Psychometric and Research Intern

At Curriculum Associates, we believe in the potential of every child and are changing the face of education technology with award-winning learning programs like i-Ready that serve a third of the nation’s K–8 students. For more than 50 years, our commitment to making classrooms better places, serving educators, and supporting accessible learning experiences for all students has driven the continuous improvement of our innovative programs. Our team of more than 2,500 employees is composed of lifelong learners who stand behind this mission, working tirelessly to serve the educational community with world-class programs and support every day.

Summer 2026 Psychometric Internships
 

Applications missing the following will not be considered:

• Coverletter
• Resume/CV
• Unofficial Transcript

More details below

About Curriculum Associates

Curriculum Associates is an industry-leading educational technology and publishing company committed to making classrooms better places for teachers and students. Our assessments provide valuable feedback to teachers and students and are used to route students into individualized instructional paths.

In this role, you’ll support products that are designed to improve student outcomes in digital reading and mathematics, especially for students who are historically underserved. We believe a diverse team leads to diversity in thinking, making our products better for teachers and students.

About the Internships

Curriculum Associates offers two Psychometric Summer Internships:

• Psychometric Assessment Solutions Internship: Conduct operational psychometric analyses and/or research to support operational analyses for large-scale adaptive assessment programs. Results from the research will inform the design, validity, and fairness of large-scale adaptive assessments while advancing psychometric methods.

• Psychometric Learning Solutions Internship: Conduct research to improve knowledge on how students interact with and benefit from our digital personalized instruction products using a variety of data sources and advanced analysis methods. Results from the research will inform decisions about personalized instruction product features and how we routinely analyze the data from these products.

Interns will have the opportunity to:

• Manipulate and analyze the large datasets (millions of records!) at Curriculum Associates. These data include some of the most extensive assessment and instructional data in the nation.

• Collaborate with other members of the assessment development and psychometrics teams. Attend regular team meetings and work closely with experienced researchers.

• Gain a deep practical understanding of conducting research in an industry setting, learn more about different teams working towards an educational product, work closely with experienced researchers, and observe day-to-day operations as a researcher at an educational technology company.

• Join discussions about how research informs product decisions. Experiences may include attending a Technical Advisory Committee meeting, collaborating with experts in other departments, presenting work at internal meetings, etc.

Research Project

Interns will focus on at least one major project. The project may be eligible for submission to a national conference at the end of the summer. Here are some examples of the types of projects that interns may work on:

• Psychometrics Assessment Solutions:

• • Conduct fairness and validity analyses for our assessments to better serve historically underserved students.

  • • Conduct research aiming to improve item selection for students resulting in more authentic, relevant, and faster administration of our flagship adaptive assessment.

    • Develop and innovate methodology to identify bias and fairness issues in our item pool and adaptive assessments.

    • Conduct simulations to support recommended item selection changes for our computerized adaptive testing (CAT) assessments. 

  • Understand the extent to which our items’ psychometric properties are susceptible to position effects.

• Psychometric Learning Solutions:

• • Investigate engagement in our digital personalized instruction lessons

  • • Operationalize a definition of engagement and study its prevalence and impact on measurable outcomes.

    • Assess approaches to handle disengagement and improve data quality for research.

  • Analyze process data to evaluate usage of on-screen support features, such as text-to-speech and glossary, and its impact on student success.

  • Explore the adaptive components of our digital personalized instruction product, including conditional content scaffolding and lesson path acceleration, and their impact on students’ learning experience and outcomes.

The project an intern works on will be determined based on current research needs and intern interests.

Qualifications for Interns

Candidates for the internship will ideally have the following qualifications:

• Currently pursuing a doctorate in educational measurement, educational psychology, educational research, psychometrics, learning analytics, data science, or a related field Candidates should have measurement-related coursework (i.e., classical test theory, item response theory) or applied measurement experience. Preference will be given to students with at least three years of doctoral-level coursework completed by the start of the internship.

• Must have a strong interest in research that impacts student learning and/or applied psychometrics.

• Experience with data manipulation and analysis in R and/or SAS.

• Must be located within the US for the duration of the internship.

Funding, Length, and Location of Internship

• Interns will work remotely for eight weeks during the summer, ideally from June 8, 2026 to July 31, 2026. Some flexibility in the dates may be offered if needed.

• Interns will be considered temporary employees of Curriculum Associates.

• Interns work 40 hours/week and will be paid $31.25 per hour (equivalent to $10,000 for 8 weeks).

Next Steps

• Please provide the following information in your application, note that applications that do not include all this information will not be considered (attach all documents in the resume section of the application).

• • A cover letter in which you include a response to these questions:  

  • • Are you interested in the Psychometric Assessment Solutions or Psychometric Learning Solutions internship?

    • • If you would like to be considered for both internships, please indicate which one is your first choice.

    • What are your current research interests?

    • How do your background and research interests align with the internship(s) identified in the first question?

  • A current resume / CV

  • An unofficial transcript

Applications must be submitted by January 12th, 2026 at 11:59 pm ET to be considered. Application reviews will begin on January 13th. Final selections will be communicated by early March.