Our Research Partners

Dr. Juliane Blazevski, Principal, Hypothesi.

Dr. Juliane Blazevski has a background in research and evaluation methods gained through her graduate training at the University of Michigan in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology and in the field where she has served as an external evaluator on federally funded grants and privately funded program evaluation projects. She is trained in doing advanced statistical analyses (i.e., IRT, HLM, SEM and longitudinal data analysis), research design planning, measure development and validation (including tests of gender/ethnic variance and inter-rater reliability), program/product beta testing and implementation evaluation.

As the founder and CEO of Hypothesi, LLC, Dr. Blazevski is committed to providing rigorous, yet accessible, program evaluations. Evaluation activities span several areas of education and non-profit programs, with an emphasis on charter school effectiveness, education innovation, instructional climate, and assessment across K – 12 and higher education settings. Dr. Blazevski also provides consultation in the areas survey development, education/youth program evaluation, student and teacher motivation, classroom climate, and 21st century skill development/assessment.

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Dr. Richard Gershon, Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Medical Social Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.

Dr. Gerhson is a leading expert in the application of Item Response Theory (IRT) in individualized and large-scale assessments. He has developed item banks and Computerized Adaptive Testing (CAT) for education, clinical, and health - including cognitive, emotional, and motor applications.

He currently is the principal investigator overseeing field operations for the National Children's Study (NCS) Southern Regional Operating Center. He also chairs the overall NCS Health Measurement Network to develop a measurement strategy for 100,000 children, and their parents, from birth to age 21. He is also the principal investigator for the National Institute's of Health (NIH) Toolbox for the Assessment of Neurological and Behavioral Function and for the NIH Common Fund Patient Reporting Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Technical Center.

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John Richards, Ph.D., is Founder and President of Consulting Services for Education, Inc. (CS4Ed).

CS4Ed works with publishers, developers, and educational organizations, as they negotiate the rapidly changing education marketplace to improve business–planning processes, and to develop, evaluate, and refine products and services. He is Adjunct Faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education teaching Entrepreneurship in the Education Marketplace.

John was President of the JASON Foundation, GM of Turner Learning–the educational arm of Turner Broadcasting–and Manager of the Educational Technologies Division of Bolt Beranek and Newman that launched the award winning Co–NECT school design.

Over the years, John has served on boards for a variety of education groups including NECC; Cable in the Classroom; Software Information Industry Association (SIIA), Education Market section; and the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP). John's projects have won him numerous awards including two Golden Lamps and several CODIEs, as well as several EMMY nominations. He is a respected keynote speaker and is the author/editor of four books, over 90 articles, and has been responsible for the publication of over 1,000 educational products. He recently completed the 2011 U.S. Educational Technology Market: Pre K–12 report for the Software and Information Industry Association, and with Chris Dede (Eds.) has just published Digital Teaching Platforms, Teachers College Press.

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Saul Rockman President, Rockman et al.

Saul Rockman has spent more than 35 years as an evaluator, studying the use and impact of media and technology for learning as well as broadly educational projects in formal and informal settings. He is president of Rockman et al, an independent evaluation, research, and consulting firm headquartered in San Francisco. The company, now in its 23rd year, works with preschool, K-12, postsecondary and adult education institutions, as well as with informal education projects having a wide community or consumer audience. In addition to core education initiatives, such as research on school reform and teacher professional development, Rockman conducts research and evaluation on public television and radio series, museum programs, mobile media and websites, after school programs, and edutainment products.

The company’s interests cover learning in informal settings, education and technology policy, audience and consumer impact, and the effects of telecommunications and media.

Saul established Rockman et al after leaving the education group of Apple where he was manager of education research. Prior to joining Apple, Saul was director of technology programs at WestEd in San Francisco, California. Before moving to San Francisco, Saul was director of research at the Agency for Instructional Technology in Bloomington, Indiana. Saul did his doctoral work in Mass Communications at Indiana University, Bloomington.

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Kay Sloan, M.A. Managing Research Director, Rockman et al.

Kay has over 25 years of experience evaluating a wide range of initiatives in education and school reform, technology, the arts, and children’s media. She currently manages Rockman’s studies of federally-funded initiatives designed to improve teaching and teacher training, leadership, and learning in high-need urban schools, in partnership with the New York-based New Leaders, New Visions for Public Schools, and Hunter College. Kay’s expertise is in qualitative research methods, and she has developed rubrics, case studies, and research briefs for a variety of clients, and conducted numerous assessments of student writing and performance in other content areas, including those conducted as part of the recently completed multi-state evaluation of National History Day. Kay’s other work in the arts and humanities includes the summative study of the NSF-funded Music Instinct and nationwide evaluations of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read and Poetry Out Loud, sponsored by the NEA in partnership with the Poetry Foundation.

Rockman has a longstanding interest in the impact of technology on teaching and learning, in both K-12 and higher ed, and Kay has worked on projects ranging from studies of virtual learning in rural schools to an evaluation of the Wide Web for Women, an NSF-funded effort to increase women’s participation in computer science and associated fields.

Before joining Rockman, Kay worked in children’s media, as an evaluator for PBS and the Agency for Instructional Television in Bloomington, Indiana, where she authored a book on the development of a nationally distributed children’s television series. Kay has taught in public schools and at the university level. She did her doctoral work in English and Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington, and still spends much of her free time reading. She enjoys music, walks with the dog, and travel with her husband and children.

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