Elizabeth Summers, Ph.D.

Elizabeth Summers, Ph.D., is our Executive Vice President at edCount, LLC. Dr. Summers has extensive experience in assessment development and alignment evaluation. She has led and assisted numerous local, regional, and national studies of both general and alternate assessment systems, served as coordinator and manager of various projects to improve, design, or redesign assessment systems, and has played a pivotal role in the development and evaluation of alternate assessment systems around the country. Dr. Summers co-authored the Learner Characteristics Inventory (LCI), a survey that collects descriptive data on students participating in alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards.

As Project Director for the development of large-scale state alternate assessments, she provides oversight to development and documentation activities such as content standard prioritization for assessment, item development, item reviews for content, bias, and sensitivity, forms construction, and technical documentation. In addition to leading large-scale alternate assessment development and providing oversight for numerous alignment and validity evaluations, Dr. Summers has also served as Project Director for a multi-state, US Department of Education funded Enhanced Assessment Grant, the Strengthening Claims-based Interpretations and Uses of Local and Large-scale Science Assessment Scores (SCILLSS), where under her direction, four organizational partners and edCount worked together with three state departments of education and a panel of experts to establish foundational resources for new science assessment systems

Prior to joining edCount, Dr. Summers worked as a research coordinator and evaluator for several education grants with the National Alternate Assessment Center located at the University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities at the University of Kentucky. Over the past decade, Dr. Summers’ research products have reflected her commitment to understanding the cognition of special needs students and designing and improving testing and instruction to maximize the achievement potential of this population. She has authored or co-authored more than a dozen research reports, the majority of which have appeared in peer-reviewed academic journals. She has designed several research instruments that are in wide use, including an index of learner characteristics; authored several book chapters, and, since 2003, has presented regularly at national and regional conferences. In 2007, she was awarded TASH’s Alice H. Hayden Emerging Researcher Award for her commitment to improving understanding and service to students with disabilities.

Dr. Summers received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and M.S. in Education from the University of Kentucky, and a B.A. in Art and Psychology from Georgetown College.