Laura Halderman is a lead research project manager in the Center for Global Assessment at ETS. She manages the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, a survey of adults conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in over 30 countries. She establishes timelines and workflows, manages the budget, drives communication with national project managers and develops agendas for international meetings and monthly webinars. She manages the instrument/platform development and the data analyses at ETS and coordinates work across five international subcontractors.
Prior to PIAAC, she was the lead test developer for the 2018 cycle of the Programme for International Student Assessment, which included Reading Literacy and Global Competence. She managed test development work across international contractors and countries, developed coding guides, led the coder training for all 71 participating countries, worked with psychometricians on the field trial analyses, selected the main survey item pool, and designed testlets for the adaptive test for reading literacy.
She started her career at ETS on the Reading for Understanding grant. She developed scenario-based assessments of reading comprehension for Pre-K through 12th grades, designed studies, and disseminated research findings through presentations and papers. Before ETS, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh and received her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology in 2006 from the University of California, Riverside.