Tribute to Dr. Jim Popham

Jim Popham and I first “met” when his Transformative Assessment was published. At the time, I was using this book in an online book study in Moodle and invited him to join us for a live chat. Although not so schooled in technology at the time, Dr. Popham agreed immediately. The rest is history.

As one mutual acquaintance said, “Lucky me!” to which I agree. We talked, debated and watched sports and the news. I got to provide tech support and research. I was privileged, some might say, to catalogue all of Jim’s articles and papers (although I have a nagging feeling I have missed a few).

While many of you know Jim as a larger-than-life persona on stage or in front of a crowd, you may not know what a fiercely private person he was outside the world of education. On July 16^th, Jim transitioned to professor heaven.

Having been Jim’s long-time research assistant, tech support and friend, I am saddened to share this news with you. 

I’ve learned Jim fondly referred to Transformative Assessment as “a first date” with formative assessment. That book certainly changed my practice. Another mutual acquaintance shared, “Jim brought clarity and a unique wisdom to educational measurement and evaluation. His contribution was immense and will endure forever.” And a colleague of Jim’s shared, “I believe that civilization is a process of teaching and learning. Sometimes requiring unlearning and relearning. Jim was one of the best teachers and contributed in so many ways to all of us.”

Keep your memories close. Send supportive thoughts to Jim’s family. Share his witticisms and knowledge. We all gained from having Jim in our lives.

W. James (Jim) Popham: A Tribute to Teaching, Assessment & Fathering

Teaching was at the heart of everything W. James (Jim) Popham did. Whether in the classroom, leading a conference session, authoring an article, or even chatting in the car, he was always a teacher first. His journey began in a small high school in eastern Oregon, where he taught English and social studies, advised the yearbook, sponsored a class, and served as an unpaid tennis coach. He often joked that his coaching salary was perfectly aligned with the quality of his tennis instruction at the time.

William James Popham was born on July 31, 1930, to William James and Anne Popham of Portland, Oregon. He grew up in Portland and attended the University of Portland, where he graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and later received his master’s degree in education. After receiving his doctorate from Indiana University in 1958, Popham accepted an assistant professorship at Kansas State College in Pittsburg, Kansas. After two years, he moved to San Francisco State College, where he taught for two years before being appointed as an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

And the rest, as they say, was history. Most of his career unfolded at UCLA, where for nearly 30 years, he taught instructional methods to aspiring teachers and courses on evaluation and measurement to graduate students, about 1000 students per year. He even co-taught assessment courses with Madeline Hunter. His impact was internationally recognized—he received several distinguished teaching awards (UCLA Distinguished Teaching award (two times!), professor emeritus, Indiana University School of Education distinguished alumni). He was honored in January 2000 by UCLA Today as one of the university’s top 20 professors of the twentieth century. He opted for early retirement in 1992 when he discovered that emeritus professors received free parking. In 2009, Jim was appointed to the Congressionally established National Assessment Governing Board, where he served until 2019. From 2010 to 2024, he served on the Technical Advisory Committee for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.

Beyond the classroom, Dr. Popham understood the necessity of publishing in academia, and he dedicated his non-teaching hours to writing, literally most often with pencil and paper, and finally, the computer. While Jim was known by many nouns and adjectives by many different people, one word that can be agreed on is prolific. His written contributions included more than 170 papers, 290 journal articles, 35 chapters in books, and over 90 books (= a gazillion words)—many of which have been translated into multiple languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, French, Farsi, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Some, Popham said, when deemed appropriate, were even translated into Canadian. And this count does not include the numerous papers and presentations imparted by Dr. Popham. His interests and expertise were wide and varied and included titles like the following: Criterion-Referenced Measurement (1978); Wanted: AIDS Education That Works, Phi Beta Kappan (March 1993); Circumventing the High Costs of Authentic Assessment, Phi Beta Kappan (February 1993); Educational Testing in America: What's Right, What's Wrong? A Criterion-Referenced Perspective, Educational Measurement (January 1993); Combating AIDS on the Front Lines, School Administrator (August 1992); Two-plus Decades of Educational Objectives, International Journal of Educational Research (January 1987).

In the past two decades, Dr. Popham published several popular books that included Transformative Assessment (2008); Instruction That Measures Up (2009); Transformative Assessment in Action (2011); Mastering Assessment (2011, Pearson); Unlearned Lessons (2009, Harvard Education Press); Everything School Leaders Need to Know About Assessment (2010); and Evaluating America’s Teachers: Mission Possible? (2013); The ABCs of Educational Testing: Demystifying the Tools That Shape Our Schools (2016); and Assessment Literacy for Educators in a Hurry (2018). He encouraged purchasing these books because he regarded their semi-annual royalties as psychologically reassuring. When asked recently which his favorite book was to write, Popham smiled and said, “The one that sold the most copies.”

In his writing, speaking and feedback, word choice was important to Jim. He always kept The New Oxford American Dictionary on his desk and used it to make a point. If one has read much of Dr. Popham’s work, his use of alliteration may have caught your eye. It was one way he liked to play with his vocabulary, even in the deployment of fictitious names in his written examples.

His leadership extended beyond UCLA into regional and national organizations that promoted educational evaluation. He served on the editorial boards of several major research and evaluation journals, including Educational Research Quarterly, Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education, and Evaluation and the Health Professions. In 1978, he was elected president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). He was also the founding editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a quarterly journal published by AERA. His commitment to AERA was nothing short of remarkable—after attending his first annual meeting in 1958, he continued to attend for 60 consecutive years. According to him, this was clear evidence of a bit of a compulsive streak.

Jim Popham’s contributions to education spanned decades, shaping how we think about instructional objectives, assessment and evaluation. While teaching at UCLA, he founded and directed the Instructional Objectives Exchange (IOX), a clearinghouse designed to support educators in developing and sharing behavioral objectives. At one point at UCLA, Jim distributed bumper stickers that said, “Help Stamp Out Non-behavioral Objectives.” IOX, as a research and development organization, created statewide student achievement tests for a dozen states. He always claimed he personally passed all those tests, due to his unrestricted access to the tests’ answer keys. IOX produced videos, filmstrips and reports. His work also extended to collaborations with the Southwest Regional Laboratory for Educational Research and Development, reinforcing his commitment to refining how learning is measured and understood.

Popham was deeply engaged in the evolving landscape of educational evaluation. Drawing from B.F. Skinner’s research on behaviorism and Ralph Tyler’s work with objectives, made him a key figure in the programmed instruction movement, a method that emphasized carefully structured learning sequences with clear expectations. However, as educators sought better ways to determine when students were ready to progress, the conversation shifted toward more effective assessment strategies. This shift played a pivotal role in what became the criterion-referenced measurement movement. As educational evaluation evolved in the late 1960s and early 1970s, criterion-referenced measurement gained traction because it offered a clearer picture of student progress in relation to defined learning goals rather than comparing students to one another.

Popham was at the forefront of this transformation. In his 1969 article Implications of Criterion-Referenced Measurement in the Journal of Educational Measurement, he argued that criterion-referenced assessments provided more meaningful insights for instruction and decision-making. His 1978 book, Criterion-Referenced Measurement, reinforced this, emphasizing that these assessments offer a direct and useful interpretation of student performance. This movement laid the groundwork for curriculum-based assessment and measurement, which gained momentum in the 1990s. Without Popham’s pioneering work in the 1960s and 1970s, this shift in educational evaluation might not have occurred. He saw measurement and evaluation as instructional tools—what he called “instructionally catalytic”—helping shape what and how educators teach.

Beyond his research and influence, Popham had a knack for making complex topics accessible. This included statistics. Many a student made it through their college statistics class thanks in part to Understanding Statistics in Education, with Kenneth A. Sirotnik (1992). His humor and clarity made abstract concepts relatable.

For nine years, Dr. Popham resided in Hawaii and assured us all that it wasn’t just about the tennis and pineapples. His work while there was profuse and included three editions of his Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need to Know, plus 14 other titles. While writing happened in many locations, Sarah shared, “Jim would announce to me, Tomorrow is a writing day, and I have to get (chapters, proposals, articles, reviews, etc.) done. It never ceased to amaze me how focused and tenacious Jim could be with the written word.” Even in paradise.

Even after retiring from UCLA, Popham remained deeply involved in education. As the director of IOX Assessment Associates, he continued his work in test development and played an active role in evaluating HIV education programs for the CDC. His goal, as always, was to improve instructional practices and provide educators with better tools, regardless of the content.

With the publication of Transformative Assessment in 2008, Popham’s work in the formative assessment arena really became known to the masses. In his witty, digestible style, Dr. Popham conveyed valuable teaching strategies that he and his contemporaries (David Berliner, Margaret Heritage, Sue Brookhart) had been researching and working with for years.

His last work was the 10th edition of a classroom textbook for educators, first released in 1995, Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need to Know (2025). With this book, Popham made educational measurement approachable for classroom teachers, ensuring that assessment remained a tool for learning rather than a barrier. Remaining current with research, happenings, insights, and challenges in education, this textbook demonstrates Jim’s wit, thought leadership, and relatability. Through time with this book alone, Popham has demonstrated repeatedly that he could make research consumable for classroom teachers and help guide their teaching practice. He was always clear about his purpose: “Students are my main reason for staying active in the field of evaluation and measurement.”

While students and teachers primarily know Popham for his work as an educational expert, his children knew him as Dad, and his wife of 40 years knew him as partner. A couple of years ago, his daughter, Shelby, shared with him that because of him, she teaches something she loves at a world-famous university, and his IOX business inspired her to use her knowledge to create other opportunities for herself. His son Mitchell recalled all the days and nights they played catch, went to the batting cage and went to all the games–memories he’ll forever treasure along with their 40 years of Sunday phone calls. Who knew that Jim liked making peach jam and peach everything with his kids when all the trees in the yard began to ripen? And Chris (son #3) admitted to fondly remembering all the times his Dad had “gotten” him and the others for April Fool’s. His children have good memories of their Dad’s love of words (particularly of the alliterative kind). As a teenager, Brent (son #2) even had an opportunity to use “vociferous” in a quiet movie theater. Jim loved taking his kids to concerts (Chuck Mangione, Neil Diamond) and ball games, playing badminton, and going to the beach. To Sarah, Jim’s knowledge of world history and politics was amazing. Up until recently, they talked about current events and, invariably, he could add context to whatever the issue was that they were discussing. Sarah shared she will miss his big brain.

Through teaching, research, writing, and leadership, Jim Popham shaped the field of educational assessment. His wit, wisdom and unwavering commitment to improving education left a lasting impact on generations of educators and students, along with his family and friends.