Brian Stecher is a senior social scientist in the education program at the RAND Corporation. Dr. Stecher currently directs a multi-state, NSF-funded study of the accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, he leads the accountability component of the U.S. Department of Education's National Longitudinal Study of No Child Left Behind, and he recently completed a four-year evaluation of the California Class Size Reduction initiative. His research emphases include applied educational measurement, including the implementation, quality, and impact of state assessment and accountability systems; the cost, quality, and feasibility of performance-based assessments, and the development and validation of licensing and certification examinations. Dr. Stecher's work has included a number of other evaluation studies--evaluating the outcomes and costs of computer education programs, a study of the costs of evaluations, an examination of the utility of Title I evaluation-and in 1987, he authored a book on this topic, How to Focus an Evaluation. Dr. Stecher's work has also included a number of studies on performance and portfolio assessments, including an evaluation of the Vermont portfolio assessment program, a book chapter on using portfolios for large-scale assessment, and cost/benefit analyses on portfolio and performance-based assessments. He has also directed studies to develop and validate national educational indicators and professional licensing and certification tests, as well as a series of studies about assessment and accountability reforms in vocational education. Dr. Stecher is a member of the Technical Design Group, advising the California Department of Education on the development of that state's accountability system. He has published widely in professional journals, and he is currently a member of the Editorial Boards of Educational Assessment Journal and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Dr. Stecher was a member of NRC's Steering Committee for the Workshop on Taking Stock of the National Science Education Standards and was a member of the NRC's Committee on K-12 Science Assessment, which concluded its work in July 2005. Dr. Stecher's received a BA in 1968 and MA in 1970 in mathematics from Pomona College and the University of Oregon, respectively, and a Ph.D. in education in 1982 from the University of California, Los Angeles.