Lloyd Bond In Memoriam
Lloyd Bond
September 2023
Lloyd Bond, an influential scholar and researcher in the field of psychometrics, and a pioneer in the learning sciences, passed away on September 28, 2023.
Bond was recognized widely for his research on the assessment of teaching ability and the cognitive processes underlying standardized test performance. He is known best for his time with the National Board of Professional Teaching and strengthening teaching standards across the United States.
Bond earned his PhD in psychology from Johns Hopkins University, specializing in psychometrics and quantitative models. During his career, he held positions at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and was a visiting professor at Stanford University. He was a fellow of the American Psychological Association.
At the University of Pittsburgh, Bond worked as a senior scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC). A psychometrician, his work supported the view that the construction of standardized test items should be firmly grounded in cognitive theory. His research focused on the assessment of teaching ability and the cognitive processes underlying standardized test performance. He also worked on the analysis of performance errors to diagnose the gaps in a person's knowledge structure that lie behind the errors, and bias in testing.
Bond served on the Educational Testing Service (ETS) External Committee, the College Board's National Advisory Board on Minority Concerns, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress's (NAEP) Analysis Advisory Panel. He was an associate editor of the Journal of Educational Statistics. He had been a Spencer Fellow of the National Academy of Education (NAE) and a postdoctoral fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA). In 2011, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) presented Bond with a Presidential Citation for his contribution to educational quantification. A charter school in Chicago, Illinois, "Chicago International Scholar School: Lloyd Bond," was named after Bond in recognition of his contributions to academia.
Bond grew up in a large family on the south side of Chicago. There, he attended George Washington Carver High School where he graduated as salutatorian. Although Bond was accepted into every Ivy League to which he applied, with plans to attend Stanford University, he ultimately decided to pursue higher education at Hillsdale College, a small, Christian liberal arts school in southern Michigan. After graduating from Hillsdale in 1964 with a BA in psychology, Bond worked with General Motors for nearly a decade before deciding to continue his education at Johns Hopkins University. He graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1976 with a PhD in psychology, specializing in psychometrics and quantitative models.
In a 2021 interview with his alma mater, Hillsdale, Bond asked students to make the best of their time in university, saying "This might be the last time in your life to have true freedom to learn with only this one obligation of learning. Find something that you like, and hopefully, it will also be something that is useful and somebody will pay you for it. But if you want to be successful and enjoy this life, first of all, find something you like to do." Read the full article "A Life-Changing Education: Lloyd Bond's Career in Academia."