Sandra Murphy is professor emerita at the University of California, Davis where she also directed the Center for Cooperative Research and Extension Services for Schools and acted as faculty advisor to the Area 3 Writing Project. Her publications include Designing Writing Tasks for the Assessment of Writing (with Leo Ruth), Writing Portfolios: A Bridge from Teaching to Assessment (with Mary Ann Smith), Portfolio Practices: Lessons from Schools, Districts, and States (with Terry Underwood), and Assessment for Learning: Using Rubrics to Improve Student Writing, a K–5 book series (with Sally Hampton and Margaret Lowery). She cochaired the Steering Committee of NAEP to develop the 2011 framework for the National Assessment of Educational Progress in Writing. While serving as a work group member to develop the Common Core State Standards, she coauthored the standards for writing with Sally Hampton. According to Murphy, all of her work is informed by the years she spent teaching high school and community college literature and composition.