Erin Buchanan, M.A.

Erin Buchanan, M.A., is a Senior Associate at edCount, LLC. Ms. Buchanan brings with her over a decade of experience in instruction assessment and curriculum development. Ms. Buchanan contributes to edCount’s organizational objectives through intellectual engagement, technical expertise, and management of staff and company resources. Her responsibilities include managing projects and managing the work of junior staff; planning and implementing methods, techniques, and skills to complete projects in a timely and cost-efficient manner; preparing high-quality reports and other outputs; and developing corporate knowledge and knowledge of individual program areas and projects. Ms. Buchanan brings with her over a decade of experience with education in assessment, development, and instruction.

Currently, Ms. Buchanan serves as the Deputy Project Director and Reporting Lead for the Strengthening Claims-based Interpretations and Uses of Local and Large-scale Science Assessment Scores (SCILLSS) project. Within the SCILLSS project, Ms. Buchanan manages all project phases and assists with the application of a principled-design approach for the development of three-dimensional large-scale and classroom-embedded science assessment tasks. She also serves as Project Director for the recently-funded Stackable, Instructionally-embedded, Portable Science (SIPS) Assessments project, which involves several state and organizational partners. Ms. Buchanan plays a key role in the design and development of assessment evaluation projects with edCount. Ms. Buchanan served as the Project Director and Lead Facilitator to complete an alignment evaluation and cut score validation study for the Indiana Reading Evaluation And Determination (IREAD-3) assessment to help ensure that the scores from the assessment reflect students’ skills in relation to the target standards, and to ensure that the cut scores adequately differentiate among the achievement standard levels. She also facilitated an alignment review and analysis of the Mississippi Subject Area Testing Program (MSATP) for Algebra I and English II as well as the New York State Assessment System in English language arts (ELA) at grades 3–8. She recently contributed her expertise to the alignment evaluation of the Georgia Milestones Assessments in ELA, mathematics, science, and social studies, where she facilitated expert panels, analyzed data to support the evaluation of the assessment design and development process, and created final reports.

In recent years, she served as both facilitator and participant on item review and focus group panels for multiple general and alternate assessments in English language arts at grades 3–8 and high school. She has extensive experience developing and reviewing item specifications, stimuli, items, art, rubrics, annotated scoring sets, and training materials, and has constructed operational, embedded field test, and stand-alone field test forms. Ms. Buchanan also has extensive experience developing curricula and performance task assessments using a backward design approach. She led the development of a technology-enhanced curriculum and assessment package for grade 1 in English language arts for the K–12 Open Education Resources (OER) Collaborative, a consortium of 13 states aimed at creating comprehensive, high-quality, open educational resources for teachers and students in English language arts and mathematics.

Prior to joining edCount, Ms. Buchanan served as ELA Content Lead for Pearson for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessment, coordinating and managing item and passage development at the elementary and middle school levels. Prior to her work with Pearson, Ms. Buchanan worked as a Language Arts Content Specialist in the Standards and Assessment Division for the Wyoming Department of Education, coordinating item and rubric development for the Proficiency Assessments for Wyoming Students in English language arts, and planning and facilitating statewide professional development workshops for teachers. She also served as a member of the Wyoming Standards Revision Steering Committee, and facilitated the revision of the Wyoming English Language Arts Content and Performance Standards. Ms. Buchanan has four years of elementary school teaching experience in Michigan Public Schools, where she developed and delivered curriculum, served on the Language Arts District Curriculum Mapping Committee, and was awarded a technology mini-grant for her use of the SMART Board in classrooms. Ms. Buchanan earned her M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction and her B.A. in Elementary Education from Michigan State University.