Laura Hamilton Named General Manager of Research Centers at ETS

(Princeton, NJ – Oct. 5, 2020) – At a time when educational measurement and research are critical to the future of education, learning and assessment, ETS announced today that Laura Hamilton has been named General Manager of Research Centers within the organization’s Research & Development (R&D) division.

In this role, Hamilton will oversee the organization’s research centers which will focus their efforts on a number of cross-cutting domains to help inform decision-making and shape the future of education and learning and continue ETS’s tradition of making a major impact in foundational and applied research on both operational assessment programs, and to more broadly advance the practice and science of measurement.

Hamilton joins ETS from the RAND Corporation, where she most recently served as a senior behavioral scientist and distinguished chair in learning and assessment. She also directed RAND’s Center for Social and Emotional Learning Research and co-directed the American Educator Panels, RAND’s nationally representative survey panels of teachers and principals. “Laura’s strong background in behavioral science and keen passion for education positions her well to help lead our research programs to continue to shape the future of education as we know it today,” said Kadriye Ercikan, Vice President of Research and Measurement Sciences at ETS. “I am thrilled she has joined us as we accelerate this important work and focus the organization’s research agenda on serving the learners of tomorrow and those who teach them.”

Included among the areas Hamilton will oversee, are those whose research will be focused on K-12 teaching, learning and assessment; validity, fairness and equity in learning and assessment; digital assessment; language learning and assessment; the role of assessment in learning development; learning across the lifespan; and foundational methodological research that includes validity, psychometrics, statistics, cognitive science, and data science.

“ETS’s strong history of making significant contributions to education research and psychometrics are what I look forward to continuing as I join the organization,” said Hamilton. “As we consider how education and society will change in the coming years, it is important that our research addresses the full range of competencies learners will need and the growing number of contexts in which learning happens. It will also be crucial that we work alongside key stakeholders to understand their needs and help them make informed decisions about how to facilitate learning at all stages while ensuring equitable opportunities to learn.”

Hamilton earned a Ph.D. in educational psychology and a Master of Science in statistics from Stanford University, and a Master of Science in psychology in education from the University of Pennsylvania.