Celebrating QR Connections: Andrew Ho
Beyond the Test Score: Making Sense of Educational Statistics
The "Celebrating QR Connections" series, sponsored by Ellen Genat Hoffman, '68 and Stephen G. Hoffman, celebrates the connection between quantitative reasoning and various disciplines.
Wellesley College welcomes Andrew Ho, the Charles William Eliot Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a psychometrician whose research aims to improve the design, use, and interpretation of test scores in educational policy and practice. Ho is known for his development of methods for measuring educational progress and educational inequality.
In the field of educational testing and measurement, we know that quantitative reasoning is susceptible to predictable fallacies. People believe that test scores are more meaningful, precise, and permanent than they actually are. Ho draw upon his work linking hundreds of millions of test scores to a common scale (Ho, 2020; Reardon et al., 2026) to illustrate decisions made to address and dispel these fallacies. Ho argue that these are examples of more general communication competencies in statistics that we should articulate, demonstrate, and develop in statistical coursework and practice (Ho, 2026).