He holds an M.A. and an M.Phil. in English and American literature from Rutgers University, as well as a B.A. in English (magna cum laude) from Boston College.
Mr. Curley has more than 35 years of test development, program coordination, and project management experience, working primarily on the SAT and the PSAT/NMSQT. During that time, he has served as the test development coordinator and the test creation team leader for the SAT Reasoning Test for 21 years. He has supervised groups of 10-15 test development staff members for two periods totaling approximately seven years. He has served as the test development coordinator and the test creation team leader for the PSAT/NMSQT for nine years, and he has served as the test development coordinator for the College Board 8th-Grade Readistep Tests for four years. He worked on the Smarter Balanced Test Blueprint Development Project for the life of the contract in 2012.
Current responsibilities include developing SAT Reading materials and assembling and reviewing SAT Reading pretests and operational forms, work that he has done successfully throughout his career at ETS.
A significant topic of Mr. Curley’s research publications and presentations has been differential item functioning for gender and ethnic groups, with a new paper in press now focused on gender performance on SAT Reading sports and science passages and items. Other research topics have included test equating and scaling, test speededness, test preparation, the interaction of test content and validity, the development of language skills tests, and the content changes to the SAT that were introduced in 1994 and in 2005.