The Buros Center for Testing hosts a lecture by Barbara Plake at 1:30 p.m. April 9 in Teachers College Hall, room 105.

The talk, “Assessment… with a Touch of Class,” focuses on how the fundamental concepts of testing quality apply to classroom assessment practices. Plake will focus on ensuring that classroom assessments reach an appropriate level of technical quality so that results can support teaching and learning. She will show that effective classroom assessment practices require cooperation between teachers and education leaders and necessarily involve students.

Plake retired from UNL in 2006 and now serves as an independent consultant.

She will also lead the first webinar in the Buros’ “Decoding the Standards” series, 1 p.m. April 10. The webinar topic is “Overview of 2014 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing.” For more information, click here.

Plake served as co-chair of the joint committee for the 2014 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. She earned a doctorate in educational statistics and measurement in 1976 from the University of Iowa.

She worked as a research associate for American College Testing before joining the faculty in UNL’s Department of Educational Psychology in 1977. In 1988 she became director of the Buros Center for Testing.

While at UNL, Plake received the Universitywide Foundations Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1985 and the W.C. Meierhenry Distinguished University Professorship in 1991. She is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Test Publishers and the Career Award from the National Council on Measurement. She is a Fellow of Division 5 of the American Psychological Association and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.