Chad Gotch

Scholarly interests

Chad Gotch works to maximize effective and appropriate use of educational assessment. When done well, assessment empowers. When done poorly, assessment undermines. It sows anxiety and discord. With this in mind, Dr. Gotch focuses his efforts on three complementary areas of scholarship. Together, these areas inform the life cycle of assessment, from development to use and policy.

Assessment literacy concerns the ability of educators to recognize and employ a wide variety of assessment opportunities to make decisions and support student learning. Dr. Gotch studies and builds this capacity within both pre-service and in-service teachers.

The communication of assessment results, sometimes called “score reporting”, represents the primary interface between assessment developers and assessment users. How results are communicated can affect motivation, identity, and even the integrity of an assessment system. Dr. Gotch applies interdisciplinary perspectives to the study of these communication moments to support positive outcomes of assessment.

Validity is the most fundamental consideration in educational measurement. Dr. Gotch studies the construction of validity arguments from both technical and non-technical evidence, to evaluate claims about tests and those who take them.

Teaching

ED_PSYCH 508 – Educational Statistics
ED_PSYCH 509 – Educational Measurements: Test Development and Assessment
ED_PSYCH 401 – Classroom Assessment: Elementary
ED_PSYCH 468 – Classroom Assessment: Secondary

Selected accomplishments

• Gotch, C. M., & Roduta Roberts, M. (2022). Developing test performance communication solutions in a teacher-researcher partnership. Educational Assessment, 27(3), 247-268.
• Gotch, C. M. (2021). Digital Module 22: Supporting decisions with assessment. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 40(1), 103-104.
• Gotch, C. M., & French, B. F. (2020). A validation trajectory for the Washington Assessment of Risks and Needs of Students. Educational Assessment, 25(1), 65-82.
• Gotch, C. M., & Roduta Roberts, M. (2018). A review of recent research on individual-level score reports. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 37(3), 46-54.
• Roduta Roberts, M., Gotch, C. M., & Lester, J. N. (2018). Examining score report language in accountability testing. Frontiers in Education, 3(42), 1-17.
• Gotch, C. M., Brookhart, S. M., French, B. F., & Adesope, O. O. (2017). Fundamentals of classroom assessment [Video].
• Gotch, C. M., & French, B. F. (2014). A systematic review of assessment literacy measures. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice. 33(2), 14-18.

Educational background

• Ph.D., Washington State University, 2012
• M.S., University of Idaho, 2002
• B.S., Virginia Tech, 2001