Shira Solomon, Ph.D.

Since joining CNA Education in 2008, Shira Solomon, Ph.D. has made original and collaborative contributions to research, evaluation, and technical assistance projects relating to teacher professional development and the evolving role of educational assessments in instructional practice.

In her work through the Regional Education Laboratory (REL) Appalachia program, Solomon has focused on developing instruments for evaluating pre-service and in-service teacher professional development programs for Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. She has worked with school districts, state departments of education, and teacher colleges to identify short- and long-term evaluation objectives, develop data collection tools, analyze results, and apply findings. This work has included designing interview and focus group protocols for site visits and pre-test protocols for surveys; conducting interviews and focus groups; and developing surveys, rubrics, and other assessments.

Solomon has briefed officials in state departments of education and school district administrators on the development of data collection instruments and the interpretation of analytic results. She has presented her work on rubric development at the West Virginia Association of School Administrators and presented on Career and Technical Education assessment at the American Evaluation Association. Additionally, she has published her work on statistical error relating to standardized test scoring in the Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods and presented it at the American Educational Researchers Association.

Solomon has also authored a series of white papers on health and disability issues of regional and national prominence in K-12 education research, practice, and policy. Topics include the relationship of childhood obesity to academic achievement; the effects of inclusive classroom practices on students with special needs; and the challenges of estimating the prevalence, growth, and educational costs of autism. These papers contributed to the founding of a regional research collaborative led by deans of major regional colleges of education that focuses on issues of K-12 students’ physical, social, and emotional health.

Prior to joining CNA, Solomon was an English teacher, a writer, and a research assistant. She taught English Language Arts at a middle school in East Harlem and English as a Second Language at a large, urban university. While pursuing her doctorate in educational evaluation and research, she worked as a research assistant at a social and behavioral science research institute and a cancer research institute, and taught quantitative and qualitative research methods to social work students and allied health professionals.

Education

• Ph.D. Educational Evaluation and Research, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, 2008
• M.S.T. Secondary Education, The New School for Social Research, New York, NY, 1997
• B.A. Comparative Literature, Columbia University, New York, NY, 1994
• B.A. Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, The Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, NY, 1994

Publications

• S.R. Solomon & S. Sawilowsky (2009). Impact of rank-based normalizing transformations on the accuracy of test scores. Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods, 8(2): 448-462.
• S. R. Solomon (2008). A comparison of ranking methods for normalizing scores. Ph.D. dissertation, Wayne State University, United States -- Michigan. Dissertations & Theses @ Wayne State University database. (Publication No. AAT 3303509).