One of the influential voices in shaping the Common Core State Standards in English/language arts was Barbara Kapinus, a senior policy analyst at the National Education Association. She retired from that post early last month. But now she’s taking a lead role in guiding the creation of the tests being designed for the new standards.
Kapinus has been named the English/language arts director of the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium, officials disclosed today. Announcement of a parallel director in mathematics is expected to come soon.
SMARTER Balanced isn’t the only consortium to be drawing on Kapinus’ expertise. The other state group designing assessments, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, also lists her as one of the members of its content technical working group on ELA.