Dr. Kathryn O’Grady holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Chemistry and a Master of Science from the University of Western Ontario, a Bachelor of Science in Education from Queen’s University, and a PhD in Education from the University of Alberta. She also holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

Before founding Progressive Education Research Group Inc. in 2022, Kathryn began her career as a scientist before transitioning to teaching. She taught in Ontario, Alberta, Switzerland, and Belize, in both private and public schools. As a teacher, she incorporated her scientific background into her instructional approach. With a foundation in experiential education, her classes focused on doing science first and then drawing understanding from the experience. During her teaching career, Dr. O’Grady was seconded to Alberta Education for five years to work on the Chemistry 30 exams (Grade 12 graduation test), first as the Examiner and later as the Examination Manager. Upon returning to the school board, Kathryn served as Science Consultant with Edmonton Catholic Schools for nearly two years, supporting K-12 teachers in science classrooms across more than 100 schools. Following her experience at the school, school board, and ministry levels, Dr. O’Grady was recruited by the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC), where she served for nearly 12 years as Manager of the nation-wide Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP) and Coordinator of Learning Assessment Programs.

Kathryn’s priorities in education and assessment focus on understanding student knowledge and improving decision making through the use of high-quality evidence. She emphasizes the importance of developing valid and reliable assessments that are efficient to produce and evaluate, particularly in limited-resource environments. Her professional contributions have involved both large-scale student assessments and smaller-scale classroom-based studies, consistently aiming to provide data that can lead to meaningful policy decisions. In her senior management roles at the CMEC, she spearheaded the organization’s transition from paper-based to digital, online assessments. Although she was no longer with the CMEC when they partnered with Vretta to modernize the PCAP, she indicated that the transition to online assessment was driven in large part by the opportunity to implement adaptive testing for more granular data collection. Vretta’s solution enables the integration of all components of the assessment system with a user-friendly assessment platform.

Kathryn is committed to sharing assessment data and publishing research articles to make findings accessible to educators. Currently, she is involved in the quality management of assessment for international teachers, serves as a reviewer for publications based on international large-scale assessment data, and works with AI models to ensure that accurate information is used in training systems. While Kathryn recognizes the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, she remains concerned about the lack of clear policies and guidelines. She emphasizes the need for improved data collection through assessments to inform educational development.

Dr. O’Grady is an experienced assessment specialist who provides consulting services in large-scale assessment and analysis, program evaluation, policy analysis, strategic planning, project management, training, and report writing.

In her leisure time, Kathryn’s interests include gardening, volunteering, curling, weaving and training her new puppy. Please feel free to connect with Kathryn at: k.ogrady@eduresearch.ca.