About me

Welcome to my website! My name is Sam Ihlenfeldt (or Samuel D. Ihlenfeldt on publications) and I am a sixth year Ph.D. candidate in the Quantitative Methods in Education program at the University of Minnesota. My driving belief is that testing can be used for good, but only if it is fair for every stakeholder, including students and parents from all backgrounds. With the support of my advisors, Dr. Joseph Rios and Dr. Michael Rodriguez, I have had the opportunity to apply this belief as an educator, a consultant, and a researcher for both private and public organizations.

Part of the process of fair assessment is communicating test results. If the results of a test (and their intended uses and interpretations) are not communicated properly, any other efforts to validate those uses and interpretations are undermined. For my dissertation, titled “Score Reporting to Parents Who Communicate in Somali or Hmong”, I will be using funds from the NCME Mission Fund Grant to conduct experiemental research with parents who speak Hmong or Somali at home. It is my hope that principles of test accommodation literature can be applied to generate score reports that better communicate the intended uses (and limitations) of large-scale standardized tests.

Have a look around this site using the navigation above, and feel free to send me a message on Twitter or an email if you have any questions. If you are interested, the following papers have been instrumental in guiding my own research:

Randall, J. (2021). “Color‐Neutral” Is Not a Thing: Redefining Construct Definition and Representation through a Justice‐Oriented Critical Antiracist Lens. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 40(4), 82-90.

Zapata-Rivera, D., & Katz, I. R. (2014). Keeping your audience in mind: Applying audience analysis to the design of interactive score reports. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 21(4), 442-463.

Zenisky, A. L., & Hambleton, R. K. (2012). Developing test score reports that work: The process and best practices for effective communication. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 31(2), 21-26.