Customized, trustworthy,
and value-driven guidance
and assistance for
assessment organizations

ABOUT: PITONIAK EDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT

I approach each collaboration with curiosity about how I can help others improve and maintain the quality of their assessments.

Basic Steps in
The Assessment Cycle

After nearly four decades of experience in large-scale assessment, I started a consulting firm with the goal of bringing my expertise to customers seeking concrete solutions founded on best practices in standardized testing.

I believe that particularly in times of rapid technological change, care should be taken to ground the processes of educational measurement in the critical principles of validity, fairness, and reliability. Doing so will achieve the goal of assessment: yielding trustworthy and actionable information for score users.

My services are customizable to your needs.  I am an expert trainer who can help you learn about any or all aspects of assessment. I can work with you to evaluate a testing program against industry standards of best practice. I am a seasoned facilitator who has designed and led standard setting activities to set cut scores on tests around the world. In all cases I will work with you to achieve your assessment goals.

ABOUT: MARY PITONIAK

Like many psychometricians, I came into the field through a side door. Pivoting from clinical psychology, I obtained a position in the personnel department at a teacher licensure and certification testing organization. After branching out into test development, editorial production, and project management, my renewed fascination with validity and statistics inspired me to obtain my graduate degrees in educational psychology and psychometric methods.

During my 23-year tenure at ETS, I led the audit program that evaluated testing programs against standards for best practices. My experience also includes two decades working on the gold standard of assessments, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). I have conducted training and capacity-building efforts in all areas of assessment across multiple countries. I have extensive experience in all aspects of standard setting and co-wrote the chapter on this topic in the fourth edition of Educational Measurement with Dr. Ronald Hambleton. I co-edited the fifth edition of Educational Measurement, for which Linda Cook and I won the 2026 Annual Award for Exceptional Achievement in Educational Measurement from the National Council on Measurement in Education.

I am skilled at meeting organizations where they are, building trust, and working together to make their assessments the best they can be. What separates me from other psychometricians is my operational experience in diverse aspects of assessment from the ground up, and my ability to troubleshoot practical challenges while helping to ensure quality. 

Countries in which I have provided services include the following:

Azerbaijan

Canada

Chile

Ethiopia

India

Malaysia

Pakistan

Russia

Saudi Arabia

Slovakia

South Africa

Taiwan

Thailand

United States

Mary Pitoniak
Mary at 48th IAEA

Services

Training staff on assessment development, scoring, analysis, and reporting methodologies

I have been developing and leading training workshops on assessment methodologies for more than two decades, both virtually and in-country.  I am a skilled communicator and customize content to the knowledge and skills of the participants. Topics include Overview of Psychometric Concepts, Test Development, Fairness, Validity, Item Analysis, Constructed-Response Scoring, Standard Setting, and Score Reporting. 

Evaluating assessment programs against industry standards

I oversaw the process at ETS whereby testing programs were evaluated against standards for best practices. I have also applied that process to testing programs in other countries.  The evaluation process is also an opportunity for educating staff on important aspects of the assessment process, including the topics listed above under training. The concepts will become concrete as I review them in the context of your program’s evaluation results.

Designing, leading, and evaluating standard setting activities

My MS and PhD research involved real-life workshops to evaluate new standard-setting methodologies for consideration for application to a CPA licensing exam. I was fortunate to have as my doctoral advisor Dr. Ronald Hambleton, a prominent psychometrician with deep expertise in standard setting, with whom I co-authored the standard-setting chapter in the fourth edition of Educational Measurement (the first chapter dedicated to the topic in the history of the series). I have conceptualized, conducted, and evaluated standard setting workshops for high-stakes licensure exams and for student proficiency tests. I’m open to any inquiries about standard setting and how I can help you with this critical process. 

Testimonials

News

The fifth edition of Educational Measurement won the 2026 NCME Annual Award for Exceptional Achievement in Educational Measurement for its editors, Dr. Linda Cook and Dr. Mary Pitoniak. Cook and Pitoniak structured the content and selected leading experts to write the book’s 21 chapters, which deliver cutting-edge research and practical guidance on educational measurement—from validity, reliability, and fairness to assessment design, technology, and international testing. The edition explores how measurement informs teaching, learning, and accountability, while addressing the latest technical advances and theoretical perspectives, making it an essential resource for researchers, practitioners, and anyone shaping the future of assessment in education.

Contact

I would love to talk with you about your assessment program. 

Contact me today to schedule a free
consultation to explore working together.

Send message via text or
WhatsApp: +1-640.275.3548
Email to: mary@pitoniakconsulting.com