Cara Cahalan Laitusis is a principal research scientist in the ETS Research Centers. Her research has impacted the accessibility, validity, and fairness of assessments and broader equity issues in education. She received a Ph.D. in school psychology from Fordham University and has received numerous awards for her work, including fellow status from the American Psychological Association (2023), the ETS Senior Research Scientist Award (2015), and the Promising Measurement Scholar Award (2008) from the National Council on Measurement in Education. In addition, Laitusis has been awarded over $10 million in research grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences and authored numerous books, research articles, development guidelines, and workshops on accessibility and design of digital assessments. Her work has informed major testing programs in the United States (the SAT® and GRE® tests, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, Smarter Balanced, the English Language Proficiency Assessments 21) and international survey assessments (the Programme for International Student Assessment).
She is currently a member of the American Psychological Association Coalition for Psychology in the Schools and Education and cochair of the Assessment and Measurement SIG for the Universal Design for Learning Implementation and Research Network (UDL-IRN). Before coming to ETS, Laitusis was a school psychologist who worked with a diverse student population ranging from pre-kindergarten to high school. She also supported several USAID grants to improve educational quality in Ghana and Malawi.