Fireside Chat: Assessment for Good

Richard Culatta is an internationally recognized innovator and learning designer. As the CEO of ASCD and ISTE, Culatta is focused on supporting education change-makers to create equitable and engaging learning experiences for students around the world. Prior to joining ASCD/ISTE, Culatta served as the chief innovation officer for the state of Rhode Island. In this role, he led an initiative to make Rhode Island the first state to offer computer science in every K-12 school, and created a state vision for personalized learning. Culatta was appointed by President Obama as the executive director of the Office of Educational Technology for the U.S. Department of Education. In that capacity, he led efforts to expand connectivity to schools across the country, promote personalized learning and develop the National Education Technology Plan. He also pioneered new opportunities for engagement between the department, education leaders and tech developers, including bringing top game designers from around the world to the White House to help rethink the design of assessments. Culatta also served as an education policy adviser to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, and a resident designer for the global design firm IDEO. Culatta’s book, Digital for Good: Raising Kids to Thrive in an Online World, uncovers the challenges with our current approaches to preparing young people to be effective humans in virtual spaces, and presents a path to a healthier and more civil future digital world. Culatta began his career in the classroom as a high school teacher and has coached educators and national leaders around the world on making learning more equitable. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish teaching and a master's in educational psychology and technology from Brigham Young University.

As CEO of ETS, Amit Sevak leads the world’s largest private educational assessment organization. Sevak has been a driving force in education, learning and workforce development around the globe. Throughout his career his transformational leadership consistently led to innovation, better learning and improved job prospects for hundreds of thousands of students and workers. Sevak has been a coach for edtech CEOs, served on nonprofit boards, and in 2017, he founded Mindset Global, an education investment firm. Sevak earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Chicago and earned his master’s in business administration (MBA) from Harvard Business School.