Dr Calvin E. Wright

After a long and tenacious battle against osteomyelitis and congestive heart failure, Dr. Calvin E. Wright was among friends and family when he passed away on November 17, 2016. He was 88. Growing up in Sacramento, CA during the Great Depression, Cal worked as a stock boy at his father’s grocery during WWII and later rode the freight trains to state parks to work for the US Forestry Service. Cal received an A.B. from UC Berkeley in 1951, frequenting the local jazz haunts where Dave Brubeck and others played. Moving to Seattle, Cal drove a taxi at night to make ends meet while earning his M.S. and Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Washington in 1957. His initial post-grad project was creating a computer program using an IBM ‘tabulator’ with punch cards to predict what high school students’ grades would be in different subjects in college. His focus on psychometrics (the mathematical prediction of human behavior) using multivariate statistics led to his appointment as Director of the Bureau of Testing at the UW in 1959. Cal moved back to California in 1961 as an Associate in the Chancellor’s Office of the California State Colleges. While there, he designed the protocol used to determine student eligibility for admission to the California State Universities. As Director of Evaluations and Research for American Institutes for Research (AIR), Cal led the evaluation of comprehensive individualized education programs for K-12 students. As the President of Educational Evaluation and Research, Inc. in Menlo Park, CA, Cal was involved in extensive evaluations for the California State Department of Education, ranging from accountability of vocational education programs to audits of bilingual and special needs populations for the California Community Colleges. Cal authored or coauthored over 400 technical or research reports. In between, he enjoyed gardening, travels to Bodega Bay, TV, dim sum, and happy hour. After retiring in 1990 and returning to Washington, Cal stayed busy by consulting with the Seattle Public Schools, being active in his homeowners associations, and bookkeeping. He is predeceased by his wife of 47 years, Dorothy, and survived by his brother Robert and sister-in-law Mary, his son Steve and daughter-in-law Mary Beth, and his son Jeff and daughter Teresa (Diana). A celebration of Cal’s life will be held on Saturday, December 10, 2016, 2pm at Moles Farewell Tributes – Bellingham, 2465 Lakeway Dr, Bellingahm, WA. Please share your memories of Cal at wordpress-271002-1416095.cloudwaysapps.com.

Dr Calvin E. Wright

October 12, 1928 - November 17, 2016