission is to help families and schools work together on behalf of children.

In addition to her continuing leadership of IOX, in recent years Dr. Stanley started an entrepreneurial venture, ORNAMENTS TO REMEMBER. Mouth-blown and artisan-crafted, these glass ornaments are not for everyone—only those who want to capture life's moments in a fun and spirited way.

The long-term mission of ORNAMENTS TO REMEMBER is to be a revenue stream for The Learning Community. Although no longer working actively in the classroom, Sarah uses other means to support the cause of public education.