Dr. Alka Arora is a researcher and psychometrician with more than 25 years of experience in K–12 STEM assessment, measurement, and data analysis across the major national and international studies, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and TIMSS Advanced, and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Her work centers on the content and framework side of large-scale assessment — assessment design, framework and standards-alignment studies, item and scoring-guide review, and the cross-assessment comparisons that allow NCES to interpret and report U.S. results in an international context. She brings particular depth in mathematics and science content, constructed-response scoring, and standard-setting.
Most recently, Dr. Arora spent more than a decade as a Senior Researcher at the American Institutes for Research (AIR), supporting the NAEP assessment development program through development plans, assessment design, item and framework review, and small-scale investigations to support assessment quality, alongside reviews of NAEP results, snapshots, and state and TUDA reporting. She conducted multiple framework and item comparisons among TIMSS, NAEP, and PISA to identify how the assessments’ constructs align and differ, and served as lead mathematics content expert for the 2023 Maryland College and Career Readiness Empirical Study. Earlier, over nearly a decade at Boston College’s TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center — as Researcher, TIMSS Advanced Project Coordinator, and Assistant Research Director — she coordinated the development of TIMSS, TIMSS Advanced, and TIMSS Numeracy frameworks, achievement tests, background questionnaires, and scoring rubrics, and served as a liaison among study directors, participating countries, and the international research community.
Dr. Arora holds a Ph.D. in Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation from Boston College and began her career as a secondary STEM teacher. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and a certified reviewer under the What Works Clearinghouse 5.0 group-design standards, and is a member of AERA, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and the Comparative and International Education Society. Her published scholarship includes work on student misconceptions in physics and mathematics drawn from TIMSS data and a comparison of the Next Generation Science Standards with the NAEP frameworks.